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Safe As Milk Lyrics
Well my cigarette died when I washed my face
Dropped some drops in an ashtray hit a wrong place
Woman at my blinds to see spiders spinning lines
Its a safe as milk it's a safe as milk
I never heard it put quite that way
The shape I'm in is a gone a way
They called a day they called a day
yesterday's paper headlines approach rain gutter teasing rusty cat sneezing
Soppin wet hammer dusty and wheezing
Lusty alley whining trashcan blues
Children running after rainbows stocking poor
Gracious ladies nylon hanging on to line
Jumping onto leg looking mighty fine
Sorrows lollipop lands stick-broken on a dark carnival ground
Pop up toaster cracklin Aluminium rhythm and sound
Ev'ry day pencil lazy and sharp
The icebox inside looking like a harp
E-lectric bulb been out for years Freezer fumes feed the gas tears
Cheese in the corner with a mile long beard
Beggin' blue bread dog eared (repeat twice)
I may be hungry but I sure ain't weird
Dropped some drops in an ashtray hit a wrong place
Woman at my blinds to see spiders spinning lines
Its a safe as milk it's a safe as milk
I never heard it put quite that way
The shape I'm in is a gone a way
They called a day they called a day
yesterday's paper headlines approach rain gutter teasing rusty cat sneezing
Soppin wet hammer dusty and wheezing
Lusty alley whining trashcan blues
Children running after rainbows stocking poor
Gracious ladies nylon hanging on to line
Jumping onto leg looking mighty fine
Pop up toaster cracklin Aluminium rhythm and sound
Ev'ry day pencil lazy and sharp
The icebox inside looking like a harp
E-lectric bulb been out for years Freezer fumes feed the gas tears
Cheese in the corner with a mile long beard
Beggin' blue bread dog eared (repeat twice)
Song Info
Submitted by
kienholzfan On Oct 29, 2004
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Captain Beefheart weren't allowed to release this song because the label thought it referred to acid, although Don Van Vliet is very against drugs.
So was the original "Safe as Milk" album released without "Safe as Milk"? How odd!
Which company? The Mirror Man ' ('Plain Brown Wrapper') sessions were completely rejected remember? Then a single album came out without Beefheart's ok. The song seems to be about urban living in the rough and ready world of the Captain. That fridge sure sounds familiar... There are adverts about Acid Reflux. :)
I think it's conflating domestic squalor with environmental decay. The phrase "safe as milk" was a sarcastic shorthand reference to strontium 90 affecting mothers' milk and causing deformities in babies. At the end the narrator is separating himself from the grand-scale pollutants - I may look like a living wreck but I "know better". This is a Herb Bermann lyric wrongly credited to Don.