unhinged? i guess its a compliment

"Safe As Milk" is definitely a good place to start if you are new to Beefheart. Jumping straight into "Trout Mask Replica" isn't exactly the easiest thing to do if you are new to avant-garde blues.

well i like avant garde stuff a lot but i never thought much about Beefheart to quite honest. i heard a little of trout mask replica and thought i needed some time till i can listen and understand it

I watched a documentary on Beefheart last night and am not entirely convinced the man's a genius. I mean what is the appeal, if I'm going to spend who knows how much time spinning one of these, I need to know the appeal. Is it just to be Beefheart fan?

Ry Cooder, Frank Zappa, Muddy Waters, easily, I could understand. What's so great about Beefheart? I heard one guy in the documentary say he had the core blue's sounds of of Howlin' Wolf with time signatures of Ornette Coleman, is it true? Is it good? What do you guys like about it? I mean the guy seems kinda spaced out to me and the only person who produced his music really was Zappa... and if I had guess that was only because they were friends and to stop any future suicide attempts after the Monera Pop Festival. I think Beefheart with all his anxiety attacks, odd ideas, anti-social and often erratic and dangerous behavior must've either been a genius like so many say... or he was just plain out psychotic.

What do you guys like about him again?

i'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here, but allow me to explain something...

Frank Zappa's production was the WORST thing to happen to the Magic Band. his financial constrictions prevented the instrumentals on Trout Mask Replica from sounding anywhere near their intended quality, to ill effect. in fact, the time constraints he placed upon the band (they recorded the instrumentals within four hours) prevented second-takes in most situations and offered an air of novice and ineptitude to the whole band, which could not have been further from what they were trying to accomplish. the two songs on the album which sound truly impressive (Moonlight on Vermont, Veteran's Day Poppy) are coincidentally the two that were recorded at a different session with an entirely different set of engineers.

had Beefheart chosen a suitable replacement for producer they might have elicited a much stronger sound and consequently better album. the problem was Frank Zappa's label was unwilling to provide the necessary funds and technicians to promote anything greater than what they had accomplished.

Okay I could see that. So what do you like about Beefheart? What albums would you recommend? I'm just finding it hard to get into him. What I'm asking is how do you know he's not just being pretentious? I've heard from so many people that the albums are really inaccessible at first, and that many albums of his sound bad... but they grow on them.... and then suddenly they realize he was a genius. Do you think he is a genius?

I just don't want to get myself all excited and end up having some placebo effect about liking his music, or thinking it is good when it isn't. I can't judge at all, I really haven't listened to jack shit by him. I started listening to the beginning of Safe As Milk and it just sounded bluesy to me. Not inaccessible or genius, but that was only a few songs. Thanks for the input so far btw.

i don't like doing this but i want to address everything you said in this post...

a good start would be Trout Mask Replica. it's probably the most challenging of the lot but it will provide you a good focus on what his material is apt to sound like. from there Lick My Decals Off, Baby and Safe As Milk are probably his next two best. towards his latter part of his career he achieved somewhat of a groove with a new backing band -- the albums Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) and Doc at the Radar Station would probably be among my personal favorites.

as for what i like about Beefheart, i can appreciate the complexity and the organic preservation of the instrumentals, but what i enjoy most is the abbreviated marriage of poetic license and aural dissonance: the juxtaposition of what makes me think and what makes me feel.

a loaded question to be sure, but an understandable position at that. i've long expressed that i feel Beefheart was in no way pretentious -- his was a veritable enigma to the world, but always encapsulating the same idiosyncratic humor that his personality typified.

interviews that he's given over the years certainly vindicate him of this.

yes, there is an element of "you won't like it at first" in there but i think that follows suit for any challenging music you might listen to. i listened to PIL's Metal Box for a year before i finally "got" it.

was Beefheart a genius? perhaps. it's easy to recognize him for the effect he had upon the musical world, but unless you really immerse yourself in his material i doubt you'll coincide based upon what he wrote.

i never made a conscious effort to enjoy Beefheart, it was never this arduous task to me. i simply enjoyed a few of his tunes on his first album and tried a few more thereafter.

and just to note: Safe As Milk is probably the least Beefheartian of them all. there's a few whispers of insanity on it ("Electricity") but nothing that comes close to the organized dissonance of his later works.

Thank you for all your help Lucifer_Sam, It was a great read and answered all my questions. In the end it doesn't matter weather or not he is pretentious of if he is a genius, but weather or not I enjoy his music. I've listened to most of Safe As Milk and although it is the least "beefheartish" Beefheart album I actually did enjoy it, especially Electricity. I'll be interested to see weather or not I like Trout Mask Replica.

Trout Mask Replica is a great way to get rid of people/family unwanted in your household/room. Two of my cousins were chilling in my room one day unannounced, I arrive ask them to leave, they don't, TMR goes on the music player, the bigger off!

I can't actually say I enjoy listening to it, rather just once in a while when you need something to blast the roof off, however Lick my decals off, Baby is alot more playable I feel and nicer to listen to,.

Hey gentlemen. I've only heard Diddy Wah Diddy by Captain Beefheart, i like it, i might get into more based on what i've been hearing. But I just wanted to ask if anyone else thought that Diddy Wah Diddy may be a brothel?