Earlier, I did reviews of unreleased recordings by the Residents, but this time, I’m going to review their 1974 debut album, Meet the Residents. I have the original 1974 mono mix of this album in my iTunes collection, and it is one of the weirdest albums I ever had the pleasure of listening to. The cover art is a vandalization of the cover of the Beatles’ first American release, Meet the Beatles, but none of the songs on the album actually parody the Beatles.
Here are the tracks (note: these are a decription of tracks from the original mono mix):
“Boots”-A severe butchering of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made for Walkin'”, consisting of tape distortion, out-of-tune lead vocals, bombastic horns, thumb piano, and doo-wop style backing vocals.
“Numb Erone”-This consists of an oriental-sounding tune performed entirely on a broken piano.
“Guylum Bardot”-This has the same broken piano from the previous track, this time with deep grand piano chords, bluesy horns, percussion, and nasally group vocals.
“Breath and Length”-This track starts off all ominous, followed by a piece featuring copy machine-like noises, animal-like vocals, chimes, female group vocals, and a tape solo that sounds like a malfunctioning paper shredder.
“Consuelo’s Departure”-Full of various tape effects and wordless hick vocals that were also processed.
“Smelly Tongues”-Beginning with plopping tape noises and distorted computer-like beeps, this track is filled with broken piano chords, tape effects, percussion, and doo-wop-style group vocals.
“Rest Aria”-A modern classical piece featuring piano, jazzy horns, percussion, and some Middle Eastern-like atmospheres.
“Skratz”-A strange spoken word piece featuring distorted jazz instruments.
“Spotted Pinto Bean”-A low-budget mini opera featuring operatic female vocals, orchestral instruments, jazzy horns and drums, a parade field recording sound effect, and a field recording of what sounds like a Vietnam War battle to end it all.
“Infant Tango”-This is a mutant disco track featuring cheesy wah-wah guitar, electric bass, horns, and Muppet-like vocals. There is also a rising electronic crescendo in one part of the song.
“Seasoned Greetings”-This starts off in an arcane style with piano, horns, and accordion, before becoming an avant-garde progressive rock piece with psychedelic guitar, distorted electric bass, horns, and percussion. It later becomes out-of-tune before a reprise of the opening segment comes, with a Resident saying a Christmas greeting to his family.
“N-ER-GEE (Crisis Blues)”-This closing track is divided into 6 parts:
1. The intro consists of deep electronic drones with a silly-sounding voice talking about what’s happening during Christmastime.
2. This consists of piano, percussion, horns, and vocals.
3. A sound collage consisting of a skipping record featuring the Human Beinz song “Nobody But Me”, also featuring distorted growling noises, a cymbal tape loop, gobbling high-pitched wordless vocals, an explosion sound effect and a frequency beep that sounds like that of a station identification from old television networks.
4. A children’s music-style marching band piece.
5. A slightly jazzy number featuring instrumentation similar to the previous part of the song, this time with silly lead vocals talking about the energy crisis.
6. The last part consists of a tape loop of the Residents singing, “Go home, America. 55 would do”, as like a toll-taker on the road.
The Crazy Mind of Tré Roland 