captain beefheart: safe as milk

Granted, the blues has never exactly been dominated by Caucasian musicians. However, a few white boys have truly understood its raw power, and approached the blues with a freshness and excitement that explodes out of the stereo and rampages around the room. Such is the case with Captain Beefheart's 1967 debut, Safe As Milk, recently reissued with seven extra tracks and restored artwork. The riffs from "Zig Zag Wanderer" and the chorus of "Yellow Brick Road" roll and tumble with the best of them, and the Captain's remarkable four-and-a-half octave voice enables him to keep up with the frenzied pitch of the music, whether he's growling out surrealist imagery, emitting high yelps for punctuation, or sputtering mere nonsense.

Furthermore, Safe As Milk is impressively cohesive for such a rough blues-rock album. Beefheart opens it with a fairly standard guitar line, but goes on to add less conventional touches that hint at the eclectic nature of his later work. The theremin in "Electricity" and the bizarre lyrics and prominent percussion of "Abba Zaba" set the stage for the closing track, the grandiose, psychedelic "Autumn's Child." The Captain's tight arrangements and the quality of the musicians in the Magic Band (including a 19 year-old Ry Cooder on guitar) ensure that none of these flourishes seems out of place.

However, those who already own Safe As Milk on vinyl might want to think twice about rushing out to buy the reissued version. The sound quality isn't much better than that of the original, and most of the extra tracks either seem loose and unfinished or degenerate into meandering jams.

Still, there are plenty of worthwhile moments, such as "Big Black Baby Shoes," a warbling parody of '60s psychedelia, and the stomping "On Tomorrow." Also, the bonus tracks provide an interesting glimpse of the Magic Band in the studio, presaging the intricate, free-form arrangements of Beefheart's follow-up masterpiece, Trout Mask Replica. In general, Safe As Milk stands on its own and provides an accessible introduction to the Captain's later, more complex work. So let them white kids play the blues, but make sure they play it like this. (Buddah)

—Eliot Rose

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