Captain Beefheart

[lost highway]

Okay I love Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, I like Ice Cream For Crow and kind of like Troutmask. Who knows the whole catalog? Where do I go next?

[shakes]

safe as milk is his safest (no pun intended) work. pretty much a straightforward blues album but still completely beefheart

 

mirror man (sort of a sister album to safe as milk) takes that formula and stretches the songs out a bit

 

theyre the albums that really made him click for me

[RainDogToo]

I love all the albums mention, but also really enjoy  Lick My Decals Off, Baby, Strictly Personal and Bluejeans & Moonbeams.

[worrierking]

Shiny Beast is really good (and appropriately weird).  Same for Doc at the Radar Station.

 

I pretty much like what the OP likes plus Safe as Milk.  Not a fan of Blue Jeans or Strictly Personal, in which the record companies tried to mainstream him.

[mountain bed]

Licks My Decals Off is a great one.

 

Fortunately there's quite a bit of cool stuff of his on youtube. And if you're on FB definitely like his page (Captain Beefheart - Singer). They always have neat stuff about Captain they put up.

[LouieB]

What was that Zappa and Beefheart album?  Bongo Fury?

 

LouieB

[jff]

Okay I love Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, I like Ice Cream For Crow and kind of like Troutmask. Who knows the whole catalog? Where do I go next?

 

If you like all of those, you'll probably like all of it. 

 

From Trout Mask, the next step is Lick My Decals Off Baby.  Or working backwards from Trout Mask, Strictly Personal. That's where they really start getting bonkers.  Mirror Man is sort of an offshoot of Strictly Personal, but it's pretty forgettable. 

 

From Ice Cream for Crow, the next steps would be Doc at the Radar Station or Shiny Beast (Bat Chan Puller), or if you can find it, Bat Chain Puller, an unjustly rejected album which was mostly re-recorded as Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) with a mostly different group of musicians.

 

Blue Jeans and Moonbeams and Unconditionally Guaranteed are outliers in the Beefheart discography. There are some good songs on them, but most Beefheart fans would say they're way too much like regular rock music.  Beefheart singing for Three Dog Night would only be a slight exaggeration of how these albums sound.  These two albums have come to be called the Tragic Band era.  

[thingfishp]

What was that Zappa and Beefheart album?  Bongo Fury?

 

LouieB

 

Bongo Fury, indeed, a musical awakening for me at the age of 15.  I read an interview with Gary Lucas a while back in which he kind of trashed their collaboration, stating that Zappa seemed to have Beefheart on a metaphorical leash as kind of an oddity on stage.  An interesting read about working with Beefheart is Bill Harkleroad's book "Lunar Notes", which I believe is still in print.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

A couple of my favorites, which I don't think have been mentioned here, are A Carrot Is As Close As A Rabbit Gets to A Diamond (great title...lol) and the Legendary A&M Sessions EP. The Legendary Sessions EP was one of my first exposures to Beefheart outside of Zappa, and Don just crushes Diddy Wah Diddy to open it. It's only 5 songs, but the whole thing really rocks. It's also a lot more accessible than some of his other stuff. Personally, I like the more "regular rock music" sessions. It's not as mainstream as you might think. The Carrot disc has some stuff that is also on Blue Jeans and Moonbeams, but it's also got songs like Tropical Hot Dog Night and The Past Sure is Tense.

 

if you like the Spotlight Kid album, there is a whole bootleg's worth of outtakes that floats around in the internets. Worth seeking out. And if you like the early Captain, Grow Fins is worthwhile too.

[jff]

 An interesting read about working with Beefheart is Bill Harkleroad's book "Lunar Notes", which I believe is still in print.

 

Yeah, looks like it's back in print.  Amazon has it for cheap. I guess I sold my copy when it was temporarily out of print. I think I got $75 for it.

 

Same deal with John French's book, Beefheart Through the Eyes of Magic. It's readily available again.  Pretty much the same story as Lunar Notes, but 300 pages longer.