Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: Safe As Milk [★★★★½]

In Greek mythology, the Cyclops was a one-eyed monster named Polyphemus most famous for eating Odysseus’ men. In another, less common myth, the hapless Cyclops fell in love with a nymph named Galatea, and tried to woo her with song. But she rejected him, and his later run-in with Odysseus left him blind and wretched. Imagine that Polyphemus kept singing, and that this horrible, cave-dwelling ogre would growl and bellow the blues— the only voice which could compare to his existential discontent is the terrifying bellow of Captain Beefheart, also known as Don Van Vliet.

The passing of Don Van Vliet on 17 December 2010 came twenty-eight years after the Captain hung up his shell-shocked microphone and retired from a music biz career (which had earned him notoriety, critical acclaim, and no money) in order to sing through his paintings. Few ostensibly “rock” recording artists have longer shadows; Beefheart’s legacy rumbles on in pretty much any music which avoids the smooth ruts and well-trodden paths. Imagine an unholy mash-up of Howlin’ Wolf, Salvador Dali, e.e. cummings, Pablo Picasso, John Muir, and Ornette Coleman, and you start to scratch the surface of Beefheart’s art. He is most famous for his deep, bellowing, booming preternatural growl of a voice, an instantly recognizable and often frightening distillation of Howlin’ Wolf’s similarly bone-rattling holler, only amplified into an abstract poetry cannon. Besides his voice, which alone could have made him a career in the hard blues gutter, Beefheart was an astonishingly facile wordsmith, rich in puns and poetry and dazzlingly bonkers non-sequiturs full of nature and sex and blues and surreal metaphor. Behind him bashed his many aptly-titled Magic Bands, probably the most innovative aspect of his music. Deconstructing rhythms and turning song forms inside-out and backwards, Beefheart’s best music chugged along like a lopsided funky dumptruck with free jazz flat tires, and despite the wobbly, stop-start rhythmic attack, somehow everything held together in an abstract musical logic.

Beefheart’s first recording was a rowdy cover of Bo Diddley’s “Diddy Wah Diddy”, which featured one of the heaviest basslines ever to grace a 45. But beyond minor regional success, the single did not impress his record company, and so Beefheart would move on to Buddah to record his first full-length, Safe As Milk. At this point, the Magic Band—as evidenced from the ’66-’67 acetates and live recordings on the rarities box Grow Fins—was a heavy psychedelic blues band, and among the freakiest in the Los Angeles scene. But Beefheart’s vocal attack put him way beyond other white blues bands; contemporaries like Canned Heat, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, or even the Doors sound like kids in a sandbox compared to Beefheart’s lupine overdrive. It is interesting, then, to hear how varied and even well-rounded Safe As Milk is. As a record, it presages virtually all of the later moves he would make in his career. Hard blues opener "Sure 'Nuff 'n Yes I Do" recycles Muddy Waters’ “Rollin and Tumblin’”, and tracks like "Plastic Factory" commandeer traditional blues riffs. Gleefully demented noise like "Dropout Boogie" and "Electricity" point toward Beefheart’s friendship with fellow iconoclast Frank Zappa and anticipate the epic surreal weirdness of 1969’s Trout Mask Replica. But the heavier tracks are leavened with bouncy pop like "Yellow Brick Road" and "Abba Zaba", a tribute to a candy bar, and there is even commercial r’n’b like "Call On Me", which is almost Motown, and "I'm Glad", which sounds like the Impressions (and which helps explain his unbeloved 1974 records Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans & Moonbeams).

As would be the case throughout his career, his backing musicians deserve a good portion of the credit. Drummer John French would be Beefheart’s gloriously irregular heartbeat for several records, and guitarist Ry Cooder, who would quit the band shortly after, contributes excellent slide guitar. Sadly, the intense pressure of making this wildly uncommercial music would lead to constant personnel shifts and record company troubles. The record itself suffers from middling sound quality to a producer’s decision to switch from a state-of-the-art 8-track studio to a primitive 4-track; the sound is often muddled. There were no real outtakes from the sessions (other than the aforementioned acetates), and the very good CD edition (on a reborn Buddha Records) includes longer, less focused blues jams from October-November 1967 sessions. Safe As Milk (the title being, perhaps, a wry acknowledgment of the record’s potentially distasteful originality) would become a cult record, especially in the UK, and while few fans rate it as his best work, it is probably his most accessible creation, and the ideal first purchase for anyone who wants to visit one of the wilder corners of underground 60s rock.

