Safe As Milk: 43 years hence

 Nothing is quite as efficacious a musical publiciser as an artist's death. Depressing but true. Indeed, Van Vilet's recent demise (in December, from complications with his M.S) made me cast a curious eye over the career of an undoubted visionary, whom I had previously always considered slightly too outre for my tastes. However, on a long overdue visit to Camden this week I managed to pick up Captain Beefheart's Safe As Milk album. Whilst navigating my way through the market's incongruous mix of tourists and unscrupulous looking vendors I was pleased to stumble upon this classic slice of acid bleached blues. From my (admittedly limited) experience of Don Van Vilet's output, this seems among his most accessible efforts. And more to my personal taste, than the likes of avant garde cornerstone, Trout Mask Replica.
      As renowned for his paintings as for his music, The Captain is definitely worth exploring. Deemed a child prodigy, whilst being a famously erratic and recalcitrant personality / performer, he is intriguing too. One instance of this eccentricity was his refusal to wear headphones during the Trout Mask Replica sessions, meaning he was more in time with the percussion than the backing vocals. Another is hs reputedly never having read a book, or, more believably considering his musical virtuosity, never having had a guitar lesson and being completely unable to read music.
                  So a true maverick in every sense, and hugely influential musically.Arguably influencing the bluesy revival of the seventies, psychedelic rock, modern garage rock, soul, and er anything alternative, like, ever.
                  All these are reasons to admire but not to love, and love people undoubtedly do.Just read Jack White's epitaph. Safe As Milk has Vilet's trademark eccentricity alright, just listen to 'Elecricity', and imagine running through a desert on acid, or watching Fear and Loathing, perhaps. This is the song that the consummate mythologiser Vilet would have us beleive, led to the commercial A+ R giving them the axe, viewing it as 'too negative'.
 Though it also has some more streamlined efforts that, whilst still virtuoso, are just a teeny bit easier to listen to, and worthy of love not just admiration. See 'I'm Glad' for a Beefheart ballad, and proof of his mellifluous, honey vocals. The cut also proves how goddam  versatile he is, I mean, he sounds like Otis Redding!
    Also, Zig Zag Wanderer, has some ace, straight edged riffage which you could imagine on the Easy Rider soundtrack. Elsewhere, 'Call on Me', could be early Stones, and 'Yellow Brick Road 'could be a # 1 hit, ditto 'Sure Enough and Yes I Do'. The strangely moving, 'Autumn Child' features my favourite Beefheart vocal on the album. Whilst containing the staccato key and rhythm changes, also seen on 'Abba Zaba', that typify his later work. There is awesome songwriting everywhere on this album suturing his mercurial creativity up into listener friendly three minute snippets.


For an album created in 1967 it also sounds remarkably timeless, though undoubtedly having contemporaneous 'hippy' vibes, it doesn't sound like it is old, just out there, way out. The album features some fantastic guitar playing from the twenty year old whizz kid Ry Cooper who Vilet recruited especially for the task. The way he wields his guitar is also unique, almost using it as a purely rhythmic instrument, but somehow still getting it to turn out hazy riffs. The origins of the Beefheart ideal of a stripped down blues played using African rhythms can be seen here.

                  This debut marked the arrival of an important voice in music, figuratively and literally.
And it holds up remarkably well in spite of shambolic production, and its relative obscurity at the time. The musicianship still seems fresh, and the songwriting brimming with invention, nearly 45 years later. An excellent entry to The Captain's great ship.


A macabre example of Van Vilet's impressionistic painting