Strictly Personal

The band recorded a lot of material in October and November 1967 for a double album called It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper. According to John French, one disc was to hold structured studio tracks and the other unstructured blues jams by an alter ego, the 25th Century Quakers. Buddah declined to release it, and the band re-recorded songs from it for Blue Thumb, on which this was the first album released. The sleeve design is a relic of the double-album plan.

While the band was in Europe, Krasnow mixed the tapes alone, with heavy phasing and reverberation in line with psychedelic fashion. Beefheart later condemned the production and said the effects were added without his knowledge or approval, though other band members said he first agreed to them. Rolling Stone's Barret Hansen wrote in December 1968 that the band had the capability of making the ultimate white blues album but that the liquid audio spoiled it. Stewart Mason later called it a terrific but underrated album. Earlier versions of its songs came out on Mirror Man in 1971.