MP3: "Dropout Boogie"

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: Safe As Milk (Buddah Records, September 1967)

Side one:

1. "Sure 'Nuff 'n Yes I Do" (Don Van Vliet, Herb Bermann) – 2:16

2. "Zig Zag Wanderer" (Van Vliet, Bermann) – 2:40

3. "Call On Me" – 2:37 (Van Vliet)

4. "Dropout Boogie" – 2:32 (Van Vliet, Bermann)

5. "I'm Glad" – 3:31 (Van Vliet)

6. "Electricity" – 3:08 (Van Vliet, Bermann)

Side two:

7. "Yellow Brick Road" – 2:28 (Van Vliet, Bermann)

8. "Abba Zaba" – 2:44 (Van Vliet)

9. "Plastic Factory" (Van Vliet, Bermann, Jerry Handley) – 3:09

10. "Where There's Woman" (Van Vliet, Bermann) – 2:10

11. "Grown So Ugly" (Robert Pete Williams) – 2:27

12. "Autumn's Child" (Van Vliet, Bermann) – 4:02

Comparable Albums

No one really sounds like Captain Beefheart, so it’s difficult to list similar albums. Beefheart’s next album, 1968’s Strictly Personal, was a somewhat sloppy foray into psychedelic blues jamming. Beefheart’s high school buddy Frank Zappa released Absolutely Free in 1967, but other than its aggressive stance toward commercial pop and staid ‘60s culture, it bears little in common musically. If Beefheart had had the inclination, he could have probably made a pyschedlic blues album like the Doors’ first, or Disraeli Gears by Cream, but thankfully he followed his muse. For other examples of unhinged counterculture of the I-can’t-believe-these-guys-got-to-make-a-record variety, see anything by the Fugs, or the Deviants’ Ptooff!

Peter Walker: Rainy Day Raga [★★★★]

This stunning LP, an instrumental fusion of Indian raga, Spanish flamenco, and American folk guitar, pretty much encapsulates the burgeoning East-West musical cross-pollination that was in the air in 1967, and deserves a much wider audience. Peter Walker, originally from Boston, traveled widely—to Mexico, Spain, and Africa—studying the music of the world, especially flamenco, and became part of the New York City folk scene, befriending the similarly brilliant Sandy Bull. On a trip to San Francisco, he met Janis Joplin, but it was there that he first heard Ravi Shankar in concert, and devoted himself to studying the raga. Upon returning to the East coast, he met Timothy Leary, who was so impressed with Walker that he made him musical director of the ‘Celebrations’ at his Millbrook estate.

This record features nine original compositions and a cover of “Norwegian Wood”, which takes the Beatles’ first track to feature a sitar and unravels it into a peaceful raga. Walker, backed with subtle percussion and the occasional flute, uses the drones and escalating tension of the raga as a backdrop for his airy solos, which never lose the melodicism of flamenco. Overall, the effect is placid and meditative, and the album title seems to pretty much hit the nail on the head. Where classical Indian music can often sound rhythmically or melodically disorienting to the novice, Walker’s synthesis of Spanish and American tones with Indian form is a spellbinding and accessible blend of the three. According to Walker’s own liner notes, his American raga “employs the Indian concept of starting with a drone, adding a scale based on the drone, then a melodic line based on the scale, then weaving, reweaving, and interweaving the melodic line so that a freely improvised piece is constructed.” This is placid, cerebral stuff, and highly recommended.

MP3: "White Wind"

Peter Walker: Rainy Day Raga (Vanguard, 1967)

Side One:

1. Morning Joy 3:46
2. Norwegian Wood 4:16
3. White Wind 7:40
4. Bianca 3:07
5. Spring 2:59

Side Two:

6. Sunshine 3:26
7. Rainy Day Raga 6:25
8. Road To Marscota 5:47
9. April In Cambridge 3:12
10. River 5:12

[Note: This album is often listed as being from 1966. The excellent new edition on Ace’s Vanguard Masters includes newspaper clippings and reproductions of the record labels which make it clear that the record was issued in 1967.]

Comparable Albums

Walker’s own 1969 follow-up, Second Poem to Karmela, is just as good as this one. Fans of American folk guitar saints John Fahey and Robbie Basho will find plenty to enjoy here (try, for ’67 comparison, the former’s Days Have Gone By and the latter’s The Falconer’s Arm I). Even more similar to Walker’s style is the brilliant Sandy Bull, whom I discuss here). Ravi Shankar’s career and discography are daunting, but all of the few ‘50s and ‘60s records of his I’ve heard offer good examples of his dense, intricate and intense style. Another jazzier record which brings guitar and eastern instrumentation together is Gábor Szabó’s Jazz Raga.

