Features Disc of the day
Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band
Safe As Milk
(Buddah, 1967)
Van Vliet's blues-rocking debut. Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal guest!
This storied outfit's earliest activities after emerging from the California desert included playing Rolling Stones tunes and releasing a single version of Diddy Wah Diddy by Bo Diddley. And if the above activities seem a fair distance from later Beefheart trepanning parties like Trout Mask Replica, they're a good précis for Safe As Milk. With Beefheart's signature wolf-roar (strange to think of him ever being 26) present and correct, the music is a blues-heavy rock rich in natural eccentricity rather than paisley-underpants '67-psychedelia, and despite previous label A&M dropping the band for being uncommercial, these songs are invariably catchy, hummable and in possession of the all-important good beat. They're varied too; take latiny choco-bar tribute Abba Zaba, the soul and doo-wop of Call On Me and I'm So Glad and freak folk weeper Autumn's Child for proof. There are signposts to where they'd go later - see how rhythmatist Drumbo's already getting to grips with those treble-jointed micro-beats on the fabulous Electricity - but there's a kind of calm here that suggests he hadn't yet started forbidding the band to use the toilet to make their playing "tense". As for contemporary admirers, a certain J.W. Lennon was on the money.
Clive Prior
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 19/10/2009
Further Listening
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica (Straight, 1969)
The Mothers Of Invention - Freak Out! (Verve, 1966)
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour (Kamera, 1982)
Previous Disc of the day
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Boo Hooray - Haunted
Rumpled velvet pop from weary Scots romantics. Out on Monday!
6:00 AM GMT 04/02/2010
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The Pernice Brothers - Overcome By Happiness
"Prince Valium" leavens the badness with Bacharach/Fanclub tune gold.
6:00 AM GMT 03/02/2010
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The Walker Brothers - Nite Flights
Former pin-ups' last-gasp reinvention as art rock phantasms.
6:00 AM GMT 02/02/2010
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Chet Baker - Deep In A Dream
"The ultimate Chet Baker collection", they called it.
6:00 AM GMT 01/02/2010
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Oh man, this is one of the greatest recordings ever released... and it would take an idiot to say otherwise.
Posted by Anonymous at 4:28 PM GMT 21/10/2009 Report Abuse
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