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Meet the Residents
Meet the Residents is the debut studio album by American experimental rock band the Residents, released on April 1, 1974, through Ralph Records. Most of the album was recorded throughout 1973 during breaks from production on Vileness Fats, the group's film project and main focus at the time. The album is said to adhere to N. Senada's "Theory of Phonetic Organization," in which music composition should be based on individual sounds rather than traditional musical notes.
The music on Meet the Residents is a mixture of several Western genres, including blues, jazz, opera and classical music, performed in an amateurish manner, deliberately or otherwise. The album features much of what came to be the Residents' trademark sound for most of the 1970s, with loud horns, odd time signatures and cartoonish vocals.
The first six tracks on the album segue into each other to form a sort of suite, starting with a skeletal cover of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots are Made for Walkin'" before transitioning into a medley of piano melodies, Dadaist lyrics and oddly-timed percussion, ending in "Smelly Tongues", one of the group's better known songs.
The rest of the album is composed of longer, more developed compositions (with the exception of the short "Skratz"). Tracks like "Rest Aria" and "Spotted Pinto Bean" are structured in a classical manner, with grand piano backdrops, horns, sound effects and operatic vocals.
Meanwhile, the second side of the album consists of more percussion-based mostly instrumental compositions, particularly the track "N-ER-GEE (Crisis Blues)", the longest track on the album, a suite which at one point notably samples and loops the Human Beinz single "Nobody but Me" (around the word "boogaloo") and builds increasingly chaotic music around it.
The design of Meet the Residents, as well as its title, is a direct parody of the Beatles' 1964 Capitol Records debut and third US release, Meet the Beatles. The front cover features all four Beatles cartoonishly defaced, while the back cover is formatted identically to the original, substituting the sleeve notes, track listing, album and publishing credits, and crawfish heads and claws are drawn over the original Beatles band photo (except for Ringo Starr, whose head is replaced by a starfish). The band members are subsequently credited as "John Crawfish," "George Crawfish," "Paul McCrawfish," and "Ringo Starfish."
The cover allegedly drew the attention of Capitol Records, who threatened legal action if the cover were not changed. In response, the Residents pressed a stereo edit of the album with new artwork, swapping the defaced and "crawfish" photos around, so that the "crawfish" photo was now the front cover. It is unknown if the threat of legal action from Capitol was actually real, given that all subsequent re-releases of the album have again featured the original 1974 artwork.
Meet the Residents was recorded from February to October 1973 during breaks from the filming of their long-running project, Vileness Fats. The sessions took place at 'El Ralpho Studios', a home studio owned by the group which was located on Sycamore Street in San Francisco. Rather than the traditional method of writing, rehearsing and recording a song, the Residents constructed their songs entirely on tape, building up through overdubs. During the early sessions the group had no plans to release the material, but throughout the course of the sessions it evolved into a structured album.
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Meet the Residents
Meet the Residents is the debut studio album by American experimental rock band the Residents, released on April 1, 1974, through Ralph Records. Most of the album was recorded throughout 1973 during breaks from production on Vileness Fats, the group's film project and main focus at the time. The album is said to adhere to N. Senada's "Theory of Phonetic Organization," in which music composition should be based on individual sounds rather than traditional musical notes.
The music on Meet the Residents is a mixture of several Western genres, including blues, jazz, opera and classical music, performed in an amateurish manner, deliberately or otherwise. The album features much of what came to be the Residents' trademark sound for most of the 1970s, with loud horns, odd time signatures and cartoonish vocals.
The first six tracks on the album segue into each other to form a sort of suite, starting with a skeletal cover of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots are Made for Walkin'" before transitioning into a medley of piano melodies, Dadaist lyrics and oddly-timed percussion, ending in "Smelly Tongues", one of the group's better known songs.
The rest of the album is composed of longer, more developed compositions (with the exception of the short "Skratz"). Tracks like "Rest Aria" and "Spotted Pinto Bean" are structured in a classical manner, with grand piano backdrops, horns, sound effects and operatic vocals.
Meanwhile, the second side of the album consists of more percussion-based mostly instrumental compositions, particularly the track "N-ER-GEE (Crisis Blues)", the longest track on the album, a suite which at one point notably samples and loops the Human Beinz single "Nobody but Me" (around the word "boogaloo") and builds increasingly chaotic music around it.
The design of Meet the Residents, as well as its title, is a direct parody of the Beatles' 1964 Capitol Records debut and third US release, Meet the Beatles. The front cover features all four Beatles cartoonishly defaced, while the back cover is formatted identically to the original, substituting the sleeve notes, track listing, album and publishing credits, and crawfish heads and claws are drawn over the original Beatles band photo (except for Ringo Starr, whose head is replaced by a starfish). The band members are subsequently credited as "John Crawfish," "George Crawfish," "Paul McCrawfish," and "Ringo Starfish."
The cover allegedly drew the attention of Capitol Records, who threatened legal action if the cover were not changed. In response, the Residents pressed a stereo edit of the album with new artwork, swapping the defaced and "crawfish" photos around, so that the "crawfish" photo was now the front cover. It is unknown if the threat of legal action from Capitol was actually real, given that all subsequent re-releases of the album have again featured the original 1974 artwork.
Meet the Residents was recorded from February to October 1973 during breaks from the filming of their long-running project, Vileness Fats. The sessions took place at 'El Ralpho Studios', a home studio owned by the group which was located on Sycamore Street in San Francisco. Rather than the traditional method of writing, rehearsing and recording a song, the Residents constructed their songs entirely on tape, building up through overdubs. During the early sessions the group had no plans to release the material, but throughout the course of the sessions it evolved into a structured album.