Safe As Milk 4
Stone‐build
Which, because they are all through ‘Safe As Milk’, brings us to Van Vliet compositions. The ‘songs’ are heaps of rithm and figure arrangements. That this came from Van Vliet is not in doubt. At the time of the later ‘Trout Mask Replica’, Wikipedia states the drummer John French,
…was required to transcribe Van Vliet’s creative ideas (often expressed by whistling or banging on the piano) into musical form for the other group members.
As noted, the figures are often basic in pitch, but bold. In Magic Band music, figures are nearly always a developed melodic scrap. More than a ‘lick’. To form a figure, moves in the song are often displaced, broken or reduced. Result is the figures only loosely connect to the line of melody. They have life, become the ‘song’, through which sung tune crawls and grapples.
As noted up some, linear composition changes every few bars. These changes are a feature through all Van Vliet music, whatever the process, age or band. With no apology the listener is dramatised into a change. On ‘Safe As Milk’ the compositions use simple chords undisguised though later, different lines may become disjoint. In the end, ‘Safe As Milk’ is mostly composed as four beats to the bar, interspaced here and there with three beats (on the later ‘Trout Mask Replica’ the music is played in all kinds of variants). As noted, the band has a guitar sound.
Some of these features, dislocated figures, short riffs and verse‐long switches are found in the Chicagp Blues. The ideas of cutting a rithmic backbeat down to a sketch thump, or stopping music altogether for singing, can be found in the songs Wille Dixon wrote for Howlin’ Wolf like ‘Spoonful’—but the thump there comes from guitar, not drums. Still, the track ‘ZigZag Wanderer’ works with that kind of effect.
But all this is only to say the compositions have discipline. These are elements of the music not open to experiment. They are the fundaments of what a composition will be. In other ways, some of these compositions are nothing like the Blues. Aside from culture, only those who want to drag legitimacy from sonic reference would call the Magic Band ‘Blues’ or even ‘Blues‐Rock’. Some might say the lack of Blues was in the original lyrics and a wider range of melody, but it’s deeper than that. It’s not that the compositions are necessarily ‘freer’. It is that there are possibilities within the outline that have not been researched—and the Van Vliet compositions intend to.
For example, aside from the thump/figure variations mentioned, an occurrence in Van Vliet composition on ‘Safe As Milk’ is the chorus crushed short. Or some insert of three‐count bars like in ‘Dropout Boogie’ and ‘Plastic Factory’. Van Vliet didn’t learn that from Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf. And though the games would become wild later, as noted the four time is often cut. Figures are shortened, as in the insert in ‘Call On Me’, the tail of ‘Zig Zag Wanderer’, where part of the figure of the song is squashed into two beats, or the compressed chorus on ‘Yellow Brick Road’. On ‘Abba Zaba” it’s arguable what is verse, chorus or bridge. The compositions don’t become overlaid counts or that Jazz—but they make many moves between swings and accented stomps. It’s a surprise in ‘Zig Zag Wanderer’ and ‘Abba Zabba’ when the band stop, then the bass takes up. This is composition by reduction and addition. For this band, it’s a conventional rock move.
To grasp where this comes from, I think you need to reset that Van Vliet was sculptural (in an interview I found later he calls music ‘sound sculpture’). Likely he heard music as crags and lumps—‐it sounds like that. He was dramatic about how to create a rithmic idea from a sung shape. Then he, deliberately, primitively, crashes these lumps together. He likely thought hard about ways to do that. He was also brutal, or primitivist, about doing that and only that—no smooth delivery here.
If you baulk at art, remember Van Vliet and Zappa knew their books. Knew music and painting also. Though Van Vliet stayed true to musical sculpture via the Blues, that was compulsion. Once he had sacked off the band democracy (‘Trout Mask Replica’) then he might build in showtunes, ‘Concierto de Aranjuez’ and whatever else shaped right. You can find these on later albums—‐he mentioned Igor Stravinski in interview, which Mike Barnes reasoned as jagged rithm and note clusters. If it’s density you’re after, there could be a book on what is ground into Van Vliet tracks.
Hold up. Without explaination, writers talk about Jazz influence. Huh? Ever since Bebop, those Jazz people have talked about solo improvisation. On several tracks released between albums, or from studio tape releases, the Magic Band improvise. They do not solo improvise—they seem to improvise in a spontaneously composed River style. And I hear no other marks of ‘Jazz’ either. The metronome rithm is missing, no smooth swinging, no sophistico melodic‐reference, no endless triplets or double speeds. And the Captain’s deliberate constructions are nothing like the tune/blah/tune of most Post‐Bebop ‘Jazz’—only an occasional lead squeal (later than ‘Safe As Milk’) seems to reference Jazz.
However, if people say it, there must be something to it, right? The logical but challenging shapes of some Post‐Bebop Jazz, especially Ornette Coleman and Theolonius Monk, seem a likely compositional source. Especially the tunes of Theolonius Monk. These were constructed as bold clusters of notes, strongly rithmic, such that people who didn’t like Theolonius Monk suggested he was bashing the piano. For instance, the tune ‘Mysterioso’ is a stepwise rise of fourth notes???, on the beat, and 12‐bar on the ‘blues’ chords. It’s strongly sculptural. It’s also challenging, because the stepwise motion makes sense to the ear as melody, but the potential sequence of chords make zero sense as part of the diatonic system. That may allow a musician to fly from all kinds of angles. But I doubt Van Vliet was interested in that. If there’s anything in this, likely he liked the sculptural effect.
Anyway, all of this adds to the sonic clatter of the Magic Band. It’s an unusual clatter, it’s not the squall of Free Jazz, or the micro‐detail of some twentieth century Art Music. Even in density, it’s clear and pounded. I was playing a track for myself… my girlfriend, who has no time at all for noisy guitar music, started laa‐ing and bumping along to the sounds of the song ‘Autumn’s Child’. Half the time she was was singing to the figures, as she had done to Howlin Wolf’s ‘Spoonful’ (which made her laugh). “Weird”, she said—I gotta agree.