{"id":752,"date":"2012-04-09T04:42:52","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T09:42:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=752"},"modified":"2012-04-09T04:42:52","modified_gmt":"2012-04-09T09:42:52","slug":"album-review-the-residents-the-third-reich-and-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/09\/album-review-the-residents-the-third-reich-and-roll\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Residents – The Third Reich and Roll"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Residents<\/strong>‘ third recording (though released as their second), The Third Reich and Roll<\/em>, presents the inscrutable group at their most provocative. The album (or EP, depending on your point of view) artwork is designed to offend, and it’s wildly successful in its goal. A German SS officer looking very much like Dick Clark<\/strong> smiles benignly from the cover, surrounded by couples who (at first) seem to be dancing. But a closer look reveals one-half of each couple to be the man who Mel Brooks<\/strong> described as having \u201ca funny little moustache, piece of hair falling in his face.\u201d<\/p>\n

MVD Audio currently has the rights to the Residents’ back catalogue, and in 2012 released the album, following up earlier reissues of Meet the Residents<\/em><\/a> and Not Available<\/em><\/a>. Contemporary descriptions of The Third Reich and Roll<\/em> would have you believe that the record is a typically Resident-ial treatise on pop music’s fascistic tendencies, and its goal of giving the listener a tiny but of predigested rebellion to keep them from actually, y’know, rebelling. Setting aside all that deep insight, there remains the music.<\/p>\n

In its own way, said music is as provocative as the artwork. Technically comprised of but two long tracks (\u201cSwastikas on Parade\u201d and \u201cHitler Was a Vegetarian\u201d), in reality the album is a long string of snippets of popular songs, each run through the Residents’ musical grinder. The result is predictably bizarre. Chubby Checker<\/strong><\/a>‘s \u201cLet’s Twist Again\u201d is re-imagined as a bierhalle putsch singalong, and the transitions between pieces owe a lot to Frank Zappa<\/strong><\/a>‘s montage editing style used so effectively on We’re Only in it For the Money<\/em>. Cannibal and the Headhunters<\/strong>‘ \u201cLand of a Thousand Dances\u201d is transmogrified into something altogether more menacing.<\/p>\n

And that’s only the first two minutes. You’ll thrill (or shudder) to insanely inverted\/re-imagined renderings of Tommy James and the Shondells<\/strong><\/a>‘ \u201cHanky Panky,\u201d a spooky choral reworking of The<\/strong> Turtles<\/strong><\/a>‘ \u201cHappy Together,\u201d and other beloved favorites. While decades later The Residents would produce relatively accessible works such as 2006’s The River of Crime<\/em><\/a>, in the mid 1970s they were having none of the mainstream.<\/p>\n

As with most Residents releases, it’s not always clear what sort of instruments are making the sounds; everything is so treated and twisted that it’s nearly impossible to know. But the juxtaposition of strafing warplanes’ machine-gun fire and a \u201ccover\u201d of The Swinging Medallions<\/strong>‘ \u201cDouble Shot (of My Baby’s Love\u201d) makes some sort of crazy sense in The Residents’ world. Near the end of the whole thing, a relatively straight (by Residents standards) take on the coda to The Beatles<\/strong>‘ \u201cHey Jude\u201d (with some Stones<\/strong>-y \u201cwoo-woos\u201d thrown in for effect) wraps the album up in inimitable style. The emphasis throughout The Third Reich and Roll<\/em> is on Top 40 tunes from the 1960s; to this reviewer’s knowledge, no one has ever presented a full catalogue of material covered on the record, but Residents fans have gamely attempted to do so: their best guess can be found on the album’s Wikipedia page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Aficionados of the strange: if you haven’t heard this, correct that oversight. Others \u2013 including those who are offended by desecration of hits they love \u2013 best stay away.<\/p>\n

Note<\/strong>: Perhaps music’s first mash-up, The Residents’ inspired and apocalyptic cut-up-and-reassembly of Beatles<\/span> tracks titled \u201cBeyond the Valley of a Day in the Life\u201d was included as a bonus track on some earlier reissues of The Third Reich and Roll<\/em>. It’s not, however, included on the 2012 MVD Audio pressing.<\/p>\n

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The Residents‘ third recording (though released as their second), The Third Reich and Roll, presents the inscrutable group at their most provocative. The album (or EP, depending on your point […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1823],"class_list":["post-752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-residents","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}