captain beefheart's debut album 'safe as milk' from 1967 in fact is the only release by the buddah label in which he had a say. because the second record he worked on that year, the double album 'it comes to you in a plain brown wrapper', never was realized the intended way. for producer bob krasnow confiscated the recordings, established a record company of his own (blue thumb), had don van vliet sign to it, and brought the best part of the tapes out as 'strictly personal'....

of course, krasnow's former boss wasn't happy with that, and demanded to hand over the rights. bob refused, but many years later they reached an arrangement, allowing buddah to release some of the left-overs in 1971 on the 'mirror man' album. but by then beefheart already had moved to another label, and except for three poems he delivered for the back cover, he had no concern with the product.

and when, twenty-five years after the 'brown wrapper' sessions, an affiliate company from england put out a collection of outtakes and alternate versions - the ceedee 'i may be hungry but i sure ain't weird' - don had been out of the music business for almost a decade. so the captain also missed the later transformation from buddah to buddha and its revision of his old music, but he probably likes the 1999 remastered versions of the 'safe as milk' and 'mirror man' albums as much as we do.

spread as bonuses over the two compact discs with the amazing new sound is all the other material from the buddah era: the 'i may be hungry but i sure ain't weird' outtakes and the unreleased song 'korn ring finger'. and although the ceedees were released at practically the same day, this complete 'buddha catalogue' quite strangely wasn't one or other combined set.

however, some employees at the reincarnated label must have had the same pondering. because six years after the birth of the 'original masters' the english branch of the record company created a keep case to put a repressing of them in together! the combination of the discs - presented as 'made in the european union' - is somewhat predictably titled 'x2'....

MY CONCLUSION: a repeat MY ADVICE: nice for those who don't have the separate originals

[100406]