The Story Behind "The Sounds Of '67"

In 1989, at the age of sixteen and armed with a fresh new driver’s license, a Ford Taurus wagon, and the 1979 edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide, I drove over to the Coventry district of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, to buy an album I’d never heard by a band I’d only read about. And I found it, for the then-steep price of $9.99, at the little hole-in-the-wall record store that was next to Grum’s Sub Shoppe. In 1989, before I had any access to a computer (much less the internet, mp3s, Youtube, Wikipedia, or the Hype Machine), finding new music was much more difficult. Those without the requisite music geek older sibling or cousin had to rely on their friends (who listened to the same crappy radio stations you did, watched the same crappy MTV you did, and bought the same crappy albums everyone else did)—either that, or find other bored loners willing to conduct a little empirical research. I am being a bit unfair to my older sister, who introduced me to the Smiths (thanks, Amy!) and Oingo Boingo (I take it back, Amy), but other than some of the slightly more adventurous late-night programming offered by WNCX and WMMS, I was on my own. And so I did what any normal bookwormish loner and future music geek would do: go to the library. I found the Rolling Stone Record Guide in the St. Ignatius High School library, and checked it out so many times that I ended up just stealing it (sorry, St. Ignatius); from the Cleveland Heights Public Library, I found Robert Santelli’s Sixties Rock: A Listener’s Guide (which I did not steal), the mantic ravings of Lester Bangs, and the undiagrammable sentences of Robert Christgau. In other words, I wanted new music, so I did my homework. I think part of the reason so many music geeks my age get so misty about their beloved cult records is that we grew up when it was difficult to find out about the buried-treasure records out there, and even more difficult, not to mention costly, to actually hear them. Now, in the space of about two minutes I can find, download, and listen to albums the mere mention of which would have caused, in 1989, some kind of aural salivation. It took me years to finally get my dirtied fingers on the Kinks’ sublime Face To Face.

The record in question bought on that Autumn day in 1989 was Love’s Forever Changes. As with a small handful of life-changing records, I can still clearly remember the moment I gently nudged the cassette into the tapedeck (for in those days, I was a tape man), heard the cascading guitars of the opening track, and immediately knew that I was going to like Love. Twenty-two years and hundreds of plays later, 1967’s Forever Changes sounds as fresh and wonderful, as dark and deep and cryptic, as endlessly listenable, as it ever did. It was, after all a five-star album, a classic, according to Dave Marsh then, and to me now. And if I hadn’t taken the plunge, by buying an obscure 1967 album by an obscure band just because some music critic said it ruled, then I would have missed out on years and years of deeply rewarding listening pleasure.

Soon I began to notice that a suspiciously large percentage of the records I loved camed from one specific year, 1967, the year of Sgt. Pepper’s, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Are You Experienced, John Wesley Harding, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Something Else By The Kinks, Mr. Fantasy, Disraeli Gears, Magical Mystery Tour. There must have been something in the water that year, which is actually probably true. Once I discovered Nuggets, it was all over: I devoted my spare time to tracking down obscure 60s artists, in search of acid-fried concept albums, fuzzed out guitars, amateur sitar playing, and the unsolicited spiritual advice so common to pop songs of the time. My college roomates quickly grew tired of all five volumes of The Genuine Basement Tapes (and grew irritable when I played Trout Mask Replica or Uncle Meat, which I put on when I wanted some privacy). Since my early years of being a 1967-phile, I have collected (though ‘accumulated’ or ‘piled up’ might be better words) dozens and dozens of records by bands both big and small, simply because I thought they might have some of that 1967 magic. I didn’t even care what genre the record was: if it came out in 1967, it was worth at least a listen. Genre can be important, inasmuch as a record tagged as ‘psychedelic’ is guaranteed at least some sales among cultists; such is the science of collecting now that terms like psych, popsike, freakbeat, garage, and psychsploitation, if improperly used, can get you into a fistfight at the Pasadena City College Flea Market & Record Swap. But the genres and labels are not as important to me as the actual music. And while I Iove the cover art (this nerd has a Forever Changes LP hanging on his wall)—and 1967 is an amazing year for album covers—the best music is not the rarest obscurity, but rather the music you like to sit down and spend some time with.

Time marches on. The young music geek finds more obscure bands in order to brag about having found said bands, even bands that broke up before said geek was born. The internet rolls down the road, bringing convenience and misinformation in equal doses, and soon, like so many beehives, websites are constructed to store information about long-lost bands. MP3s make them digital, and accessible; now almost anyone can get their hands on the rarest of rarities. Bootlegging is, for the most part, a thing of the past (having been replaced by its older brother, Theft). If only due to convenience, the weather forecast is clearer than it’s ever been for the student and devotee of 60s rock.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. We tend to invent things when what we’re looking for doesn’t exist; trawling through the internet, I couldn’t find a decent chronology of the albums released in 1967 that was comprehensive enough for my trainspotterish collector mentality. While there are tons of lists out there (for example, on Wikipedia and Rateyourmusic.com), I was looking for a month-by-month chronology, an overview that took in the nooks and crannies and detours of 1967 music, not just the acknowledged peaks and mountaintops. Not finding it, decided to roll up my sleeves and do it myself. This was foolhardy. I quickly learned that, while the music produced in 2010 alone must number in the millions of hours, even in that more primitive and limited era, there were at the very least several thousand LPs pressed in 1967. Not even accounting for classical music opera, easy listening, spoken word, self-help, and other chaff, there are hundreds of records which would probably count as ‘pop’, but which would send the average rock music fan into a tailspin of despair (Connie Francis, for example, released four albums in 1967).

