Safe As Milk 2
Spin issues
If you don’t know, I’ll tell you, Van Vliet’s output including ‘Safe As Milk’ can difficult to listen to. Nothing to do with musical values. It is sonically, technically, difficult to replay. I’ll talk more about composition further on, but this band established continuity sometimes in the rithm, sometimes in the guitar. This is difficult for limited sound systems to replay in a way that makes sense. A listener needs to hear this music top to bottom or they will become lost. It gets worse. The Magic Band shifted rithm through sections of four bars or thereabouts—the verses, choruses, bridges, fills, that kind of song material. What will filter through a limited replay system will not always be the main line of the composition.
The usual solution, even on music as complex as an Art Music orchestra, is to make sure that what reaches the vocal band is the lead melody, or a vocal. Likely what replay is available will be tuned to that. And then to make sure the melody alternates with other elements in the vocal pitch‐band. But the vocals on ‘Safe As Milk’ are often not the main line of this music. And, given the vocals are a midrange growl, they can be swamped by high instruments like a slide guitar. So whatever makes it’s way from limited replay, it will not be the vocal which is what, in Pop and Opera replay, most people use to get a line on the composition. So go ahead, try listening to ‘Safe As Milk’ on a television via streaming, where the pitch‐replay is limited. The replay jarrs between guitar, cymbals and the Captain’s whoops and hollers. The sounds that jab out may be exciting, sure, but for many they will be confusion.
So I feel a need to say that the ‘Safe As Milk’ recording is good sonic engineering, perhaps outstanding. While the album wasn’t made with limitless resource, the company and craftsmen involved were excited by this music. They had the equipment, and they knew what they were doing. For what it’s worth, as many albums were at the time, ‘Safe As Milk’ was recorded on a 4‐track (yes, the plan was an 8‐track, but what’s good for The Beatles…). It was a recording of a highly practiced group. So largely, the recording was capture of a live band—at the time a well known process, and the techniques have arguably not gotten better since. Two engineers and two producers are credited. One of the engineers was Hank Cicalo (of Nat King Cole, the Monkees, Carole King etc.). And one of the producers (presumably meaning anything from musical suggestions to editing oversight, sequencing and sign off) was Richard Perry (of Barbara Streisand, Leo Sayer, The Pointer Sisters etc.)—‐his first big job.
I’m laying this on thick because often people seek reasons for the lack of general popularity of this music, so you need to know there is nothing limited about the recording of ‘Safe As Milk’. It was good then. It would be good now (ok, older versions could use a re‐master). If anything, it is the musical structure, and how to replay this structure, that is an issue. The wide pitch range of significant material and jerky horizontal sections. They are a challenge. I’m not saying it’s a must, or laying HiFi on you, but ‘Safe As Milk’ is best heard through headphones or good replay systems. And I’m not going to say, “Oh Hey! If you didn’t use good replay then you can’t make comment on this music!” But without good replay, you could be lost.
Young milk
So how did this unusually alert and constructed music come to be composed and played? That starts with Don Van Vliet, The Captain. Many sources claim that Van Vliet was a spoilt kid. An only‐child whose parents made enough money, who was noted by adults as good at visual arts, who listened to old records, drank Pepsi all day, and was able to bunk off school without being ‘normalised’ by support workers. As a young guy he moved into music but perhaps for artistic or medical reasons never learned to read music or ‘play’ instruments.
Van Vliet’s artistic bent, the one that adults recognised him for, was sculpture. His sculpture, and later career in framed visual work, were were based in putting down what he thought in a structure, a structure he made of it. He was what the art people call a ‘primitivist’. So Van Vliet was listening to records and thinking of this. Several sources suggest he was a little shy, so maybe was looking for personas. He anchored on old Blues records, and there is no doubt from what people say and the sound, that he locked on a guy called Howlin’ Wolf. It’s not hard to see the appeal. Though some say Howlin’ Wolf was a less subtle bluesman, Howlin’ Wolf was not an unsophisticated artist. He developed a version of singing the Blues that was all rithmic attack, and developed Blues tones into an growl, to which he added the odd whoop. Howlin’ Wolf’s singing was a primitivist construction. Van Vliet heard this, and the story is he worked a time to sing like the Wolf. But there is no doubt he got there. Van Vliet is not the same singer as Howlin’ Wolf, Wolf prowls his throat sound, Van Vliet could convince with tone changes. But it was a remarkable sound.
As Howlin’ Wolf before him, Van Vliet was not unknowing in doing this. Van Vliet had been trained and taught himself in fine art. He believed in primitivist construction. In his playing of the saxophone, harmonica, shemai (a multiple‐reed Indian oboe) he said, “I try to play myself through it”. He was not, or rarely, learning the music theory that other players use—he was making physical moves he felt expressed himself, and hoped the noise would fly. Gary Marker (sometime bass guitar, early producer/engineer) said (of the time of the later ‘Trout Mask Replica’ rehearsals),
…he mistakenly got the idea he could play a reed instrument. He didn’t really understand that [the Jazz musician] Ornette [Coleman] wasn’t noodling randomly…
At this time Van Vliet was hanging out with a guy called Frank Zappa. Though no primitivist, Frank Zappa had some of the same inclinations. Indeed, Zappa engaged with music by producing musical parody. Zappa loved a musician who could replicate, say, Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ on a trombone. So his mate Van Vliet learning how to sing like Howlin’ Wolf was a fit, right? Chase these paths of progressive music.
Van Vliet did odd jobs and also scuffed round bands. He learned to play some harmonica (which fits the primitivist approach). He worked on his voice. Then a band was formed by a guy connected to Frank Zappa, a trumpeter/guitarist called Alex Snouffler (later ‘Alex St. Claire’). Though Van Vliet had not been a public part of Zappa’s activity (realised for a time as ‘Studio Z’), Van Vliet was invited to join. The name ‘Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band’ came from video scripts cooked by Zappa and Van Vliet. The players in the band were all fans of ‘The Blues’.
At birth, though reports are not clear and the situation likely fluid, the band was a democracy. Or perhaps at least decisions were made as a forum. Van Vliet was a somewhat unknown element with a handy instrument, his voice. Moreover, Van Vliet knew nothing about music formally. He later griped that the band would crush his proposals, said he didn’t know how to construct music. Maybe he said this unfairly, maybe with resentment. Anyway, when it came to original work, Van Viet wrote the material. That kind of activity can make a man the root of a band, which he became, and then lead the band through several incantations. But, at the time of ‘Safe As Milk’, and even when he first started the supply of song, he was singer and composer in a band.