※悔しがり失調粘着連投発作統失荒らしが数匹居ます (こいつらが湧く前は良いスレでしたね) ※自己肯定に難があるようで意見を否定されることに非常に敏感です (反応が早く発作を起こして連投を始めます) ※こいつらが暴れるからしばらく休止という意見は荒らしの思う壺なので無視します ※Music is the Best
Well, what can one say about The Residents? They have been wearing those trademark eyeball heads, top hats and tuxedos for nigh on 35 years now. The have been cheekily (some would say self-indulgently) subverting the whole notion of pop, rock, electronic, and avant garde/experimental music for the best part of 40 years. They have become THE most enigmatic bunch in the history of popular (or unpopular) music. They have released approximately 3 million records and videos and other artefacts since 1971 and yet nobody knows if the original members of the band are still alive or not.... They truly are the most baffling, eccentric and inscrutable collective (I couldn't possibly consider them as a 'band') on earth.
Third Reich 'n' Roll - their third album [proper] released in 1976 - is an absolutely hilarious deconstruction of the pop song whereby our anti-heroes simply defecate from a great height onto the collective heads of the then rock'n'pop aristocracy. All manner of unwitting victims fall prey to the characteristic Residents [mal]treatment: detuned melodies, unhinged arrangements, goofy plunking piano, guitars that sound like angry wasps, nightmarish orchestral interludes, rumbling kettle drums, varispeeded nasal vocals .... all blended, shaken and stirred into an ungodly sonic stew.
The album is split into just two suites: side a (part one) is entitled Swastikas On Parade (which explains the controversial artwork on the cover), whilst side b (part two) rejoices under the delightful title Hitler Was A Vegetarian. There are NO other track listings, so this means the listener is forced to pick out the individual songs being lampooned as they work their way through 36 minutes of sheer aural mayhem. Disorientating it certainly is - and for the unititiated ear it is nothing more than an unlistenable, infuriating mess. But this is the album's strength. One reviewer once called this 'a work of quite astounding awfulness and atonality', whilst another lauded it as 'pure unbridled genius'. The truth actually lies somewhere in between.
Persevere with this record though, and you will then be able to pick out the following tunes amongst many more buried in the mix: Let's Twist Again (which kicks off the album), It's My Party, Yummy Yummy Yummy, Gloria, Wipe Out, Light My Fire, 96 Tears, Good Lovin', Heroes and Villains, and ending with possibly the most hilariously skewed take on Hey Jude's fade-out/coda you could ever clap your ears on.... the guitars so out of tune they could curdle milk!! In fact they cleverly combine this with the Rolling Stones' Sympathy For The Devil (are the Residents the first ever band in the known universe to pioneer the 'mash up' then??) so seamlessly that you wouldn't realise this. This if anything shows that Paul McCartney ripped the chords to Hey Jude's coda off Jagger and Richards - who came up with the tune first !!
This album has already been issued on CD in 1988, but what differentiates that release from this 2005 remastered repackaged edition (with hardback book and lots of extra artwork inside) is that the earlier CD also adds four bonus tracks: the notorious cover of the Rolling Stones' (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction which, when released as a stand alone single in 1976, was deemed 'a truly excruciating piece of music - so repellent it could clear a room in seconds'; its B-side Loser [is congruent to] Weed, and the two Beatle tributes Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life / Flying. This new package sadly omits these otherwise quite intriguing oddities, choosing to present the album exactly as it was originally released on vinyl. Maybe that's a bit of a lost opportunity bearing in mind the potential for lots of extra bits to be fitted onto this remastered CD.
Still, a fascinatingly warped listening experience for anyone brave enough to take a dip into The Residents' weird, wonderful and sometimes frightening world....
N.B. Those new to The Residents may find that the best starting place is by far their most listener-friendly release: 1980's Commercial Album, which has also been remastered and reissued as a hardback CD and an even better DVD edition. This album features forty short minute-long tunes and is the closest the Residents have come to making a 'pop' album. The title alludes to this and also the fact that the original brief was for the tunes to be actually USED in TV commercials.
I have been curious about The Residents for a long time,having noted the mutated Beatles satire that is the cover of their first recording. Then the eyeballs appeared and I kept wondering,"wazzup wit' deze guys"?? So,I read some reviews on Amazon and went to The Residents web-site and decided to take the plunge,buying The First Album and Third Reich,used of course. The Third Reich 'n' Roll arrived in the mail first a day ago and today,i have listened to it continously. It is an amazing work of art. Sheer genius. And to think it's over 30 years old...it sounds like some artifact from the Future/Past...a sci-fi version of rock music. The equation of facisim with pop music is right on. i love it and i will be buying a lot more Residents in the future. What a group! (I wonder if Roger Waters had heard this before "The Wall"-you know, "The Wall" alludes to the facist effect that pop music has on music and young people-something David Bowie alluded to,also.) The Residents are America's best hope. (I had a similar revelation about the stupidity of wasting energy on rock music and it's lemming-like effect on young people at a Midnight Oil concert during their heyday-a lot of chest puffing about change,etc.but little or no action.)Also,now that i have heard these guys' music,i am afraid that listening to "regular" music will just be too boring!!!! might as well throw out it all!!! i never thought anybody would top Zappa,but the Residents have and then some...i bought a bunch more residents offa amazon today. great,great,great. (and twining "Hey Jude" w/ "sympathy for the devil" is worth the price of this cd alone.) i am glad i finally had the courage to check this group out-very rewarding.is hearing the residents for the first time life changing? YES!