Friday, December 17, 2010

81. Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Safe as Milk (1967)

1. Sure Nuff 'n' Yes I Do
2. Zig Zag Wanderer
3. Call On Me
4. Dropout Boogie
5. I'm Glad
6. Electricity
7. Yellow Brick Road
8. Abba Zaba
9. Plastic Factory
10. Where There's Woman
11. Grown So Ugly
12. Autumn's Child

In this post-mad cow disease world, not even milk is safe anymore.

That's the tagline to what may be the worst film yet to be written, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to write it anyway. But first, I must write about Captain Beefheart, a noted eccentric and contemporary of Frank Zappa. Aside from a few tracks here and there, I hadn't really given him a full listen before this album, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was actually quite accessible. 


Yeah, really. You wouldn't expect it from a guy named Captain Beefheart, but this was a fun and engaging listen. It just might be the best white blues album on the list so far, in fact. The first track sounds like a Muddy Waters track if Muddy Waters dropped some acid and wrote his thoughts down. 


This album tends to oscillate between straight R&B songs like 'Call on Me' that already must have started to sound out of date in the wild Spirit of '67 and some of the freakiest blues this side of the Mississippi. 'Electricity' is nothing short of WILD, maaaaaan. It's even got a Theremin! How many blues songs do you know of with a theremin? 'Abba Zabba' is another particular delight, with its pseudo-African rhythms, which might be the first time a rock band ever used those. Hey, you're getting your world music into my blues! Stop it!

And unfortunately, I've just found out that he's dead while writing this review. I'm hoping this isn't the start of some terrible curse relating to my blog, but all jokes aside, this is quite a sad loss to music and to art in general. Artists as rare and unique as Don Van Vliet don't come around too often: They should be treasured and remembered, and most importantly, celebrated. 9/10

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