Safe As Milk

Product Details

"I may be hungry, but I sure ain't weird," Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart, famously intones on this bright-sounding re-mastered version of the 1967 debut by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band. Safe as Milk is a bold, tough-ass distillation of Delta blues stomp and 1960s garage-punk swagger, fused with a radically polyrhythmic and tempo-shifting style that one might term "art rock". Listening to the delightfully playful, absurdist "Abba Zabba", it's easy to see why Lester Bangs called Beefheart "the only true dadaist in rock"; the song is a good indication of the intricate, rule-breaking music the Magic Band would continue to hone. But there are also formidable ballads (the psychedelic "Autumn's Child", the lachrymose "I'm Glad"), mid-tempo pop-soul tunes (the Otis Redding-ish "Call on Me"), and straight-ahead blues-rock workouts ("Plastic Factory"), all of which showcase the fretwork of a young Ry Cooder. Much has been made of Beefheart's multiple-octave vocal range; he sings menacingly on "Dropout Boogie" and allegedly broke a very expensive microphone on the eerie "Electricity". The last seven tracks on this reissue (for the most part fascinating, unfinished instrumentals) were recorded with a different line-up; they are outtakes from Mirror Man Sessions. --Mike McGonigal