Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Safe As Milk {Deluxe Edition} [A Prof. Stoned Comp 2025]
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** Stereo Album Demix/Remaster 2025 **
01. Sure 'Nuff 'n Yes I Do
02. Zig Zag Wanderer
03. Call on Me
04. Dropout Boogie
05. I'm Glad
06. Electricity
07. Yellow Brick Road
08. Abba Zaba
09. Plastic Factory
10. Where There's Woman
11. Grown So Ugly
12. Autumn's Child
All tracks Stereo
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** Mono Album Remaster 2025 **
01. Sure 'Nuff 'n Yes I Do
02. Zig Zag Wanderer
03. Call on Me
04. Dropout Boogie
05. I'm Glad
06. Electricity
07. Yellow Brick Road
08. Abba Zaba
09. Plastic Factory
10. Where There's Woman
11. Grown So Ugly
12. Autumn's Child
All tracks Mono
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** The A&M Sessions 1966 - Remaster 2025 **
01. Obeah Man
02. Just Got Back From The City
03. I'm Glad
04. Diddy Wah Diddy
05. Who Do You Think You're Fooling
06. Moonchild
07. Frying Pan
08. Here I Am I Always Am
All tracks Mono [Rec: Early 1966, Wally Heider Studios, Hollywood CA]
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** Live at the Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco CA, Summer 1966 - Demix/Remaster 2025 **
01. Down In The Bottom
02. Don't Start Me Talkin'
03. The Sun Is Shining
04. Tupelo
05. Somebody In My Home
06. Old Folk's Boogie
07. St. James Infirmary
08. Evil (Is Going On)
09. Harp Instrumental
All tracks Stereo
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** Demo's & Garagy Stuff circa 1965-67- Remaster 2025 **
01. Triple Combination (Ma van Vliet's house; Lancaster CA, Summer 1966)
02. Here I Am I Always Am
03. Leave Me 'Lone
04. Somebody In My Home
05. Call On Me
06. Sure 'Nuff N' Yes I Do (Original Sound Studios, Los Angeles CA, March 1967)
07. Yellow Brick Road (Original Sound Studios, Los Angeles CA, March 1967)
08. Plastic Factory (Original Sound Studios, Los Angeles CA, March 1967)
09. Electricity (alt. mix from acetate, April 1967)
All tracks Mono except Tr. 01 Stereo
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Total time: 2h20m55
Demix/Mastering: Prof Stoned
Special thanks to Johnny (audio research, sleeve scans & speed corrections), Galeans (audio research) & The Poodle Bites (stereo LP rip & sleeve scans).
v1.0: 29-04-2025
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Note:
The Stereo Album: Everything here was given the demix treatment. The resulting mix is not 100% true to the vision of the original, so purists are advised to stay away. Whereas the original stereo mix has Don's vocals often in the left or right channel, they have been centered on every track here, which is already a major improvement. Because of the lo-fi origins of the recording, it proved difficult to extract the musical elements with the usual high precision. Therefore, the drums and bass guitar are often not centered, which means the stereo image can still sound a bit antiquated but with an improved instrumental balance and ditto clarity. The source of this master is a fantastic vinyl rip from the original USA promo stereo pressing done by 'The Poodle Bites' and used with kind permission. We cannot thank him enough for the effort he put into these. They can be found in 24/96 high resolution on his blog (see links in folder). Here is an excerpt of his notes, which explains precisely why I did not use the 1999 CD remaster:
"The recording of this album has a distressing history, as can be read elsewhere. The tl;dr of it is that the band switched from a state-of-the-art 8-track to a lesser 4-track studio mid-recording, primarily due to the inexperience of producer & engineer Richard Perry. This necessitated track bouncing which resulted in a lower fidelity (generational loss) along with roughly-tuned mixes as typical of late-1960s recordings. Apparently, Perry's original mixes were deemed so substandard that Bob Krasnow had to take over and remix the album. After the original 1967 release, there have been several commercial reappearances of this album, however even the earliest 1970 reissue has audio issues (channel dropouts, weird splices at the beginning/end of tracks, some songs running at a slower speed, ...) that are not present on the original pressings, pointing to probable damage of the original master tapes due to poor storage conditions, even in that short period of time. Several strange restoration attempts exist on CD, the best being from 1999 on Buddah, which also included some cool bonus tracks. In fact, this was probably the best reissue ever, fixing many of the major issues noted above, but unfortunately simultaneously adding other problems. The disc appears to be sourced from a safety dub (worse high-end response, extra tape noise) and has been highly limited and compressed with pumped-up bass, which makes it barely comparable to the extremely dynamic sound of the original LP and even the early reissues. The recording also runs about 1.2% slower than the original pressing, which is enough to be annoying but not quite enough to be tonally audible. I don't know firsthand which is correct, but I'll stick to the speed of the originals (plural; the mono is also faster) over whatever was used on the 1999 thing. The audio for this project has been manually restored from an original white-label promotional (stereo) copy of the album in near-perfect condition."
