Weirdest CDs Ever Released

[zombywoof]

I guess The Resident's Not Available is too obvious?

Man, that is the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread, but I always saw The Residents as being highly, highly artistic (and well over my head to be honest). That CD is quite possibly the weirdest album in my collection, though (and that's saying something).

[JKL2000]

"Essential"? Really? Is that even the real Shemp?

I suppose the following could be classified as pretty weird:
* Girls Together Outrageously - Permanent Damage
* Wild Man Fischer - An Evening With WMF
* Charlie Manson - Lie
* Robert Rich - Somnium (8 hours of ambient music on a DVD)
* Aaron Ximm - Annapurna Memories (Audio diary of his honeymoon to Nepal)

Shemp wasn't a fake Curley, he was a viable alternative - at times superior. Now Curley Joe, he was a fake Curley.

[GuitarGeek]

High?

What are you? My mother?! Dude, we say stoned, not "high". Learn how to not talk like a frelling narc!

But now that you mention it, I could see doing something like trying to kick do karate kicks in a such a fashion that you nearly kick a talk show host in the head, causing said host to cut your segment short, might seem like drug related behaviour. Or maybe he was trying to pull a Harvey Pekar. Harvey decided he had become too famous and decided to kamikaze his "mainstream career" by appearing to totally flake out on the Letterman show.

[GuitarGeek]

I hereby nominate Chris as PE's designated David Letterman stand-in to our Crispin Glovers.

And what did I ever do to you? If you don't like my posts, you know you don't have to read them.

[GuitarGeek]

Pat Metheny - Zero Tolerance for Silence

How about Metheny's epic three CD collaboration with Derek Bailey, Gregg Bendian and Paul Wertico, The Sign Of Four? I can buy that a lot of Metheny fans didn't get that one, given how all the way out there it is. But I hear even a lot of Derek Bailey's supporters didn't dig it (Henry Kaiser reportedly said that Metheny is clueless when it comes to playing free improv music).

[arturs]

Back on topic... In the 90s I lived really close to a Tower Records. They had this huge dollar bin and I would sometimes buy CDs from it just because I liked the covers.

An artist named Yasunao Tone did a CD where he digitized a picture and somehow ran all the 1's and 0's through a sound converter so that it would play sounds based on the 1/0 patterns. Neat idea in principle, but what you get is a sequence of random jarring screeches, crashes, and a lot of white noise too. Nice cover though!

[GuitarGeek]

You're right, the liner notes do say he folded it 16,384 times, but that's impossible. Since each fold cuts the length in half, by the time you did 35 folds of a 60 minute track you'd be down to about a microsecond. It must mean that he folded it into 16,384 layers, which is exactly what you'd get with just 14 folds (less if you're starting with an already folded track).

Hmm, interesting. Well, anyway, I always dug Grey Folded. It's the only thing of John Oswald's work that I've really heard, but I just love what he did with the Dead's music. You get things like a 20 something Jerry Garcia trading guitar licks with his 30 something and 40 something selves. There's that first vocal bit with the chorus of Jerry's singing "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark" for something like a minute. There's that cool bit on disc two where he overlaid all the Rhythm Devils bits, so you get this big sort of percussion ensemble effect. I just thought it was a really cool re-imagining of the Dead's music. As Peter Wyngarde once said in one of my all time favorite movies, "Most effective, Your Majesty".

[ronmac]

Shemp wasn't a fake Curley, he was a viable alternative - at times superior. Now Curley Joe, he was a fake Curley.

Shemp was great!

[walt]

Los Angeles Free Music Society-Blorp Esette(4 cd edition-originally released in 1999-re-released a few years later)

[Modry Effekt]

What is weird.

[-=RTFR666=-]

What are you? My mother?! Dude, we say stoned, not "high". Learn how to not talk like a frelling narc!

[Steve F.]

So, do youse two think Not Available is the weirdest Resi's album??

[zombywoof]

So, do youse two think Not Available is the weirdest Resi's album??

No idea. It's the only one I have. A friend once loaned me a copy of "Third Reich and Roll"; I listened to it once an returned it, so I don't really remember much about it. I've been told that "Not Available" was diving into the deep end; is this accurate?

