CDOTD 2/01/2023

 The Residents: The Third Reich 'N Roll pREServed Edition (Cherry Red) disc 1

Purchased from Amazon. A rarity for me, I'm happy to say.

I was in the Monroeville Exchange a month or two back, browsing. I noticed another customer wearing the iconic eyeball-in-top-hat t-shirt. If you know anything about The Residents, you know this image. Another older man spoke up. "The Residents! The Third Reich 'N Roll!" I tried to get kids to understand it, they don't." And then I spoke up, showing them both I was wearing my Duck Stab! t-shirt under my hoodie. 

No point to that anecdote, only that the image of The Residents as the weirdo-eyeball band has seeped into the mainstream. It's due I imagine in some part because the band early on tried to treat their venture as a business in addition to creating original music and media. It's not at the level of people who wear Joy Division tees with the Unknown Pleasures diagram; I'd guess the majority of those have never listened to that album.

They Residents weren't the first to use an eyeball head as in image: there was a villain in Ghost Rider comics named The Orb, whose eyeball head could induce mass hypnosis. The eyeball head in top hat image is memorable enough, that there have been homages and even rip offs. Most notably Ke$ha, who had for one tour dancers in tuxes, eyeball heads, and top hats. That's more than homage, it's downright intellectual property theft.

Fast forward to today. I received a notice on Facebook that both The Third Reich 'N Roll  and Duck Stab! were released on this date in different years. I felt obligated to put on one of them. 

This is the second instance of me writing about The Residents on this blog. I might repeat myself a little. 

I've listened to both albums many times, and it's possible I've listened to Duck Stab! more than any other single LP. As such, I put on TRNR instead. 

The Residents sought to avoid their own intellectual property issues by claiming the two "suites" on this LP were inspired by 1960's commercial radio hits. Truth is, it's a series of savage covers of rock and pop songs of that era. Part of the fun in listening was always trying to identify the source material/inspirations. There's a list somewhere online of all the pieces referenced, some of which I don't know. Others are very clear: "Yummy Yummy Yummy", "Light My Fire", "Land of 1000 Dances", "Let's Twist Again", etc. It's too many for me to recount. My first vinyl copy has the second side actually banded, it's more concisely divided into separate tracks. 

The story goes that sides one and two were recorded in a week each a year apart, while The Residents toiled away at day jobs in between. As with all stories regarding the band, it may be completely true but one has to take it with a proverbial grain of salt. 

Let me take a moment to address the title and graphics. Everything about them is satirical, from the pun title to the images that accompany it. The Residents' (ahem) manager and graphics person once wrote that his one regret was the back cover of this album, which uses Nazi eagles overlapped to create a six-pointed Star of David. Then there's the front cover, with an image of Dick Clark in a Nazi uniform, holding a carrot (The first suite is titled "Hitler Was a Vegetarian"), with little Hitler figures dancing on clouds around him. 

I think it's fair to say this would get you in real hot water if you did this today, even though at all times it's clear that the intention is satire and irony. What ruffled even more feathers than those images was a window display created at Rather Ripped Record in Berkeley, and the promotional photos that the band in Hitler mustaches, with big swastikas surrounding their heads, and swastika glasses. Ouch. In retrospect, it's easy to see why this would upset people. 

Some reissues of the album had the message "censored!" over any of the offending images, mostly so they could get distribution in Germany and other places in Europe those images are banned by law. 

For as much as I admire TRNR, it's the two singles that follow on this reissue that are some of my favorite of the band's output. "Satisfaction" b/w "Loser ≅ Weed", and "The Beatles Play The Residents/The Residents Play The Beatles" were both original limited edition 7"s. The latter is one side of a Plunderphonics remix of Beatles sources, long before such things were common; the B side is a cover of "Flying", chosen because (at the time) it was the only song credited to all four Beatles. It's significantly closer to what The Residents would sound like over the following years. 

The remaining tracks on disc one are jammy primitive improvs. The pREServed series has been a little disappointing in this respect, the bonus material hasn't been particularly interesting for the most part. They really put the effort into the finished product.