Tracklisting
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 A Woman
11. Grown So Ugly
12. Autumn's Child
13. Safe As Milk
14. On Tomorrow
15. Big Black Baby Shoes
16. Flower Pot
17. Dirty Blue Gene
18. Trust Us
19. Korn Ring Finger
Review
Its interesting to note that very first sound heard on the first track of the first Captain Beefheart album is a slide guitar. Its interesting because even though Beefheart's name has become associated with wilfully difficult, obscure and eccentric music, his music is grounded in the delta blues of John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf. Hearing the first thirty seconds or so of "Sure Nuff N' Yes I Do", you could be forgiven for thinking that you're in for some blues. Then the band comes in.
Beefheart's vision was to combine the beat driven sound of the blues with the unstructured sound of free jazz. Yhis vision would be fulfilled with
Trout Mask Replica, one of the noisiest, most experimental and uncommercial records ever recorded by a 'rock' artist. He was not quite ready to do this in 1967 however and on
Safe As Milk, the chaotic, noisy free jazz influences were toned down considerably.
The garage blues of "Sure Nuff N Yes I Do" kicks the album off in fine fashion. The slide guitars slash all over the place while the bass and drums keep the groove and Beefheart himself spits out the lyrics with a venom that Dylan had on "Like A Rolling Stone" and Kurt Cobain did on "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter." The Stones-y blues rock of "Zig Zag Wanderer" takes over and if you're not won over yet then you probably won't ever be. The songs on
Safe As Milk are melodic and riff driven, catchy even. Its far more like straight up rock than what people associate with Captain Beefheart. The bouncy "Yellow Brick Road" is an album highlight, combining Beefheart's trademark quirkiness with melodic songwriting.
This isnt to say that the record is completely devoid of Beefheart's bizarre approach to music. On "Abba Zabba" he combines a nonsensical use of the English language with his own made up words. "Electricity", the song that got the band fired from A&M records for being "too negative", features an extremely bizarre Beefheart vocal and a theremin, not exactly an instrument Cream would have used.
Safe As Milk isnt all banging though. "I'm Glad" sounds like Beefheart's attempt to immitate southern soul. Like most immitations, it's not as good as a track by the genuine soul greats (Otis Redding, Solomon Buerke, Al Green) but thats not the point. It's one of the weaker tracks on the album but thats simply because of the extremely high standard throughout and Im probably just nit-picking. Its a good performance, not as good as an Otis Redding song, but its a good change of pace ftom the rest of the album.
As much as people like to talk about Beefheart, a special mention must be made to Ry Cooder. Cooder served as musical supervisor on this album. This means that Beefheart would play him a song he had written (presumably on piano as Beefheart is not a guitar player) and then Cooder would interperet it and create a full band arrangement with the other musicians. At the time Ry Cooder was only twenty years old but his interperative talents are phenomenal, conjuring up the slide guitars, pounding drums and basslines from just hearing a piano part and vocal. Even though Beefheart is credited in the liner notes with arranging the songs, its generally excepted that it was Cooder, who along with the other members of the Magic Band, jammed into existence most of the musical backing that gives these songs the power and energy that they have.
Its a faultless album by any standards. If any proof were needed that Beefheart and the Magic Band have been an influence on garage rock/blues bands it came when the White Stripes covered "China Pig." Beefheart was not the first to do garagey blues music. Dylan had done it two years earlier on the first side of his
Bringing It All Back Home album and, of course, the Stones had done it on songs like "19th Nervous Breakdown." What makes all of these artists worth listening to is this - they all did it their own way.