[The Warner Brothers Album]
Before The Beginning
(-1971)
The Residents - First Lost Warner Brothers Album (Return To Sender) unreleased
1. Strawberry Fields Forever (0'28)
2. Mad Sawmill of Copenhagen Germany (1'11)
3. Baby Skeletons and Dogs (1'29)
4. (Bop Bop Shu Bop Bop) (0'40)
5. Stuffed Genital and the Next Song Are Cut?? (0'37) ?
6. Every Day I Masturbate on a Merican Fag (1'15)
7. Oh Mommy, Oh Daddy Can't You See That It's True (0'53)
8. Baby Skeletons and Dogs Reprise (1'53)
9. Mad Sawmill of Copenhagen Reprise 1 (0'29)
10. Going to Arcata Blues (1'57)
11. (Mad Sawmill of Copenhagen Reprise 2) (0'08)
12. Black Velvet Original (0'15) ?
13. (Mad Sawmill of Copenhagen Reprise 3) (0'10)
14. Jimi Hendrix Dildo (0'41)
15. Mad Sawmill of Copenhagen Reprise 4 (2'03)
16. In the Still of the Night (0'21)
17. Maggie's Farm (1'25)
18. Snot and Feces Live at the Grunt Festival (0'55)
19. Sweet Meat (2'40)
20. Oh Yeah Uhh Bop Shu Bop (0'47)
21. Om Is Where the Art Is (3'04)
22. Concerto in R Flat Minor I (0'31)
23. Concerto in R Flat Minor II (0'44)
24. (Concerto in R Flat Minor End?) (0'12)
25. Gagagapiggaeioupe (0'40)
26. Sold American (0'41)
27. Love Theme from a Major Motion Picture (0'40)
28. Prelude for Accordian Sousaphone and French Horn (0'32)
29. Oh God You're a Pie in the Sky (0'57)
30. (short intrumental) (0'09)
31. (short instrumental) (0'07)
32. Marching Toward AEIOU Blues (0'44)
33. In the Still of the Night Again (2'02)
34. ??? (0'27)
35. Oh Mommy, Oh Daddy Can't You See That It's True Agian (1'06)
36. Art the White Elephant (0'52)
37. (instrumental) (0'21)
38. (instrumental) (1'01)
39. Psychedelic and Orgasmic Finale I (4'22)
40. ? (probably Psychedelic and Orgasmic Finale II) (0'21)
Before they started publishing their music in 1972 -- even before they were "The Residents" -- the group (working with Snakefinger and the mysterious N. Senada) are alleged to have created a number of 1/4" reel-to-reel tapes. None of these works ever became proper albums, and none will ever be released, since the band does not consider them to be proper Residential material (with the possible exception of Baby Sex, some tracks from which have appeared in various collections). These tapes are only mentioned here because of their part in the early history of The Residents -- information about which is rather thin at the best of times.
Any pre-1972 works are dismissed by The Residents as embarassingly bad and completely irrelevant. Little, if any, of this proto-Residential material still exists, if indeed much ever did. Various sources cite two tapes alleged to have been recorded in 1970 called Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor and The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger, but no material from them exists anywhere.
Two pre-1972 tapes were important to the development of the group, however. The Warner Bros. Album was the group's first demo tape. They mailed it anonymously (they didn't have a name yet) to Harve Halverstadt at Warner Brothers. Halverstadt was chosen because he had worked with Captain Beefheart, one of the group's musical heroes. The tape was returned with a rejection addressed to "Residents, 20 Sycamore St., San Francisco". This, of course, gave the group their name, which first appeared as "The Residents Uninc.", a fictional musical organization. The Residents maintain that Halverstadt made the right decision, because the album "sucked", but its place in Residential history is assured because of the role it played in the naming of the band.
The tape consisted of thirty-nine songs, but the only title I've been able to dig up from the program is a cover of The Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever. The entire album was played on KBOO-FM radio in Portland, Oregon, during a Residents Radio Festival in 1977, but other than that, none of the material has been released.
[Baby Sex] Baby Sex was the last of the pre-Santa Dog tapes. The title came from the cover, which was lifted from a pornographic ad from Denmark. Unlike The Warner Bros. Album, the complete program for Baby Sex is available, and many of the tracks have appeared again on other recordings. The tape featured a cover of Frank Zappa's King Kong, as well as the songs Eloise and Kamakazi Lady, which are the first examples of what became known as "The Residents sound". Eloise is a musical setting of a poem which had been performed without music a year earlier and which appeared in the nightclub scene in Vileness Fats. This scene was eventually released as a music video.
Most of the second side of the album consisted of a recording of The Residents' impromptu 1971 performance at The Boarding House, a small club in San Francisco. Assisted by Snakefinger and N. Senada, they staged a "terrorist attack" on the club, performing for thirty minutes. Most of these tracks appear on UWEB's Stranger Than Supper and Daydream B-Liver collections, as well as on the History Mystery CD from the Our Tired, Our Poor, Our Huddled Masses Special Edition. Like The Warner Bros. Album, Baby Sex was played in its entirety during the 1977 Radio Festival.
Baby Sex
Side One
* * * * * * We Stole This Riff Holelottadick Baby Sex Deep Sea Diver Song King Kong Cantaten to der Dyin Prunen
Side Two
* * * * Something Devilish The Fourth Crucifixion Hallowed Be thy Wean --> Sandman
* Eat Me Mother
* Eloise
* For Doorknob
* Kamakazi Lady
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