Clear Spot is a great dance album. Spotlight Kid has good material but the playing is pretty lethargic.
Since we are still in the SAM discussion portion of this thread and this was my first and favorite Captain Beefheart CD I ever bought. I thought it would be a good time to share the various SAM CD versions/configurations I have purchased over the past 10 years that I overlooked originally/passed over in buying but decided to get them after all since they were cheap many years later. Some I never saw for sale originally or in the wild and only saw them in catalogs. Only a handful I saw in music stores. When I got my 1992 SAM Unidisc Canadian import CD back in the winter of 1992-93 I was content with this release in not knowing at that time that there were problems with this album as far as the tapes used for pressing and the various versions/configurations/masterings available. After I bought my Canadian SAM CD, I started seeing other Beefheart SAM versions/configurations in the form of CD/cassette albums/compilations. I was always looking for new music so my money had to stretch to be able to buy music from other artists. So I held off on buying any of these other versions/configurations until about 10 years ago. I remember in 1997 when I got online and joined the alt.fan.capt-beefheart AOL newsgroup among other artists, I got to read a learn more about the band and their recordings and learned quite a bit but when 1999 came around and I bought the Grow Fins box set I passed on the 1999 BMG/Buddha CD reissues of SAM and MM. I thought my versions of these CDs were good enough and was still convinced that my CDs were fine with what I already had. After joining this forum in 2007 and lurking here under the radar for a couple years prior I decided to join up and contribute what I could but learn a lot more from the members here of this forum. While the 1999 Buddha SAM CD was in print I started seeing people dump their other SAM CD configurations for very cheap prices so I finally bought At His Best and Best Beefheart on CD since I could get them cheap and the rest is history. Had I had the money back in the mid 90s I would have picked up these two CDs but didn't in order to stretch my money to explore other artists and genre's and not get nerdy about things and just focus on SAM. So since about 10 years ago I have found other SAM CD versions and configurations that I'm quite happy to have for a sort of collectors purpose but only collectable to me since many would find some of them of no merit or value. Below is a list of all the SAM configurations I have that I collected over the last 10 years and I got them cheap and far less than the retail prices and in the order of purchase including my first SAM 1992 Unidisc Canadian CD: Safe As Milk - 1992 Unidisc BDK-5001 (Canada) At His Best - 1989 Special Music Company SCD-4922 The Best Beefheart - 1989 Pair Records CDB 019 Safe As Milk - 1999 Buddha Records 7446599605-2 Safe As Milk / Mirror Man - 1988 Castle Communications TFO 11 1/2 Safe As Milk - 1988 Castle Communications LTCD02 Safe As Milk - 1993 One Way Records OW 29088 Safe As Milk - 2013 Sundazed Music SC 11232 (mono) Safe As Milk - 2009 Rev-Ola CR REV 271 Safe As Milk - 1990 Repertoire Records RR 4035-C (Germany) Safe As Milk - 1988 Buddah Records 28CP-36 (Japan) My cassettes I purchased before my first SAM CD: Abba Zaba - 1988? Masters – MA MC 0915784 At His Best - 1989 Special Music Company SMC-4922 There are other SAM CDs out there but I am happy with what I have so far. There are a couple early CDs that I don't have but if I can find them for a reasonable price I would maybe buy them. I have no interest in the mini LP sleeve versions from Japan. I like the earlier oddball issues. I just recently found a used copy of the 1999 Buddha CD but it is a Euro pressing so that's one more to add to the list.
I was playing SAM in my office while working a few years back. One of my staff came in and wanted to know what that weird music was while Electricity was playing. I told her, she smiled and shrugged and said I had interesting taste in music. I think that was a compliment.
Love the great Captain and have all his LP's. Safe As Milk is probably my favourite. Everything he did or tried to do is worthy of attention in my opinion. A truly unique Artist. I am not one of the Bluejeans and Moonbeams haters either. It has some great songs on it and if he was going for a more commercial appealing LP, then I don't see a problem with that either. He was a one off talent and I wish he was still around.
One of the very first websites I started visiting regularly was beefheart.com in 1998. I recently did a Google search on my name and the old profile I filled out there popped up! I was so excited for that Grow Fins set. I bought volume I on vinyl the minute it came out.
The 1999 Buddah remaster is the only issue from the original master tapes and the only one worth owning.
