who will defend unconditionally guaranteed or blue jeans and moonbeams?

i only ever heard one song off one of them & i can't remember which. it was sort of ok.

damn it these threads abt specific recs are making me get loads of 'em. got 'safe as' yesterday and just posted on that thread.

I'm getting 'decals' soon too.

Well they're obviously not as good as the rest of Beefheart's albums - but then, so very few things are!

I reckon Unconditionally Guaranteed is the better of the two (and at least features The Magic Band rather than some bunch of session musicians) but still a lot more mainstream than any of his other albums. A couple of tracks (I Got Love On My Mind, This Is The Day) are similar to some of the more melodic / melancholy material on Clear Spot like Too Much Time and My Head Is My Only House ("If you just listen to the tunes, I really don’t see this album as being that big a radical change in direction." Zoot Horn Rollo) however Don's singing is quite restrained throughout, the lyics are much more straightforward ("I haven't changed the message of what I'm saying, this is just a friendly extension.") and there are some surprisingly upbeat, poppy numbers included (New Electric Ride, Sugar Bowl) and even the most powerful numbers (Upon The My O My, Full Moon Hot Sun) lack the complexity and angularity of Beefheart's trademark material. I suspect that much of the reason this album is so derided is that it is blamed unjustly for the departure of the original Magic Band after completeing the recordings, and the replacements who Don took on the road to promote the album (foten referred to as The Tragic Band) clearly didn't understand and / or were incapable of playing most of the material.

Blue Jeans And Moonbeams has a few good tracks (Party Of Special Things To Do, Observatory Crest and the title track) but some utterly wertched ones (Pompadour Swamp is just pants and the instrumental Captain's Holiday appears to have been written and recorded in a jamming session by the backing band without Don's involvement and was included simply to fill the album out).

Oh, and if it's any help, I thought Level 42 were great up until the Boons left, and if anyone ever doubts or mocks you for saying so, I suggest you nod quietly and then play them Kouyate from True Colours.

Good luck finding Decals, Julio!

stewart i love you

side-question: were MALLARD any good?

Awww Mark, I love you too.

Mallard were OK - Beefheart lite with a country twinge.

Mu (Jeff Cotton's band) and French Frith Kaiser Thomson are better 'though and Crazy Backwards Alphabet is better still.

However, if you enjoy a bit of shouty punk thrash stuff as well as Beefheart (and Level 42 of course!) then I seriously recommend you track down the CD "Nu Ar Det Allvar / Voodoo Boogie!!" by Kraldjursanstalten (Hoorah! They'd never been mentioned on ILM before today and I've found two excuses to mention them already and it's not even midday yet!)

What Stewart said up there pretty much goes for me too. You know, ‘Unconditionally Guaranteed’ ain’t as commercially minded as the crits often like to make out (check ‘Sugar Bowl’, ‘Peaches’). I like to look at these two records rather as Beefheart’s attempts at writing love songs. He wrote the lyrics with his wife, Jan, with whom he was deeply in love (how many times does the word ‘love’ appear on UG?), and also stated at the time that he was "singing for women;" what he was really trying to do here was open up his music and ideas to a wider audience: "Since the release of Clear Spot, I’ve been working on getting a form of music everybody could listen to. I must admit I feel I was being quite selfish about that other music I was playing. But I’ve never had a producer, really, until now. Before, it was always we’d get into a studio and have someone push a few buttons to start them machines, then just let the tapes roll on. But there was never anyone there to give it a specific form. I wanted to be produced this time."

He also added in an interview at the time "I been stuck in some weird fantasy-category out of someone else’s need to explain what it was that we did… So they stamped a decal on it. I’m not a big bad boogeyman – nope, not any more." Fair enough, say I.

Although Beefheart would write it off, insisting that buyers should take it back to the shop and get their money back, taking advantage of the guarantee, he also said in ‘74, the year of ‘Unconditionally’s’ release: "I haven’t changed the message of what I’m saying, this is just a friendly extension." The guitarist, Zoot Horn Rollo, who also appears on that record, whose work, particularly on ‘This is the Day’, a beautiful song, is top draw, has also stated "If you just listen to the tunes, I really don’t see this album as being that big a radical change in direction." The guy is right.

''Good luck finding Decals, Julio!''

I do know abt a shop that has it in stock. I'm not telling tho' just in case someone reads it and goes to it and buys it (i'll get to it and hopefully it will still be there).

Blue Jeans from Light & Magic is the most addictive track of the decade, consider it defended 2 THA MAXXX.

julio my army of nanospiderbots are out combing the streets of, er, everywhere to ensure that i get that record not you

haha i used to have it, but on REEL-TO-REEL tape, i am truly methuselah s!!!

oh no! nanospiderbots!!oh no!!!

The cover of J J Cale's "Same Old Blues" on BJM is one of my favourite Beefheart vocals, even though it's one of the straightest. "Peaches" from UG is another favourite. There's some wretched stuff on both albums, but if you're willing to accept Beefheart as a commercial artist as well as a cult freak, those two albums are definitely not as awful as their reputation.

There's a spirited defense of Unconditionally Guaranteed by Graham Johnston on Perfect Sound Forever. Link To be honest, I haven't heard it, or Bluejeans.

"Chris De Bleaurggh", haha

So lemme guess, Blue Jeans & Moonbeams = proto-Sea Change?

The recent comp of the Virgin years Hot Head is a pretty good (and cheap)entry point to this phase.

The question remains: Why can't virgin send the original unsold CDs to Fopp to sell for a fiver? I aint going to for £14 each nope...