[davis]

This one belongs: http://www.krispenhartung.com/music-...dren/index.htm

[GuitarGeek]

So, do youse two think Not Available is the weirdest Resi's album??

Eskimo I think might have been weirder. I mean, wasn't all the lyrics and libretto in an invented language?

[SteveSly]

Oh man, we are kindred spirits. I've been a shortwave junkie for decades! I came across this years ago on BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in 2005, well worth a listen. There are still loads of numbers stations on the air on SW.

Tonight I finally had the time to listen to the Youtube link that you posted. This is some of the weirdest shit I have ever heard of. I am not into shortwave and had never heard of these numbers stations before, although now I know where the Porcupine Tree stuff came from (creepy on the album). This is very bizarre. It seems difficult for me to believe that with today’s technology one could not figure out where the transmissions are coming from, but yea this is weird stuff. Thanks for posting.

[notallwhowander]

So, do youse two think Not Available is the weirdest Resi's album??

Hard call. I guess so, if only because it is the most difficult album for me to explain. Most I can get a handle on one way or another.

With Eskimo, the music is weird, but the concept is pretty straightforward. The myth around Not Available is that they recorded it without any intention of actually playing it for anyone. In fact, they recorded it with the express intention that nobody should hear it. As a consequence, there is no real conceptual or pop-culture ingress that their other albums have.

For instance: they didn't construct a language with Eskimo they just chanted late '70s commercial slogans in silly accents. So if it sounds like they are chanting Coca-Cola or Toyota, they actually are. As weird as that is, a listener can still get it, even laugh at the joke. There is nothing like that in Not Available. It's clear that it is some kind of opera, a dramatic tale with a cast of characters, unfolding in music and lyric, but they never let the meaning land. Only they know what they meant, if they meant anything at all.

"Is a magic Hide-A-Bed the final home of Spanish fire?"

The story goes that they rewrote or cut anything that was conceived of with an audience, even a potential audience, in mind. The result is an operatic vision expressed with all the interior logic, and pop culture sensibilities, of a fever dream.

Even Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica comes up for air on occasion. This one never does.

Their debut is pretty weird, and comes a close second. But even then, the audio collage approach they used had some precedence in albums like the Faust debut.

The one between the debut and Not Available was Third Reich & Roll. It is also a notable runner-up. However, anyone familiar with the pop of the '50s and '60s can recognize the tunes they mercilessly slaughter. If Third Reich & Roll was a manifesto against pop music, framing it as fascist agent that promotes conformity rather than any kind of actual freedom, Not Available severs all ties with the pop music aesthetic to create its own weird soundworld.

So I guess, yeah. The weirdest of the lot.

[GuitarGeek]

Hard call. I guess so, if only because it is the most difficult album for me to explain. Most I can get a handle on one way or another.

With Eskimo, the music is weird, but the concept is pretty straightforward. The myth around Not Available is that they recorded it without any intention of actually playing it for anyone. In fact, they recorded it with the express intention that nobody should hear it. As a consequence, there is no real conceptual or pop-culture ingress that their other albums have.

For instance: they didn't construct a language with Eskimo they just chanted late '70s commercial slogans in silly accents. So if it sounds like they are chanting Coca-Cola or Toyota, they actually are. As weird as that is, a listener can still get it, even laugh at the joke. There is nothing like that in Not Available. It's clear that it is some kind of opera, a dramatic tale with a cast of characters, unfolding in music and lyric, but they never let the meaning land. Only they know what they meant, if they meant anything at all.

"Is a magic Hide-A-Bed the final home of Spanish fire?"

The story goes that they rewrote or cut anything that was conceived of with an audience, even a potential audience, in mind. The result is an operatic vision expressed with all the interior logic, and pop culture sensibilities, of a fever dream.

Even Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica comes up for air on occasion. This one never does.

Their debut is pretty weird, and comes a close second. But even then, the audio collage approach they used had some precedence in albums like the Faust debut.

The one between the debut and Not Available was Third Reich & Roll. It is also a notable runner-up. However, anyone familiar with the pop of the '50s and '60s can recognize the tunes they mercilessly slaughter. If Third Reich & Roll was a manifesto against pop music, framing it as fascist agent that promotes conformity rather than any kind of actual freedom, Not Available severs all ties with the pop music aesthetic to create its own weird soundworld.

