Right, apologies to recent readers from the former Soviet Union for the recent spate of inactivity (if such a thing is possible) which was caused by a heady mix of holidays, sheer damn laziness and labouring into the night to catch up on work amassed while I was on holiday.
Also, it has given me chance to finish the sprawling (and grindingly repetitive) book "Beefheart: Through the Eyes of Magic" by the self-styled long-suffering former Magic Band drummer, John French.
(Not to be confused with John French, the ground-breaking fashion photographer. Which is a shame...)
While largely being a fascinating and insanely in-depth account of his time working for TAFKA Captain Beefheart, like most modern books it seems in desperate need of an editor. (Proof-reading and structural guidance can never be provided by a spellcheck program alone).
Anyway, it won't be a surprise to learn that the second entry in this series is...
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART AND HIS MAGIC BAND - "Strictly Personal" (Blue Thumb / Liberty, 1968)
I first entered the world of Captain Beefheart via the obvious connection with Frank Zappa, and wound up with a copy of "The Legendary A&M Sessions" EP tacked on the end of a taped copy of the debut Mothers of Invention album "Freak Out!".
Predictably, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the ordinariness of the Beefheart EP, despite realising it was very early material, unrepresentative of his later work.
But it wasn't long before I had accumulated the remainder of Beefheart's back catalogue, with the notable exception of "Strictly Personal".
Now, it was 1990 by the time I got around to finding a nice vinyl copy of the album (it wasn't released on compact disc until 1994), and by that time I'd done my research and had read enough about it to be rather reluctant about listening to it.
"Mildly controversial" is probably the best way to describe the reputation "Strictly Personal" has gained in critical circles, mainly due to the fact that everybody involved with the production of it blamed somebody else for its perceived lack of success.
So what allegedly went wrong?
Well, take a look at the photo of the band that appears in the gatefold...
Drugs! Drugs! And lots of 'em!
Drugs were terrifically popular in the late 1960s, John French's book is a long-overdue account of just how off his head on grass and acid Don Van Vliet really was. (Like his on/off friend Frank Zappa, he chose to publicly denounce them, fearful that the public may correctly mistake "genius" for mere drug-addled flounderings).
After sabotaging the commercial viability of his debut album by tinkering with the arrangements at the last minute, Van Vliet next attempted to produce an acid-drenched double album popularly (and probably wrongly) referred to as "It Comes To You In a Plain Brown Wrapper". One half was intended to be of meandering blues jams which eventually surfaced as the "Mirror Man" album in 1971, and the other was to be tracks which would largely comprise "Strictly Personal".
(And while this idea was busily falling though, the backroom dealings surrounding the album were getting just as complex, as the producer basically went ahead and stole the album from the Buddah label and used it to launch his own label...)
Anyway, to cut a long story short, it's the production of the record that seems to have caused such upset. (Either that, or because the music was definately getting much more idiosyncratic and weirder). And it's the phasing added during production that most seem to blame.
Van Vliet maintained that it was done totally without his approval, which is quite believable despite his tendency to tell whopping huge lies to make himself look better. (Van Vliet went to ridiculous lengths on later albums to make them sound brittle and unprocessed, and one can actually hear enough of the guitar tones on "Strictly Personal" to substantiate this claim).
Many therefore attribute the uncharacteristic tone of the record to producer Bob Krasnow, and consider it a betrayal and cynical attempt to make Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band appeal to the psychedelic market.
Whatever the truth, the mix isn't as extreme as many have opined. It certainly doesn't ruin the record either, and in its own way is a lot more interesting than having the same instrument separation on every track like the majority of albums you will hear.
In fact, the band rise above it with a truly unique set of material, the likes of which would never be heard again. Founding guitarist Alex Snouffer takes wonderfully skewed heavy blues lines to their (il)logical conclusion, and the whole record still sounds incredibly exciting yet comfortably familiar over forty years after its release.
Sandwiched between the more accessible debut "Safe As Milk" and totally overshadowed by the legendary paradigm-shattering "Trout Mask Replica", "Strictly Personal" is an often ignored landmark album that suffers from an undeservedly shabby reputation.
Anyway, any song that celebrates the interior of a neglected refrigerator like this
Cheese in the corner with a mile-long beard
Bacon blue, bread dog-eared
is surely a thing to cherish...
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