CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & HIS MAGIC BAND "MIRROR MAN" LP NEAR MINT

$

20

YOU ARE BIDDING ON A LP BY CAPTAIN BEEFHEART CALLED "MIRROR MAN". IT WAS RELEASED ON THE BUDDAH LABEL (BDS 5077) OUT OF THE U.S. IN 1971. THE COVER & THE LP ARE NEAR MINT (DRILL HOLE LOWER LEFT CORNER)

**************ALL LP'S ARE DOWN GRADED JUST TO AVOID ANY CONTROVERSY. I'VE BEEN SELLING LP'S FOR OVER 3 DECADES BUT EVERYBODY HAS DIFFERENT IDEA'S ABOUT GRADING

Notes:

There are 2 sleeve versions on early vinyl issues:
One is a gatefold, die-cut cover - revealing image printed on inner right-hand wallet (vinyl inserted at spine).
The other is a single sleeve, with the cover replicating the die-cut effect.
Both early issues are printed 3-color, black & brown half-tone & spot-color silver. Later issues appear to be a 4-color process, with the brown taking on a 'greener' hue.

Most releases of this work, if not all, declare "These performances were recorded one night in Los Angeles in 1965". This is incorrect. The works are part of various material recorded over weeks in 1967 for an aborted double-album follow-up to "Safe As Milk" (known broadly as the 'Brown Wrapper' project). These works and the releases "Strictly Personal" and "It Comes To You In A Plain Brown Wrapper" are inter-connected.

This 'Mirror Man' recording is the first time some of the work officially surfaced, 4 years later as the 5th album - and why the band remains titled as "His Magic Band". Errors exist in the Artist credits: Alex St. Clair has had 'Snouffer' added to his alias, Handley is shown as 'Handsley' & Semens as 'Simmons'.

Tracklist

Tarotplane 19:00 Kandy Korn 8:00 25th Century Quaker 9:50 Mirror Man 15:38 Originally, Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band's second album was intended to be a double-album set called "It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper." Although 1968's Strictly Personal has the same artwork that was mooted for the double album, it's a single disc. As part of the same post-Trout Mask Replica closet-cleaning that led to Buddah (the parent company of Blue Thumb Records, which released Strictly Personal) reissuing Safe As Milk as Dropout Boogie in the U.K. in 1970, the label released Mirror Man, the second disc that was intended for the Plain Brown Wrapper release. Recorded in November 1967 (an odd misprint on the sleeve claims it was recorded in 1965, when the band barely existed), the four lengthy tracks on Mirror Man are even more simplistic and primal than those on Strictly Personal. All four are worthwhile, but the key tracks are "Tarotplane Blues," a free-form jam in which Beefheart jumbles together the lyrics of at least half a dozen blues standards into a stream-of-consciousness ramble (adding musette and harmonica for good measure) as the Magic Band vamps on a slide guitar-based, two-chord groove for over 19 minutes, and the similarly expansive "Mirror Man," one of the key tracks of Beefheart's entire career. Probably the catchiest tune Beefheart ever wrote, "Mirror Man" has an almost funky, hip-swaying groove, and there's a playful lightness to the way Beefheart chants the simplistic lyrics that prefigures the flights of fancy on Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals off, Baby. The remaining two tracks, "25th Century Quaker" and "Kandy Korn," are less essential but interesting enough. The revitalized and properly spelled Buddha Records reissued an expanded version of this album in 1999 as The Mirror Man Sessions, adding five alternate takes of songs that later appeared on Strictly Personal.