Captain Beefheart
& His Magic Band –
It Comes To You in a
Plain Brown Wrapper
(soniclovenoize
reconstruction)
Side A:
1. Trust Us
2. Mirror Man
Side B:
3. Korn Ring Finger
4. 25th
Century Quaker
5. Safe As Milk
Side C:
6. Moody Liz
7. Tarotplane
Side D:
8. On Tomorrow
9. Beatle Bones n’
Smokin’ Stones
10. Gimme Dat Harp
Boy
11. Kandy Korn
This was a long-overlooked follower-request from a few years
ago and I was recently reminded to do it!
This is a reconstruction of the unreleased 1968 double-album It Comes to
You in a Plain Brown Wrapper by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band. Originally scrapped with half of the material
re-recorded and infamously “psychedelicized” for the album Strictly Personal
and the other half released as 1972’s Mirror Man, this reconstruction attempts
to cull all the originally intended material for the double album that was
supposed to be their sophomore release, more successfully bridging the gap
between 1967’s Safe As Milk and 1969’s Trout Mask Replica. Some tracks have been crossfaded to make a
continuous side of music (notably Side D) and the most pristine sources are
used for the best soundquality, including a vinyl rip of an original pressing
of Mirror Man.
After a prominent rise of notoriety upon the release of
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band’s psychedelic-blues debut Safe As Milk
in 1967, the group stood at a crossroads of how to proceed: continue being a
cutting edge cult act or expanding their horizons? After a disastrous warm-up performance for
their scheduled 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, it seemed that breakthrough success
would elude the riotous bunch. To make matters worse, Don Van Vliet’s band
had been damaged by lineup changes due to members who had had enough of The
Captain’s drug hallucinations and erratic behavior. Prodigal guitarist Ry Cooder vacated to be
replaced briefly by Gerry McGee, who was in turn replaced by Jeff Cotton.
Despite the troubled waters, Don reunited with a Magic Band
that consisted of Cotton, Alex St. Clair Snouffer, Jerry Handley and John
French in the fall of 1967 to record their follow-up to Safe As Milk. The album was planned to be a double album
and was to follow the contemporary fad of extended improvisational jams, as
well as featuring a more “live” feel as compared to the first record. The album was to be called It Comes To You In
A Plain Brown Wrapper, in reference to an ambiguous parcel containing either
narcotics, drug paraphernalia or possibly pornography. The cover art was to feature exactly that as
well, a plain brown wrapper marked ‘strictly personal’!
This parcel was never delivered however, as the recording
sessions came to a halt. No reason was
ever given, but it has been suggested that their label Buddha Records had
pulled the plug out of disinterest. A
consolation was offered by the producer of the Plain Brown Wrapper sessions,
Bob Krasnow, who convinced the band to rerecord some of the material and
release it on his label Blue Thumb.
Recorded in April and May of 1968, Don & his crew recut the more
”commercial” tracks from the Fall 1967 sessions at a much more abbreviated
length (“Mirror Man” was cut from the original 15 minutes down to 5!). In a move that angered Beefheart fans for
ages, Krasnow took the liberty himself (allegedly) to overdub numerous
faux-psychedelic effects onto the newly-recorded album, even completely burying
the mixes under unlistenable phasing.
The released album—Strictly Personal—was a commercial disaster and The
Captain disowned the album, claiming the effects were added without his
permission. Some speculate that was
untrue and Don had given his approval only to later turn on the album after its
failure. Either way, this folly of
questionable truth is just simply a part of the Captain Beefheart mythos, as was
everything else.
After the critical success of the seminal experimental and Frank Zappa-produced rock album Trout
Mask Replica (not to mention its respectable follow-up Lick My Decals Off Baby),
Buddha Records wished to capitalize on Captain Beefheart’s renewed cult status
and artistic credibility. Going back to
the original fall 1967 Plain Brown Wrapper tapes, they compiled a single-disc
of material, primarily focusing on the extended live improvisations. 1971’s Mirror Man showed the world (or at
least the few who were listening) what Strictly Personal was supposed to sound
like, to some extent. But it was not
without its own short comings: not only was it merely half of the original
Plain Brown Wrapper album, but it featured anachronistic cover art, improper
musician credits and Buddha falsely claimed the album was recorded in one night
in 1965!
