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6) Name two of Don and Jan Vliet's wedding guests.

Mike Bugbee wrote a long, detailed and fascinating account of the marriage of his friend Janet Huck, which he attended. "What a strange wedding party we made. Harkleroad and his girl looked like characters out of Lord of the Rings. Beefheart looked like a prosperous German immigrant circa 1890 with Jan as his new immigrant bride. I looked like some 1950s Beat lumberjack poet."

7) Explain Garth Brook's reference to Ella Gurus in his song "The Old Stuff".

"In 1988, concert promoter Ashley Capps opened a restaurant/nightclub called Ella Guru's in Knoxville, Tennessee's newly revived "Old City" district. For more than two years, the club hosted the Neville Brothers, Bela Fleck, Garth Brooks, Wynton Marsalis, Alison Krauss, Widespread Panic, John Prine, Emmylou Harris, and many other national artists." - Thanks to Jeff Economy for this model answer.

8) What did Don Van Vliet say that the title 'Safe As Milk' referred to? Was it a) oral sex b) LSD c) STP D) DDT e) strontium 90 f) sushi

Sometimes Don said that it was about DDT and at other times Strontium 90. In the same breath he would insist that it was not about hallucinogenic drugs but about poison in mothers milk. The following quotes are from 1972, but Don continued to repeat this theme in conversation up until his final tour in 1982.

"I don't often write very heavy things. 'Space Age Couple' on the 'Lick My Decals Off, Baby' album meant something. So did the title of my album 'Safe As Milk' - I was talking about the dangers of D.D.T. in the mother's milk then, but everybody thought I was on about L.S.D. - the freak thing, you know." - from Caroline Boucher's interview in Disc & Music Echo.

"... now what I meant was milk wasn't safe any longer; it had Strontium 90 in it. But it was interpreted as lysergic. All of a sudden everybody said, Oh yea man, really. Cool cat. I have never tried to be a hip cat." - from Andrew Weiner's interview in Creem.

9) Which phenomenally successful boy band recorded a version of something which is on 'Safe As Milk'? Name the band, the title of the track and the CD on which it appears.

'Safe As Milk' was recorded at RCA's Hollywood studios in April 1967 and released in the USA in September of that year. Side two opens with the album's co-producer Richard Perry speaking these words, "The following tone is a reference tone recorded at our operating level." An audio tone is then heard rising into the guitar intro to 'Yellow Brick Road'.

Refererence tones were used at RCA and other studios in the sixties and seventies to calibrate tape recorders prior to recording, and later for playback. These tones can be found on various test records but it is highly unusual to find them on commercially released discs.

The wording of Richard Perry's announcement and his measured vocal delivery seem to be based on the delivery and text used by Robert Keith Morrison, the "voice" of Ampex alignment tapes. (His voice can also be heard on Standard Tape Laboratory alignment tapes.)

“The following tone is a reference tone of 700 cycles, recorded 10dB below operating level.”

Within weeks of the release of 'Safe As Milk', on October 9th 1967, The Monkees recorded a session at the same RCA studios where 'Safe As Milk' had been laid down. The name of the LP they were recording was ‘Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.’ One of the sound engineers on that album was the same man who a few months previously had engineered 'Safe As Milk', Hank Cicalo.

During this Monkees recording session some (and probably all) of a spoken word track was recorded as an introduction to the album. The track featured the voices of Peter Tork and another un-named member of the band. At the beginning of November it was decided to issue the LP without it.

This track was not to be heard until 1995 when Rhino re-released the album on CD. Six bonus cuts were included, 'Special Announcement' being the spoken word piece. Almost the complete track can be heard at the Tower Records site.

Special Announcement:

"The following tone is a reference tone of 700 cycles per second recorded at operating level. Set the playback controls so that the tone reads zero on the VU meter. All following tones will be at this level."

a tone is heard

"Ten thousand cycles."

a higher tone is heard

"Thirty thousand cycles."

a yelping dog is heard

© 1995 Rhino Records

The final tone, inaudible to humans, combined with the dog yelping, is probably a parody of the first playout track on The Beatles 'Sgt Peppers..' album, a John Lennon joke. The second and 'endless' playout track on 'Sgt Peppers..' was also parodied by The Monkees on their 'Live, 1967' album.

Although one source suggests that the recording of the Monkees spoken word section was done in June 1967 and not in October, all other sources agree that the dog yowling part was done by a Monkees member during that October session. It is hard to imagine that such a simple track would require two different recording sessions. In any event, both these dates are later than the Captain Beefheart recording dates and one of them is after the release of ‘Safe As Milk’.

Explaining the rejection of this track for the original LP Andrew Sandoval gave this theory in his sleeve notes to the Rhino CD, "Perhaps sensing that this joke was just a little too obscure, The Monkees deleted this piece when the album was reassembled at the beginning of November '67."

By the beginning of November 1967, when the final selection for The Monkees album was made, 'Safe As Milk' was already being appreciated by a great many people. It had been on sale for over a month. Rather than being obscure, the joke, or the kernel of it, was becoming rather well known. It was surely for that reason that the track was pulled.

I won’t speculate on whether the resemblance of this Monkees intro to the Beefheart intro is anything more than coincidence, or whether the combination of recording studio and sound engineer which existed for both albums is relevant.

I don't suppose we'll ever know who The Monkees imitated - Beefheart, Robert Keith Morrison, or both of them. But wouldn't it be fun to be able to say that the first cover version of Captain Beefheart material was by The Monkees?

Thanks to John Woram (Recording Engineer at RCA RECORDS, 1959 - 1971) for the information in the second paragraph, and to a Monkees fan called Jennifer for helping me with Monkees recording dates.

Layo & Bushwacka's 2002 dance hit 'Love Story (Tim Deluxe remix)' brings the story nearly up to date. During that summer clubbers worldwide danced to samples of a Nina Simone song, 'Rags And Old Iron', mixed with Devo's 'Mongoloid' and introduced, in timeless fashion, by the following words, "The following tone is a reference tone recorded at our operating level."

Whoever said you couldn't dance to Beefheart?

10) Which English soccer club's supporters sailed with Captain Beefheart and Captain Beefheart's men?

Stockport County supporters include this song on their unofficial web site. Captain Beefheart was the nickname of one of them.

When I was young and lazy
As lazy as could be
I said goodbye to the mother-in-law
And off I went to sea
I sailed with Captain Beefheart
And Captain Beefheart's men
And off I went down Castle Street
In a black Maria fan