A visit to the Ralph Records stable

Yello : Bimbo

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In 1980 The Residents' San Francisco based record company, Ralph Records, was going strong sending mutant rock out to the masses via mail order. On October 15, Solid Pleasure , the debut album by the Swiss trio Yello was released. This album would be hugely influential on the electronic and dance music scenes. Dieter Meier, the spiritual head of Yello, is an eccentric millionaire who provides vocals and lyrics like :

Look at myself in the window of a glass door 

Look in my eyes 

Look at myself in the window of a toy store 

Wink at the size 

The Residents : Easter Woman

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The Residents followed up their winning concept album Eskimo with another solid exercise. The Commercial Album consists of 40 commercial length tracks. Why? The five part answer is in the liner notes: 

Point One - Pop Music is mostly a repetition of two types of musical and lyrical phrases: The verse and the chorus. Point Two: These elements usually repeat three times-in-a-three minute song, the type usually found on Top 40 radio. Point Three: Cut out the fat, and a pop song is only one minute long. Then, record albums can hold their own Top 40:twenty minutes per side. Point Four: One minute is also the length of most commercials, and therefore their corresponding jingles. Point Five: Jingles are the music of America!

Andy Partridge, Lene Lovich and Phil "Snakefinger" Lithman all play on the album.

Snakefinger : Golden Goat

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The Residents' weirdness rubs off on UK artist Snakefinger who brings twisted takes on everything. The opening track contains the lyrics "I have seen the Golden Goat and he would like to lick my throat. I know his mane, I know his spoor, I know he waits outside my door."

Fred Firth : Dancing In The Street

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Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith released Gravity, his second solo album on Ralph Records. It's full of experimental dance music of all things, including a frantic cover of "Dancing In The Streets", the #6 best Indie single of 1980 according to Trouser Press.

 

The Walrus Hunt

The Residents : The Walrus Hunt

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In October of 1979, word was spreading of a new Residents album that sounded more like field recordings documenting Inuit culture than the avant garde, atonal often goofy songs the prankster band is best known for. Upon the release of Eskimo,  NME's Andy Gill raved "It's without doubt one of the most important albums ever made, if not the most important."

The Residents never set foot in the arctic. The entire album was recorded in their own studio at 444 Grove Street, three blocks from San Francisco City Hall. Drummer Chris Cutler says "I was more or less given free rein. I didn't have any music to play along to. They made me sit in a fridge and breathe Arctic air which had been brought back in Thermos flasks by their guru N. Senada." He added "All, none or some of the above might be true."

The album is made up of six vignettes : The Walrus Hunt, Birth, Arctic Hysteria, The Angry Angakok, A Spirit Steals A Child and The Festival of Death. All seem to rely heavily on a synthesizer that sounds like Arctic winds.

  Political correctness has not been kind to the concept of Eskimo. There are sensitive types who disapprove of white artists making up chants that sound vaguely like "Coke adds life" at one point in the otherwise beautiful "Festival of Death".

10,000 copies printed on white vinyl sold out. The album--the first to feature The Residents in their iconic eyeball costumes-- would sell more than 100,000. The follow-up? An eight minute edit of the album set to a disco beat. It's name? Diskomo.

Undetermined Oyster Beds

The Residents : Sinister Exaggerator

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What Here Come the Warm Jets might have sounded like had Eno been a silly boy.

-Jeff Salamon writing in the Spin Alternative Record Guide

In November of 1978, The Residents released Duck Stab/ Buster + Glen, the band's most pop-oriented and accessible album. That said, there is nothing truly pop oriented or accessible about this album. This time the self-imposed anonymous members of the San Francisco art band appear to deconstruct Booker T and the MG's ("Booker Tease"), The Ventures ("Weight Lifting Lulu"), and Kraftwerk ("Kraft Cheese"). Among those who were amused, music critic Robert Christgau who gave the album a grade of A-, writing:

 Much to my annoyance, I not only find myself nyaahing along to these weird, misanthropic, exuberantly absurdist post-art-rock fragments, I find myself giggling. Just the thing to divert precocious but obnoxious ten-year-olds. 

40 Year Itch: Those We Missed from April 1974

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On Desitively Bonnaroo, Dr John and producer Allen Toussaint follow up their 1973 hit album In The Right Place with backing by The Meters. This may be the best bass playing George Porter Jr ever put on record ( and that's saying a lot). 

"Mos' Scocious" remains an all time favorite of mine. How did this not become a hit? In and out of print, Desitively Bonnaroo is desitively the album you must pick up after Gumbo and In the Right Place.

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   The best cuts are the intimate ones where it's just Paul and his guitar. You get that on " Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" and "American Tune", the song Simon believed to be the best from There Goes Rhymin' Simon. He may be right. On record, you'll immediately get tired of the audience. They applaud when the song begins and then five seconds later when they actually recognize the first line of lyric.Simon also gives the Jessy Dixon Singers an entire track , which seems far too generous 40 years later. Still, their contributions to "Bridge Over Troubled Water" deserve a reward of some kind. Perhaps in heaven.

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    Avant-garde nuttiness from the San Francsico art collective, The Residents. Originally available only by mail order from Ralph Records ( and thus, mostly ignored by critics). The Beatles labels threatened to sue the band for using the album cover. Take the advice offered on the album cover: 

" Let the strangeness wear off through a couple of plays. Soon you too will whistle the merry tunes."