There's one thing I've gotta hand to the kids still out there, night after night, losing their minds on LSD–the music has gotten a whole lot more appropriate. The selling pont of hallucinogenic drugs, so I'm told, is to completely lose grip with all preconceived notions of reality. If you've got an Eastern bent, the drugs will act as a crutch to attaining Nirvana, a state of being so in-and-of-itself it can only be considered other-than-being. Personally, a couple of bottles of Michelob and a long snooze is just what I need to reach this exalted plane on Saturday mornings after a long poker match, but, hey, to each his own.

Anyhow, in this, our digital age, the transcendence music of choice is predominantly "ambient" music. Atonal, non-linear, often an electronic reproduction of slow, spacey ones and zeroes. In the right context, it works.

Back in the day, when consciousness-rasing was de rigueur amongst the kids, and not just southern Baptists speaking in tongues, the pills they took, in addition to sending them off on a magic carpet ride, made colors more colorful, smells more pungent (which explains why there was no Haight-Ashbury in northern New Jersey), and crazy wild sounds more groovy. Far out. You'd think these mind-altering experiments would open up a generation to true avant-garde notions of musicality and art. For a few it did, but, sadly, its principal legacy is poorly produced, white Rhythm and Blues. The Zombies, Vanilla Fudge, The Doors, Mike Bloomfield, the first Grateful Dead album. Is this really the soundtrack to lose one's mind to?

There was one album, Captain Beefheart's Safe As Milk, which, while I've got no concrete evidence Kesey and Babbs spun it at La Honda, still holds up as innovative, unlike the giggle-fest records of the kitsch bands mentioned above.

"Safe As Milk," Mr. Beefheart's first album, is being re-released this week, along with seven bonus cuts. It makes for a seventy-one minute nostalgia trip to late 60's California that seldom induces any nausea. It is distinct from Beefheart's later work; it is accessible, with recognizable melodies and traditional song structure.

In case you're forgetting, Captain Beefheart was one of the most over-the-edge, either-you-get-it-or-you-don't artists of the Classic Rock era. He never had a hit single, though I'm sure you've encountered his big double album "Trout Mask Replica" (produced by Frank Zappa) in someone's basement. "TMR" was a diarrhea of 28 scratched-out and started-over "songs," most memorable among them "Dachau Blues" and "Neon Meate Dream of A Octo-Fish." It was the Cy Towmbly painting of rock. It caused the closed-minded to cry "Emperor's New Clothes" and the stoned to ask, "Is this supposed to sound like this?" It was, though, not his best work.

After the mad success of "TMR," Mr. Beefheart recorded a handful of albums, "Clear Spot" and "The Spotlight Kid" among them, that to this day stand as some of the hard-hittingest rock-blues celebrations ever recorded. The John Spencer Blues Explosion look like a bunch of haircut sissies compared to this. In Beefheart's prime, his famous multi-octave range would sound both sweet and scary. And the band would travel to the ends of acceptable noise levels along with him. It was, truly, transcendent music.

So what of this re-release of "Safe As Milk?" Well, for one, it's good to get this material on CD. In addition, it is very interesting to see the beginning stages of where Beefheart would go. On "Safe As Milk" you can hear the early forms of his "Trout Mask Replica" non-music, as well as some of the "new-blues" he would create in his later work. This second aspect is especially noticeable in the thunderous electric bass, different from John Entwistle's in that it, frankly, lacks the skill to loop around, but still begs for attention. Still amusing is that these early forms are finding their way within 60's California LSD-Beach rock. With un-ironic use of a Theremin!!

It may be telling that the album release is boasting that Tricycle hailed it as "one of the most important rock albums of all time." Just wait to hear what the next generation has to say about car alarms.