Great thread. My introduction to Captain Beefheart (and Frank Zappa) was Bongo Fury.......it was a life changing music album for me. I hope it's included in this thread when the time comes. I love Safe As Milk......great music and playing. A little something for everyone with garage, soul, blues, and hints of things to come ("Electricity," "Abba Zaba"). ------ For those in the New York area, Gary Lucas is doing a Captain Beefheart show at the City Winery this Monday 1/22 The World of Captain Beefheart feat. Gary Lucas, Nona Hendryx, Tammy Faye Starlight, and Bob Holman - 1/22
Mine too. Had never heard Zappa or Beefheart before. Debra Kadabra scared the crap out of me. But I came back for more...
I've always been interested in his musical director side. As in... He relied on the Magic Band a fair bit when coming up with parts. He wasn't a great "musician" in the sense of playing, writing. He'd scat, sing, diddle the piano, and that just makes me credit the Magic Band more (especially for Trout Mask Replica. Wow...) But he clearly HAD it, maybe he was more of a director figure than a Brian Wilson composer. Dude was so intent on it being right he got downright abusive. I see many links between painting and music... Synaesthesia does that to ya. But I'm not surprised he went off to pursue visual art (he met the La's in the early 80s doing it at a Liverpool art gallery!) and much of his music is colourful. Splashes of pink, red... Sometimes I think the key to Beefheart is to let the music come forth, see it as capturing something, like a painting. Like it's mood pieces. As opposed to a performance of a song, which implies something less primal and immediate. He's one of those artists I think need the full vocabulary of art, and certainly a titan within just the vocabulary of music. "Steals Softly thru Snow"... You could tell me that's just a piece of music, and therein the division lies Some of his work is so evocative I believe it is art, and best absorbed in a flowing, open mindset, not too fussed with rules, just very Zen, let it wash over you, the music from his classic era is a place.
It was also my own introduction to CB! I had never heard a note from him before that, not even Willie The Pimp yet. The album just got released, my friend bought it, invited me over to his house he had to himself that night, put it on his AR turntable, turned his Sansui amp all the way up, then Don spewed forth Debra Kadabra... Imagine my shock!
I concur wholeheartedly with this list. One thing about Safe, “Autumn’s Child” always sounded like a penultimate track to me, and somewhat limp as a finish. I became acquainted with the album on a CD which had “Safe As Milk” as the first of the bonus tracks, and always imagined that as the end of the album. Wish I could shake that mistaken notion.
Yes, this immediately made me think of something like Golden Birdies from Clear Spot. But good advice for approaching, say, Trout Mask, as well.
Mt Tam, in Marin County actually. High on acid, he thought an audience member was transforming into a fish.
The Radar Station is a great site I visited quite often in the late 90s and occasionally thereafter. A great source of information and pics. I don't know if it was The Radar Station site or another Beefheart site but I remember the webmaster of "said" site, said he was only a 16 year old fan and I thought that was crazy young to be a Beefheart fan at that age and know that much about him. Now days it would not be so unbelievable with all the available information on the web. I was 20 years old when I started listening to Beefheart in 1991. I was 18 when I became aware of him visually from the Storm Thorgerson "Classic Album Covers of the 60s" book. Information about Beefheart was hard to find back in those days with only the public or College libraries being the only source for me to find anything about Beefheart/Magic Band. That's what made the internet so exciting at first, all the knowledge that was brought forth from older fans and insiders.
I'm guessing that the music wasn't fully written or grasped until after the first LP was recorded. I believe the lyrics are a Beefheart/Berman co-write like much of the first LP (though Berman wasn't credited).
Unfortunately not a good alternative, as somebody screwed up and boosted the levels beyond the point of digital clipping.
Depends upon how much differences you are looking for and are expecting to hear. The only SAM CDs with bonus material are the 1993 One Way CD, the 1999 BMG/Buddha CD and the 2009 Rev-Ola CD. Otherwise the 1992 Canadian CD to me some of it sounds mono and/or very narrow stereo. The German Repertoire CD omits the reference tone at the beginning of Yellow Brick Road. The 80s Castle CD is mono but from what I have heard and read it is a fold down of the stereo mix plus there is some audible surface noise sounding like it was a needledrop. Overall it sounds tinny too. The Japan CD is just like the Repertoire CD pretty much but still has the reference tone on Yellow Brick Road. The At His Best and Best Beefheart compilations are the botched 1970 remix with some differences/abnormalities. The 1993 One Way CD is the same as well. The one thing all the SAM CDs have in common is the lowered volume/botched intro for Abba Zaba which was restored on the 1999 BMG/Buddha CD and the 2009 Rev-Ola CD. The most balanced CD reissues are the 1999 BMG/Buddha CD and the 2009 Rev-Ola CD. The Sundazed CD is the mono mix.
