History
The original intention was to record an album for Buddah Records entitled It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper. (Strictly Personal's sleeve design is a relic of this initial concept.) A considerable amount of material was recorded for the project during the period of October–November 1967 with Bob Krasnow producing. Owing to reservations on the part of Buddah, however, the album was not released. Instead, Strictly Personal was issued on Krasnow's own Blue Thumb label the following year. It features re-recorded versions of songs from the 1967 sessions, with psychedelic effects added by Krasnow. Beefheart always professed that he hated the effects, claiming they had been added without his knowledge, though it is likely he was in fact aware of Krasnow's action and approved of them at the time. However, the album's fate may have had a strong effect on his insistence on a dry, unaffected sound on later recordings.
The material from the earlier sessions would later be released, along with an earlier version of "Kandy Korn", as Mirror Man (1971). Much other material from the 1967 sessions has since been released; the compilation I May Be Hungry But I Sure Ain't Weird (1992) contained eleven of the original cuts taken from master tapes. This album has long since been out of print, but all eleven tracks can be found spread across The Mirror Man Sessions and the current version of Safe as Milk. Some of these tracks were also used for a vinyl-only release by the Sundazed label in 2008 bearing the original intended title of It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper, but this release does not duplicate the original album concept or sequence.
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