you listen to.

buy Safe As Milk instead, which I personally think is roughly a million times better (prepares to dodge the missiles)

Imagine it as like a mad musical dream, I found that helped. Plus, ´Steal Softly Thru Snow´ is one of the most beautiful things ever (¨the black paper between a mirror//breaks my heart that I can´t go,¨ etc) AND your hero Mr Waits probably listened to it far too much at one point. So yeah.

knowing Don helps with appreciating his music. Barring that; you could PM Mr.JDTraynor about your plight- Nah, I wouldn't do that. Just check Don out and while your at it get into some Zappa too- there is tons of material between the two of them to keep you occupied till good new music arrives.

do this for about ten listens.

Then when you become accustomed to this bring in the guitar also.

give it another ten listens

then it should begin to make sense.

It's the musical equivalent of a magic eye 3D picture

but that doesn't necessarily mean you want to listen it.

It will be forever touted by people trying 'out indie' eachother however.

I enjoy a lot of so-called 'impenetrable music' but TMR is terrible. It has its moments, but the bulk of the album is simply a pretentious mess. Ironically, that's exactly why most people like it.

this happens all the time, just follow the crowd.

A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous.

Fast and bulbous.
That's right, the mascara snake! Fast and bublous.

How can you not love this record?

'Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish' in particular. I don't know why I like that song, but I do.

So, you DO understand it, then...

about as bizzare as they get. Captain Beefheart used classic mind control tactics on "The Magic Band" to achieve their arrival on some weird music planet. He even got Frank Zappa to play along but only in a cursory technical capicity. Zappa desribed his amazement the realization that "Magic Band" had been "rehearsed to death"- and they nearly were- mainly due to a six month, exclusive diet of beans. Just an example of the weirdness that his band was exposed to during the making of TMR: Toward the end of the whole episode Captain Beefheart called a tree surgeon to come out to the "Band House" and examine the tress surrounding the house cause he was afraid that the music coming from the house during the months of rehearsals had damaged the tree- somehow. I guess the tree surgeon gave the trees a clean bill of health.

its a great album! do some more drugs...or go buy Spotlight Kid.

I just don't think it'll ever be one of my favourite albums. I also don't like that from a few replies in this thread it is supposed you are either a person who "gets it" or "doesent get it", which is kind of a bad attitude for music to be made or consumed in.
It's also bloody long. An hour and 20 minutes is a long time for any album, never mind one that is intentionally difficult.

which you can pick out and enjoy. Think of it as being like 'GCSE Bitesize'.

My two year old little brother is proving that you CAN dance to this album. He seems to be enjoying himself.

then come back to it. Safe as Milk is all kinds of brilliant, including the one where you actually enjoy it rather than thinking that you probably should.