So, enter the process of weeding out. I envision this site as a place where fans of late 60s rock and pop can find good albums. While the focus will be on rock (by which I mean guitars, bass drums, and hollering, in all of the various permutations), I will also include music from genres which overlap, intersect, collide, and collude with rock, such as folk, blues, jazz, and other experimental weirdness. Some genres probably deserve to be included, but I need to draw the line somewhere; thus country music is off the menu, even though 1967 produced classic work by, among others, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, and George Jones. Likewise, soul music, as exemplified by the hit machines at Motown, Atlantic and Stax-Volt (all of which had a killer 1967), will not be included here, partly because that era of soul music is already pretty well-documented, and partly because it was much more singles- than album-oriented (my apologies to Aretha’s immortal I Never Loved A Man). There are far, far too many jazz albums to cover, and I'm not any kind of jazz expert; I will include only those records that I think might appeal to fans of 60s rock. For the most part, only LP-length releases will be included, and greatest hits collections (with a few important exceptions) will be excluded.

My personal taste is obviously going to work the rudder, so if I steer past rock toward the sharp rocks of bubblegum pop, commercial cheese, anything with sitars, and psychsploitation records, then it’s because I have big ears, a sweet tooth, and a soft spot for Peter, Paul, & Mary. While I prize the artistic triumphs of 1967, I am also fascinated and amused by the also-rans, the failed projects, the shameless copycat crimes.

So, on this blog you will find my (re)views of albums released in 1967. Following the tradition of my beloved 1979 edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide, I use the five-star rating system, as I find Professor Christgau’s letter grades too redolent of the classroom, and Pitchfork’s decimal points frankly absurd (how exactly does one differentiate between a 7.7 album and a 7.8??). Grading is subjective. Let me repeat: my rankings are my own; yours will be different, unless you’re me, and I change my mind as often as I feel necessary. But if you like any of the records I’ve mentioned above, we’ll probably avoid fisticuffs. I discuss elsewhere my grading criteria; if you find yourself violently disagreeing with me, so be it. One important point I would like to make clear is that I am not putting definitive, encyclopedia-ready, absolute aesthetic scores on albums, but simply marking them as either more or less enjoyable. Music can be very difficult to describe, and I will do my best to provide informative descriptions rather than senselessly effusive praise or heated irrational tirades. In addition, since this blog’s content is limited to the specific temporal context of 1967, I will make an effort to set albums in the context of the peers, as if we are walking together into a record store in 1967 to browse the new releases.

So consider this blog a sort of musical map of 1967, compiled by a humble cartographer who has spent a lot of time getting lost there. It is my hope that any readers who stop by will have the experience of finding a new album friend, made possible by the boundless freedom of discovery on the internet. And, to quote the album that sent me along down this path, All of God’s children gotta have their freedom.

Sounds of '67 Record Rating Guide

At left is the guide to record reviews from the 1979 edition of the Rolling Stone Record Guide. While it's not flawless, it does, I think, provide a reasonably well-defined rubric for album reviews. On this site, I will be using a similar five-star scale, with my valuations being based on the following considerations:

1) Listenability/enjoyability: the best albums feature, very simply, good original songwriting, singing, lyrics, and musicianship; when one or more of these areas is lacking, then other aspects of the album should be consequently better. For instance, Bob Dylan is not a technically accomplished singer, but more than makes up for it with his songwriting and lyrics. It will be assumed that five-star albums feature almost all good material and little filler, if any.

2) Originality vs. professionalism: Less innovative records, when very well made, may carry as much weight as wildly experimental failures, and vice versa. I do not consider "professional" or "commercial" to be bad words, even though when taken to excess, these qualities can be bad, just as "experimental" often means "unfocused". Likewise, just because bands are innovative or experimental does not mean that their records are good listening.

3) Impact and influence: artists who sold little or no records when they were active often end up finding their audience years or even decades after the fact. Commercial failure (or success) will generally have little impact on the rating. Even though this site will focus only on albums from 1967, the albums' afterlives will also be taken into account.

I of course welcome all comments and criticisms, and do not consider any rating the last word on any album; I am always willing to change my mind and revisit an album, as taste is a work in progress.