Years passed before fans were able to piece together the
Plain Brown Wrapper album, beginning with questionably-legal British import I
May Be Hungry But I Ain’t Weird in 1992.
Suffering from the same fate as other early Captain Beefheart CD
reissues of poor mastering and use of inferior mastertapes, it wasn’t until
1999 when Buddha Records released The Mirror Man Sessions, essentially a
properly-mastered Mirror Man with five outtakes from the Plain Brown Wrapper
sessions included as bonus tracks. Seven more outtakes
(presumably the rest of the listenable material) were included as bonus tracks
on their remaster of Safe As Milk. Finally,
Sundazed Records collected all the non-Mirror Man outtakes and one more additional
track in their own vinyl-only 2008 reconstruction of It Comes To You in a Plain
Brown Wrapper (which made no attempt to literally reconstruct the lost album,
unlike my own reconstruction).
While all the pieces are now available to recreate It Comes to
You in a Plain Brown Wrapper, we still have the task to wrap it all up as
one. The layout of my reconstruction was
rather simple: each of the four sides would feature one of the lengthy live jam
sessions, with one whole side following Side B of Strictly Personal as close as
possible (giving one an alternate and more authentic take on the album). I also used a pristine needledrop vinyl rip
of Mirror Man by Euripides for those tracks, as it features the album’s
original EQ and mastering parameters that has since been lost, deeper bass and
crisper highs. It is of note that the
Sundazed vinyl utilized the same mastering as the 1999 Buddha remasters, so it
was not used here as source material. I
also chose to exclude the instrumental tracks that Captain Beefheart had never
gotten around to recording vocals for (“Big Black Baby Shoes”, “Flower Pot” and
“Dirty Gene”), thus making a more finished-sounding album (although the
instrumental “On Tomorrow” was used to mimic the tracklist for Strictly
Personal). The end result is eleven
tracks that span two 45-minute discs and offer a purer Captain Beefheart album
than Strictly Personal, with this effectively replacing it.
Side A of my reconstruction begins with take 12 of “Trust
Us” from the Safe As Milk remaster, selected over take 6 as take 12 featured
vocal overdubs, suggesting it was the master take. This is followed by the epic “Mirror Man”
from Euripides’ vinyl rip of the album.
Side B begins with the reserved Delta Blues “Korn Ring Finger” from the
Safe As Milk remaster, followed by “25th Century Quaker” from Euripides’
Mirror Man vinyl rip, concluding with take 12 of ”Safe as Milk” from The Mirror
Man Sessions, again chosen over take 5 because of its vocal overdubs.
The second disc begins with the decidingly upbeat take 8 of
“Moody Liz” from The Mirror Man Sessions (chosen over the overdub-less take 16
from Sundazed’s Plain Brown Wrapper) and the rest of the side C belongs to
“Tarotplane” from Mirror Man. The final
side of the album attempts to offer an alternate, unadorned version of side B
of Strictly Personal, beginning with the instrumental “On Tomorrow” from the
Safe As Milk remaster, which is segued into “Beatle Bones n’ Smokin’ Stones”
from The Mirror Man Sessions. The final descending bassline is hard edited into
“Gimme Dat Harp Boy”, also from The Mirror Man Sessions. The album concludes with possibly the most
commercial track of the lot, “Kandy Korn” from Euripides’ vinyl rip of Mirror
Man.
Sources Used:
Mirror Man (Euripides vinyl rip, 1971 Buddha Records)
Safe As Milk (CD remaster, 1999 Buddha Records)
The Mirror Man Sessions (CD, 1999 Buddha Records)
flac --> wav --> editing in Goldwave --> flac
encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included
