Re: Captain Beefheart
To say that Safe As Milk and Mirror Man, especially the remastered versions are for completists only is steering a new fan away from essential Beefheart. I have followed Beefheart for decades and have never been tempted to buy Bluejeans or Unconditionally.
I don't know about hairsplitting over the relative merits of the Captain's output, or even the best way in, but MIRROR MAN is pretty ridiculous. I was listening to its blues-not-blues a year ago and the whole post-rock camp seemed to slop into place as a very minor footnote in rock history, doughy pale po-faced imitators. MIRROR MAN is bold crazy stuff and grooves like mad. It is amazing. But of course, so are all the others you have mentioned. In some ways I prefer MM to TROUT MASK. I think it's more cohesive, for one thing. It grooves harder, it has more blues soaked into it. No way is it better, but I reach for it (MM) more often. FWIW. Speaking of Captain Beefheart, has anyone heard the mishmash 'n miscellaneous recordings by Gary Lucas and Jeff Buckley that Knitting Factory just put out? How good is it? I am not a huge Buckley fan, but Lucas is a killer, killer guitar wrangler. ---------s np: XTC, ENGLISH SETTLEMENT __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/