Oh wait I shouldn't say that - I like him
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Safe As Milk
The Mirror Man Sessions
Strictly Personal
Trout Mask Replica
Lick My Decals Off, Baby
The Spotlight Kid
Clear Spot
Unconditionally Guaranteed
Bluejeans And Moonbeams
Bat Chain Puller
Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)
I'm Going To Do What I Wanna Do: Live At My Father's Place 1978
Doc At The Radar Station
Ice Cream For Crow
Captain Beefheart (real name: Don Vliet) was a strange chap! An on-again /off-again friend of Mr. Frank Zappa, the Beef Weiner took blues rock into the strangest pastures of oddity that the music had henceforth been shoved. He had the voice of an 65-year old belting black bluesman when he was in his twenties, and he surrounded himself with musicians of the strangest, most talented calibre. Not only that but he had a goatee sometimes, and a beard once and a mustache a couple of times and a hat and some funny clothes and a voice and a nose and he drew and he drew pictures and married a woman and retired from music and now he's sick and when he was a kid he knew Frank Zappa and he had funny voices and his drummer went "pudda-pudda-pudda" and his guitarist went "whee-do! Whee-do! Whee-do!" and his bassist went "buddum-bum-bum" and he had poetry and weird lyrics that were weird and colorfully languaged and his songs were weird and sometimes normal. And he was weird.
The man and band began as a semi-normal clan for the fans, Jan. This album sounds like one of those "lost classics" from the 60s that you read about in books by Richie Unterberger (man, could I go for a Richie Unterberger right now - NO ONIONS!). Along with the Beefeater, lead guitarist Ry Cooder totally sets a "bLLLLUES" tone with his stinging slide guitar, but the music itself covers a surprisingly wide variety of sounds. There's Animals-style blues-based rock, some acid fuzz, psychedelic hippiea, some r'n'b and doowop soul, basic garage rock, avant-garde-ish weird rock and even a little bubblegum pop! But all played in that swampy slide bwang-twang style with Don gruffly shouting and rasping as he so loves to do. There are moments on here that are a little kooky, but definitely no kookier than anything else that came out in '67. They were playing it pretty darn straight, all things considered. But a lot of the songs sound just TOTALLY cool. Not every minute is a hot tamale of juice (in fact, I'm shooting for a LOW 8 here), but crap like "Sure `Nuff `N Yes I Do," "Zig Zag Wanderer," "Electricity," "Yellow Brick Road," "Plastic Factory" and "Grown So Ugly" exemplify everything that the mid-60s were about - great songwriters taking chances and pushing the envelope just a wee bit, while celebrating the "rock spirit" that was still honestly pretty new. Remember that "rock and roll" didn't exist even twelve years prior! To put that in perspective, twelve years ago at THIS writing, "rock and roll" DID exist. Man, that's some fucked up shit. Say, to make these reviews more fun, let's have some fun little survey questions at the end of each review! Just fun little things that you can think about and talk over with your friends and just have a good time with. Here's our first one: Which smells better - a rose or me taking a dump on your face?
I'll choose the rose over mark taking a dump on my face. I just don't dig the
smell of poo.
A rose.
You asked for it, Prindle.
This wouldn't be that paki voodoo priest from Temple of Doom, would he????
Do you know the real meaning of Einstein's theory of relativity? It goes like this: If your nose is stuffed up my ass, we both have nose in the ass, but I'm
feeling relatively better than you. Think about this, Mark, whenever you feel lonely.
I don't know, because (fortunately) I've ever smelled your fecal mat