Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band: Strictly Personal

Captain Beefheart: Strictly Personal

1968

Blue Thumb Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Ah Feel Like Ahcid  2. Safe As Milk  3. Trust Us  4. Son of Mirror Man - Mere Man  5. On Tomorrow  6. Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones  7. Gimme Dat Harp Boy  8. Kandy Korn


I searched for a copy of this album forever...Eastside Records had a copy in once before but I got there a bit too late to claim it...The second time was the charm though...

 Some people have told me that the greatest day of their life was the birth of their child...

 Others claim that reaching the summit of Mount Everest as their crowning achievement...

Me? My greatest achievement was the morning I managed to drag my fat hog out of bed early enough to snag a copy of Captain's Beefheart often maligned second album before somebody else bought it...

Waitaminute...Often maligned? Why's that? Well, Captain Beefheart himself hated this album...So we, as his loyal followers must hate it too, right? I have to disagree...Remember, historically speaking, Captain Beeheart appeared to hate everything...Except Abba Zabba's...And whales...And long telephone calls...And Pepsi..And painting...But outside of those few items, he seemed to hate everything..

Sure, it's not the best Captain Beefheart album I've ever heard ("Doc at the Radar Station" or "Lick My Decals Off, Baby") but it's nowhere near the worst (we'll get to those in a few days)...I'd call it squarely middle-of-the-road Beefheart, if it wasn't such a pivotal moment in his discography...If I had only heard his first album,  I would have probably viewed Beefheart as an ordinary, everyday guy who got weird to amuse himself and/or push buttons (see: Frank Zappa)...I'd probably arrive at this conclusion based on the fact that it was largely a straight blues-rock album with a few wig-out moments...In retrospect, when I hear it, I think what I'm hearing is a very weird guy keeping it together long enough to make a straight album made but momentarily lapsing here and there...I think "Strictly Personal" is the moment where it sinks in that he was a deeply different motherfucker....

(the usual cover...I don't know why my copy has a different cover...)

And the change is immediately apparent on the first track, "Ah Feel Like Ahcid"...The Captain, in full-blown, bonk-ola, accapella, Wolfman Jack/Bluesman voice roars and mumbles reams of evocative blather about fried chicken legs and groovy postmen...Van Vliet would always try and mess with us, claiming this song wasn't about acid...Somehow the words "ahcid" and the endless talk about lickin' stamps is just a coincidence and proof that our minds are in the gutter...Riiiight...Anyway, great, lowdown blues...

And next up we have the title track to the last album?  Guess it's a "Houses of the Holy" type of deal...On paper, it's the type of music you'd find on "Safe As Milk"...Crusty blues rock, but the execution is altogether different...More skeletal and spindly...Spidery guitar figures zig-zaggin' all over the rubbery rhythm section..Still, it scans as "electric blues"...Just a distinctive, mutated strain of it, is all..

It's at the end of this song that we get our first glimpse of the "phasing" effect that drove Van Vliet so crazy...It appears here and there throughout the album, but I honestly don't think I would have especially noticed it if Captain Beefheart himself didn't draw so much attention to it over the years...But I can understand that...Anyone who's ever recorded music has encountered the moment during playback, when they can hear a fatal flaw that nobody else can seem to hear...I'm telling you, it's easy to get obsessed with such things, which I'd imagine was the case here...I personally love the way the technique is employed during the spooky raga "Trust Us"...Still, I guess I can picture Captain Beefheart being appalled at his inspired performance at the end of "Son of Mirror Man" being sucked into the vacuum cleaner...

Oh, yea...One super classic moment is "Beatle Bones 'n' Smokin' Stones" which takes the living piss out of Sgt Pepper's-era Beatles...It was enough to get John Lennon (who was previously a booster of Captain Beefheart)  all torqued off...I know it probably wasn't very nice to mercilessly butcher "Strawberry Fields Forever" but I have to admit, it's kinda worth is just to hear Beefheart shout, "Strawberry Caterpillars!" in his dopiest, flakiest voice...Holy shit, it that part funny...

In the end I'd rate this far above "Safe As Milk"...They both tend to get lumped into the same pre-"Trout Mask Replica" early-Beefheart category, but this album is so much more interesting and innovative than that...I can only guess how mind-bending this shit was back in '68...Sure, "Trout Mask" would take it much, much further but perhaps at the cost of the breezy listenablity of "Strictly Personal...(I will admit to clocking out on the album about 1/3rd of the way through "Kandy Korn" though...But in the end I always stick around for that extra little piece of "Ah Feel Like Ahcid ")...

Here's "Safe As Milk" by Captain Beefheart...Enjoy...