Safe as Milk is the debut album by Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band, originally released in 1967. It is a heavily blues-influenced work, but also hints at many of the features — such as surreal lyrics and odd time signatures — that would later become trademarks of Beefheart’s music. The album is also notable for the involvement of a 20-year-old Ry Cooder, who plays guitar and wrote some of the arrangements. Before recording Safe As Milk, the band had previously released a couple of singles through A&M Records, and it was to this company that the group first proposed their debut album in 1966. They presented the label with a set of heavily R&B-influenced demos, which the label apparently felt were too unconventional, and A&M decided to drop the band. Don Van Vliet later claimed the label dropped them after hearing the song “Electricity” and declaring it “too negative.”

[via Henrik Queitsch]