Album 999
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band - Lick My Decals Off, Baby
Year: 1970
Very often overlooked in favour of Trout Mask Replica as the "one" Captain Beefheart album people get. This slightly toned down version of Beefheart's genius sings to me. It is early avant-garde at its best and it really helped shape and define the era moreso than TMR did. The humour, while Zappa-esque in stature is far less straight forward than Zappa ever did, and it focuses far more on simply being weird. Weird for the sake of being weird possibly, but this is the start of the 70's everyone was doing it, just in slightly less obvious ways. The vocal performance is actually quite stunning if you give an intent listen, and so are the instrumentals, put this album on loop, and let it play twice and listen to every note and every piece of lyric, you will be very well rewarded.
3 Choice Tracks: Bellerin'Plain, I Wanna Find a Woman That'll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have To Go, The Clouds are Full of Wine (Not Whiskey or Rye)