Safe As Milk (Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, 1967)

On a scale between 1 and Trout Mask Replica, Safe As Milk comes in at around a 5 or so, maybe 6 or 7 if you include the bonus material. It is definitely not a casual listening album and not for all tastes. Up until recently all I had heard of Captain Beefheart was the "Diddy Wah Diddy" single featured on the Nuggets box set and "Her Eyes Are Blue a Million Miles", a track featured on the Big Lebowski soundtrack. These songs are very tame in comparison, so Safe As Milk was a jarring experience upon first listen.

It's tempting to say the album is called Safe As Milk because the next three albums illustrated an increasingly "unsafe" direction as the music became more manic and deconstructed. By this logic, you are either using hindsight, or you somehow gained access to the secret master plan of Don Van Vliet (a.k.a. Captain Beefheart). If anything, if you were at that moment, it was more likely you'd consider the album ironically titled, since the needle moved a great deal further in the crazy direction since the "Diddy Wah Diddy" single from 1966. While most of the songs here remain coherent from start to finish and have some kind of consistent groove, Captain Beefheart was clearly heading away from the fizzling garage rock scene in Los Angeles. In spite of the weirder direction, it's still as good a place as any for new listeners to start.

The Beefheart story takes an amusing turn in the 1970's. Culminating with Trout Mask Replica two albums later, then holding for another album or two, the band had gotten so bizarre that they were doomed to a lifetime of panhandling, critically acclaimed or not. This resulted in decision to consciously take things in a more commercial direction and by mid-decade the albums are surprisingly "safe" compared to the earlier albums. I haven't heard anything after Clear Spot, but the commercial shift was enough to keep the band from being homeless, yet not so dramatic that the brand name adulterated.

Captain Beefheart frequently garners comparisons to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, though fans of each are quick to point out the differences. I'm not too invested in either, so I don't have a lot to add to the discussion. Both bands' debuts feature traditional and avant-garde elements side by side. In the case of Captain Beefheart it's like "weird garage" or "weird blues", while Zappa is "weird doo-wop" or "weird pop". Zappa seems to have a much greater concern over what defines commercial pop, while Beefheart just throws caution to the wind. Then again, to use album titles, if Zappa was Strictly Commercial, then Beefheart is Strictly Personal. But that's a different album.