Safe as Milk

This rocks! Heavy garage rock energy with better production. Great listen.

I love this album. Captain Beefhearts work is actually pretty accessible, outside of his most famous album. This album is a great blend of experimental music and blues with great songwriting. This album is also just really groovy. The songs get stuck in my head easily, the bassline bops and the guitar work is really unique and twangy. Captain Beefheart was great at attracting great musicians to his band, not as good in treating them well though. Still, great album from one of my most listened artists.

When I saw the artist name my heart sunk, I thought my time had come for Trout Mask. Fortunately that can wait for another day.

I was kinda hit or miss with this on the first listen. Second time though I absolutely loved it. Ended up giving it a third go straight after which annoyed my kids to no end, they HATED this. Overall a bloody brilliant album.

Top Track - Dropout Boogie

Several tracks here were already familiar to me, however I'm less confident on whether I've actually sat through this album in one piece before, so this was effectively a new listen for me.

An unhinged, constantly volatile and challenging experience, primarily rooted in blues rock however unafraid to dip its toes into garage and psychedelic territories. The end result is as impressive as it is disorientating, and at no point did I tire of this album as you simply can't tell what might be lying in wait for you next. Ultimately, however, it's an album that I'm unlikely to return to regularly.

It's also fair to say that this is a relatively palatable effort two-years removed to Trout Mask Replica, another 1001 feature which I'm looking forward to revisiting and attempting to piece together.

Varsin hyvää blues-henkistä jamittelua! 3/5

At three tracks in, everything I have heard so far sounds pretty deeply nested within the country/rock/hippie genre that was in fashion at the time.

Dropout Boogie is pretty bad, and apparently starts a shift in the album to "weird and not really good"

Electricity has a lot of really annoying shit in it

Abba Zaba: ridiculous. Couldn't finish

Grown So Ugly: bluesy and not bad at all

Safe as Milk Take 5: needed at least a 6th take

Big Black Baby Shoes: disclaimer: I am not a guitarist. These guitars are out of tune and terrible sounding

Flower Pot: WILL IT EVER BE OVER?

Trust Us: I almost didn't make through the intro. The song actually wound up to be maybe my favorite on the album so far. Pretty low bar there though. Oops, wrote that before the 3 hour outro. No thanks

Korn Ring Finger: Absolutely fucking not. Terrible

Final thoughts: Not great, overall. Weird, atonal, and uninspiring. Also, perhaps the squeakiest drum pedal in all of recorded music history

Truly safer than Beefheart's 1969 masterpiece, Safe as Milk is still unlike anything you've heard before: 'High voltage man kisses night to bring the light to those who need to hide their shadow deed'; 'Song before song before song blues / Babbette baboon abba zaba zoom.' Weirdness ever rules the day here, but listenability is hardly an obstacle you'll need to overcome. The same can't be said about Trout Mask Replica. My favorite tracks, the R&B-inspired 'I'm Glad' and the somehow catchy 'Electricity,' are permanent achievements. Finally, however, the debut is a mere tuneup for his far more virtuosic, erudite, and satisfying masterwork. A first step in the evolution of our foremost musicologist. 'Harvest moon be nimble.'

I will not include the CD bonus tracks in this review.

Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band are a group that I started listening to within the past year. In fact, I already heard two tracks from their debut right here, "Zig Zag Wanderer" and "Electricity".

Don Van Vilet, the man who would assume the on-stage persona of Captain Beefheart, started as a young sculpting apprentice. However, his parents never financially supported his pursuit of such a career due to pre-conceived notions of artists as being "queer". Don would become so bitter that he abandoned art until he turned 23. He and his family moved during his teenage years to the Mojave Desert area, where he developed his taste in music from the blues and jazz musicians who were popular around this time. Don made friends with the members of local bands, one of whom was Frank Zappa. Through frequent collaborations with Zappa, Don started getting comfortable performing at small clubs and venues. He was invited to front the first iteration of the Magic Band by guitarist Alex St. Clair and assumed the role of Captain Beefheart. After a few other lineup changes and going through a few labels with their demos, the band was able to record and release their debut, Safe as Milk.

Right from the get-go, the Magic Band wore their influences on their sleeve with this record, particularly the Delta blues that Don and the rest grew into, while taking the style into a more garage rock direction. It does get abrasive and esoteric in places, with the grainy production quality, John French's well-accented percussion, the twin guitar complement of Alex and Ry Cooder, and the occasional use of theremin by Sam Hoffman on "Electricity" and "Autumn's Child". Of course, the standout player would be Don as Captain Beefheart, able to croon and howl like the big-name blues musicians while stretching his voice to higher registers that weren't thought of back in 1967. There were even moments where he sang gravelly on tracks like "Dropout Boogie" and "Electricity", which were probably alien for the time but pretty cool to find all these years later.

If anything, the band played it "safe" on Safe as Milk and could've gone a little weirder. Yeah, this is the group's debut album, where they were getting their foot in the door by keeping themselves rooted in the Delta blues with little variations. There's potential for growth here in distinguishing themselves from their influences, which I'm sure has been explored in the rest of their catalog.

All in all, this was a solid debut from Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band. I'd be interested to hear how they turned out a little later down the line.

3.5/5.0: Very Good

a little weird but a lot of fun. i went in knowing very little about captain beefheart but it was really enjoyable. it’s my understanding his other album on the list is a lot weirder and not as fun, im looking forward to it

I saw the band name and was instantly like, "oh god, another 60s band"
Kinda funky. kinda weird, kinda aimless? 2*

started from thats quited good ended with ok it's boring make it stop

His best

My only experience of Captain Beefheart is from Trout Mask Replica which I gave a 1. So I wasn't thrilled to see yet another of their albums pop up

I was so shocked though because I weirdly quite liked this one! Totally different sounds but still kinda odd. I liked it

4 ⭐️

The Good: We drink as much milk as we want to!
The Bad: That it isn’t Doctor Beefheart who’s telling us that…
The Ugly: Realizing that we’ve been tricked by magic…

Ry Cooder… He’s alright. To an extent. Then, he ain’t…

I’d say that the first couple of tracks were straight forward, no nonsense, blues. After that, we don’t know what to call it.

The fun part about participating in this little experiment of 1001 albums, is that we start becoming more critical while we are listening to anything.
The bad part about participating in this little experiment of 1001 albums, is that we start fearing the unknown on the list, as there is too much forced weirdness, and not enough “this is awesome”…

2 1/2*

Nee joh, een verzameling manieren om kinderachtig te zingen. Volgens het boek is het een 'doorleefde bluesstem'. Kom op... Er is in elk geval voldoende variatie. Saai kan ik het niet noemen. Daarmee kan ik er nog wel 1,5 ster voor over hebben.

No los conocía. Suenan muy bien, pero no es lo que me apetece últimamente. La primera canción es bastante buena: "Sure 'Nuff 'n Yes I Do".

This was great. Loved that final freak out.

Dropout Boogie is like 1 or two notes from being "California, here we come". Honestly, this is the most approachable Beefheart record I have come across. Abba Zaba is a great song. Very recognizable blues groove rock sound with some of that freak scene influence.

I really liked most of it! Ry Cooder can play guitar! Some of it was meh.