The Mono Album is sourced from my 2017 rip. I have now given this the mastering I felt it always deserved, but will leave the unmastered hi-rez needledrop up on the blog as well for the purists and the curious. The Avalon Ballroom tape has been radically reworked with a much more elaborate stereo image and more cohesive sound. Sadly, this does not come straight from the mastertape -which may still exist- but rather from an illegally made incomplete copy in the 70s (presumably to cassette). However, it has decent sound and together with the excellent A&M recordings reveal what the Cap'n and his crew sounded like about a year before SAM. Lastly, we have a number of demo's, some of which are of unknown origin. These are all a bit grungy but offer fascinating insight in the working process.
Enjoy!
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A note about mastering with demix technology:
You may have heard some of my recent offerings where I have used demix pro for spectral extraction. I believe it is the most revolutionary audio processing tool since ages. It enables us to break a mono signal down into dedicated elements: vocals, drums/percussion, bass guitar, guitar, piano and whatever remains after. These extractions can be of such precision they allow for a realistic reconstruction of a mix, but it depends greatly on the source material.
Why is this useful? Well... the original mix may have flaws that affect the quality of the sound. By nature, the process of mastering is designed to improve upon such flaws by applying equalization and/or processing of dynamic range. But what if one element within a recording needs more treble, while another element is already bright enough? At that point, EQ is not sufficient anymore because your choices will affect both. Of course, mastering does not begin and end with just EQ; there are always other ways of emphasizing or hiding elements in a recording. But spectral extraction allows you to improve upon the sound of one element without 'harming' the sound of all the others and also to re-balance those elements if necessary.
I have used Demix pro and now also Spectralayers on some of the recordings here. The remaining material just received a straight forward mastering, also with great care and precision of course.
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I have used the following digital studio gear and monitoring in the making of this:
- Spectralayers 10
- DeMix Pro 4.5.0.
- Cubase
- Universal Audio UAD-2 Satellite Quad-Core (incl. various extra plugins I purchased over the years)
- Adobe Audition
- Izotope RX9
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Sources (in order of first appearance):
– Safe As Milk (LP, Album, Promo, Stereo, White Labels) Buddah Records – BDS 5001 US 1967
– Safe As Milk (LP, Album, Mono, Red Label) Buddah Records – BDM 1001 US 1967
– Grow Fins: Rarities 1965-1982 (4×CD; CD, Enhanced; Box Set, Album) Revenant – Revenant 210 US 1999
– The Legendary A & M Sessions (CD, Compilation, Reissue) Edsel Records – BLIMPCD 902 UK 1986
– Live 1966-67 (CD, Compilation, Remastered, Unofficial Release) Keyhole – KHCD9023 Greece 2014
– Fan Trade Source from Acetate to Cassette
– Another Chapter From The Lives And Times Of Captain Beefheart (2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Unofficial Release) Germany 1989
See also:
https://www.profstoned.com/2021/09/captain-beefheart-his-magic-band-bbc.html
https://www.profstoned.com/2017/06/captain-beefheart-safe-as-milk-1967.html
https://upvhq.blogspot.com/2021/01/captain-beefheart-his-magic-band-safe.html
