Customer Reviews

Legendary A-M Sessions

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The songs are really good, nice to have Beefheart's Diddy Wah Diddy on CD. The CD is short in length, but if you get it for the right price it's a good addition to a Beefheart collection. The songs have more popular/commercial appeal compared to the majority of Beefheart's catalogue.

The genuinely legendary sessions by Captain Beefheart were recorded in 1966, one year before the first album, Safe As Milk (7 Bonus Tracks). All five songs are stylistically close to those on Safe As Milk. Needless to say, this is first class!

How anyone could call this album by the Captain horrific is beyond me. OK, so maybe it isn't Trout Mask or Doc at the Radar Station but those recordings are in a class by themselves. Here you don't hear the blues sung any better,at least not by any other white man. The Captain's voice is unbelievable. We're talking absolute power. Goosebumps. Chills, up and down your spine. You can hear the influence of the great blues singer, Son House all over the place. And how about that bass guitar. Can it get any deeper. Don't hesitate to buy the CD just because it only has five songs totally twelve minutes. You will not be disappointed.

This disc is horrific. As a listener of some years now I can tell you that Captain Beefheart's work is quite varied. Some of his work is quite good (great actually) like Trout Mask Replica, Doc At the Radar Station, etc... Some of his work, however, is pathetic. This could be said of an album like Unconditionally Guaranteed (which I remember reading somewhere that the Cap'n himself completely disregarded), or these "legendary" recordings here. Like the aforementioned Unconditionally Guaraneteed, this is a more traditional pop sounding Beefheart. It sounds like he's attempting to do mid 60's pop, trying to be a Top 40 star or something... I believe these recordings are from 1965, right before Safe As Milk. Fortunately by the time of that album he turned his back on attempting to be a pop star and got down to business... Unless you're a completist you'd do well to avoid this legend.

The entire album is less than 12 minutes long, but these 5 songs are true classics. "Diddy Wah Diddy" and "Who Do You Think You're Fooling" were on A&M single # 794. "Moonchild" and "Frying Pan" appeared on single # 818, while the fifth track was previously unreleased, although a promo 45 is supposed to exist. These 45s came out in the mid-60s, but the album wasn't released on vinyl until 1984 (A&M 12510). The original 45s are rare collectors items, so it's great to get these tunes on CD. Buy this one, definitely.

Contains the definitive version of Diddy Wah Diddy (huge and thunderous), Frying Pan, Here I Am, etc. Moonchild hints at later work. A must-have for any fan. Sure, there's only five songs on here, but they're worth it.