The Residents – Duck Stab (Mute)

The Residents provided me with one of my strangest relationships with any band, one that was shared by a few close friends and a few hallucinatory explorations. The story may sound a little sad, a handful of socially inept Midwesterners with nothing better to do than follow a directionless (and faceless) avant-garde band to the point where we actually scheduled listening sessions the same way other geeks may schedule Dr. Who listening parties.

In our defense, we were not social retards but acknowledged weirdos that perhaps dabbled a little too much with illicit drugs while managing to function at work, play and school. We viewed our gatherings as exclusive and we followed one common band, The Residents, with an almost religious fervor. While some of us may have had passions for other bands that ran nearly as deep, our collective respect for the visually decorated quartet became occasionally excessive.

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The Residents – Eskimo (Mute)

Growing up in the Midwest, there were documents of extreme importance to young music lovers. One of these documents was Rolling Stone magazine, whose more recent irrelevance wasn’t in place during the late seventies/early eighties. Ironically, one of the most problematic issues of the magazine today (a collection of advertisements interrupted by brief snidbits of entertainment information) turned out to be a blessing to a few young Iowa music lovers.

Towards the back of nearly every Rolling Stone publication, prominently featured in the magazine’s classified ad section, was a black and white advertisement for Ralph Records. It featured a leather-clad skull advising readers to “Buy or die!” What Ralph Records was selling exactly remained unclear after reading through the information. Instead, if you provided Ralph Records with a buck, you’d be provided with a 7″ sampler of the artists on their label.

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