The Residents: The Third Reich'n'Roll

Completing a trilogy of nameless record shop counter staff in Sheffield (see Polar Bear and Rare & Racy), I bought this in Record Collector. As it wasn't regularly in stock, I had to order it, and when it came in the young, long-haired bloke behind the counter volunteered a story about the different versions of this album on vinyl. There was one where the carrot in Hitler's hand is coloured in orange and green (as on the CD cover), and another where it's in the same red and black monochrome as Hitler himself. One version is more or less commonplace; the other is extremely rare and, by now, priceless. This was nearly twenty years ago, and if I said I could remember which is which, I wouldn't take my word for it. If you've got this record, check the cover and then check the web to see whether you're holding something pretty special.

I know that parts of this album were genuinely pioneering thirty years ago when it came out (in part it anticipates what John Zorn was doing ten years later in Godard). However, listening to it now it could easily get lumped in with all those self-consciously quirky cover versions that the world seems to be awash with these days. In fact The Residents' take on Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida sounds like Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.

Also I wonder how big an audience there would be for the music if it weren't for the eyeball schtick and the Cryptic Corporation enigma. If it worked as a means to bring weird music to a larger audience, good luck to them, I suppose. I saw them play at the Royal Festival Hall three years ago, and the biggest cheer of the night was not for the music, but when one of them carried out an eyeball in the encore.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album