The Residents Present: Buy or Die! Ralph Records 1972-1982
This could be one of the most surprising retrospectives released this year. Not that it exists – maybe a few years ago, the notion of collecting some of the label’s releases would’ve been considered too niche, but Cherry Red’s ultra-deep Residents digging has put paid to that. What’s surprising is that this is an immediately difficult listen, full of impenetrable dissonance and deliberately stumbling time signatures. It’s actually incredibly charming, engaging and heart-warming. It’s the year’s least likely comfort blanket.
It goes without saying that this three-disc collection has a heavy slant towards The Residents – after all, it was their label and studio. For clarification, the label takes its name from the act of vomiting (‘calling Ralph on the porcelain telephone’), whilst the title comes from the legend spread across the label’s mail-order catalogues. 1972 was early to be this weird – we’re way beyond The Bonzos in terms of style and significantly before punk became a marketable commodity. That there was not only a home for weirdo waifs and strays but also a studio and art department gives this set a real treasure trove appeal – a glimpse into a now-distant past and how those outside the mainstream sounded in all their glory.
The first non-Residents artist to appear is Schwump – real name Barry Schwam – a forward-thinking DJ who regularly played the band on his radio show, alongside such treats as a frog opera. The band were enraptured enough to offer him the chance to use their facilities and the result was a collection of excellent tracks, the lead of which is ‘Aphids in the Hall’, a joyously catchy song that in another dimension is a fondly-remembered hit. ‘You’re a Martian/Home’ has ‘Urban Spaceman’ vibes with a more Fisher Price percussion section. Schwump them disappeared for decades before returning with a barrage of releases demonstrating he’d lost none of his strangely loveable eccentricities. He died in 2020.
Amongst The Resident’s own tracks (a very sensible selection, nothing too wilfully obscure) there are inevitably a handful of Snakefinger numbers, their beloved guitarist friend and collaborator. Not a popular opinion in fan circles I’m sure, but I’ve never been very taken with his stuff, and the opportunity to reappraise here hasn’t changed my mind much. A focus on the guitar always felt a bit like succumbing to convention, regardless of how avant the playing was.
Far more appealing (and historically important to my ears) is The Art Bears, the band put together by Chris Cutler, Fred Frith and Dagmar Krause as an off-shoot to Henry Cow. Particular excellent is ‘Winter Wheel’, a lolloping frost beast that sadly rarely appears on Christmas compilations for some reason. It’s tremendously festive, I assure you. There’s more from Fred Frith on disc three.
Some odd sequencing puts one Chrome track on disc one and the other on disc two, which is unfortunate, they deserve a double whammy. ‘Meet You in the Subway’ appeared on ‘Subterranean Modern’ a 1979 Ralph comp, and sees the band absolutely slamming it. Chrome, at all stages of their career (definitely including their later Helios Creed-steered phase) were truly horrifying in the truest sense of the phrase. A glimpse at a robot-led future which saw humans ripped limb from limb by polished hands, chemical warfare and zombie clones – The Mountains of Madness with neon signposts. Their second appearance is a cover of ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco’, a track also covered by The Residents, Tuxedomoon and MX-80.
MX-80 had been around for a while by the time they signed with Ralph, formed in 1974 by Bruce Anderson (guitar) and Dale Sophiea (bass) before being joined by Rich Stim (vocals, guitar, and sax) and Dave Mahoney (drums). You can quikcly understand how they didn’t quite belong elsewhere – elements of speed metal, hardcore (and post-hardcore simultaneously!) and punk, they can be heard clearly in bands like Wolf Eyes and Steve Albini’s Big Black and Shellac. If you’ve not heard them before, chances are your first listen will have you scurrying off tracking down their pretty sizable back catalogue.
San Francisco band Tuxedomoon (Steven Brown, Blaine L. Reininger and Peter Principle) were post-punk even though punk had only just found its feet. There’s more than just novelty to their inclusion of an electric violin to their sound – it adds a gritty counterbalance to the wheezing synths and sax. Whilst futuristic, they harken back to the avant garde composers of the early 20th century, with a very deliberate approach to composition which set them apart from other bands which made noise for the sake of it.
Gary Panter is best known as an artist, particularly of underground comics – his densely-packed frames are influenced by artists like Cal Schenkel – ironically, both worked with Zappa (Panter creating the covers to both ‘Studio Tan’ ‘Sleep Dirt’ and ‘Orchestral Favorites’. Panter suppplied the art work for several Ralph releases (not to mention the brilliant art that adorns this set), T-shirts and other ephemera and was invited to record for the label as a part-thank you. ‘Tornader to the Tater’ didn’t end up appearing on Ralph for various reasons and has been considered long-lost. It has been found.
Fred Frith’s cover of ‘Dancing in the Street’ is tremendous, as if someone had described the original track to a 1970s Magimix blender over a bad telehpone line and asked it to record a cover. Equally exciting is the B-side, ‘What a Dilemma’, a frightening and ferocious stream of ‘Psycho’ stabs which evolves into a bouncy theme tune for serial killers. Spotted early in their career by Ralph were Yello, a band known to most for just two tracks – ‘Oh Yeah’ and ‘The Race’. The seven tracks included here are a wake-up call to the brilliance of the band at the time, angular, surprisingly daring and great fun.
Towards the end of Ralph Records most fruitful period came Renaldo and the Loaf, the English duo of David “Ted the Loaf” Janssen and Brian “Renaldo Malpractice” Poole, perhaps the closest Britain had to The Residents. Despite several releases on Ralph, only their first album, ‘Songs for Swingin’ Larvae’ is plundered here due to the 1982 cut-off, time enough to include a track with the title, ‘ Honest Joe’s Indian Gets The Goat On The Way To The Cowboys’ Conga’. I think that says it all.
Daz Lawrence