So I guess, yeah. The weirdest of the lot.

Wow you put a lot more thought into that one than I did. Eskimo is actually one of the albums I don't have from The Residents, but I think I heard it once or twice years ago. I thought I had read that they presented the vocal arrangements as being in traditional Eskimo language (which it isn't, as you've stated), but I thought I had read that it was language of their own invention.

To me the weirdest thing The Residents ever did, though, is their 1977 radio special, which purported to be hosted by a disc jockey who quite obviously doesn't like the band or the "representative from Ralph Records". He repeatedly insults the band throughout the broadcast, finally going so far as to suggest they're just "California hippie weirdos" (or something like that), to which the Ralph Records guy replies "Yeah, maybe if you're a ignorant redneck bigot". Then when they start talking about The Mysterious N. Sedada and the whole Eskimo trip, I believe, the DJ finally snaps and he and the Ralph Records guy start arguing openly as the program fades into the last selection.

And yes, I know that the DJ is actually Homer Flynn, the head Resident, and the Ralph Records guy is one of the other original Residents. I get that, that's not the point. The point is, you have to be absolutely diabolical to produce a radio show retrospective of your own music, then present it as being hosted by someone who obviously doesn't "get" avant garde music and probably thinks the world would be better place if we all sang Hank Williams songs or whatever. I mean, what a brilliant concept, as a contrast to the usual sycophantic BS merchant host who probably doesn't know much about the band's music but is being paid to sound like he thinks they're the greatest thing since powdered milk and sliced bread or whatever (Peter Graves introduction to the A&E Biography show on Frank Zappa comes to mind, as well as whichever news anchor it was I saw announce Kurt Cobain's death on TV, who clearly didn't have clue who Cobain or Nirvana was, and was just reading whatever was on the teleprompter).

[Progbear]

Why? You've got a problem with David Letterman?! What did he ever do to you

They're probably confusing him with Jay Leno.

Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music

No one who's heard the 50s/60s avant-garde music that this is a pale, amateurish imitation of would consider this the strangest anything. At best, it's a mildly amusing prank on his clueless record company (though Sally Can't Dance is arguably a funnier one, if only marginally more listenable).

[Steve F.]

Hey Mr. Not....

Thanks for your thoughts on the Resi album.

I think N.A. is my third fave Resi album, after the 1st and Fingerprince.

The big problem with the Resi's and your analysis, is that they were always obscuring the truth/their motives/everything. It is the single thing I find most off-putting about them and probably why I don't consider myself a 'fan', even though I really like the 1st 6-7 of their releases. I guess I don't like bands going 'nyah,nyah,nyah,nyah' at me while I am trying to listen to them. <grin>

Your analysis is really good, but I have to say that I don't beleive that they recorded N.A. with the intention of never releasing it. I think it's a 'story', like basically anything else we have been told about them.

But, thank you!!

[notallwhowander]

You're welcome. I deliberately choose the words "myth" and "story" because I think the truth is elsewhere too. I do think with Not Available they were try to be as non-commercial as possible. I mean the work stands for itself in this regard. Perhaps they thought they went too far, and shelved the album for a while until production on Eskimo ran late, and they needed to put something out just to get some cashflow. They concocted the whole "The Theory of Obscurity" as an attempt to market something that inherently wouldn't sell any other way.

I've never felt mocked by them though. I get the impression that they deeply appreciate anyone who takes the time to check them out. However, I came to the band in the '80s, arguably the height of their pop-culture exposure, and by some measures success. It don't don't what their attitudes were like in the '70s, when they were younger and egos were more raw. Clearly they insulated themselves with all kinds of ridiculous bullshit that they felt was necessary at the time.

In some ways, I think the anonymity thing has become a bit of an albatross for the members of the band. Between that, and the inevitable loss of secrecy on the internet, they've let the whole thing slide. It's now a kind of polite fiction between the fans and band, as far as I can tell. Each project has its own set of characters the band inhabits, along with a back story, various motivations, etc., and that is all part of the presentation of the piece. It's what they do.

[Steve F.]

You are right that 'it's what they do', and it is MY problem for the fact that it bugs me.

[syncopatico]

Many mentions of Greyfolded and none of Seastones ?

(perhaps that's not 'weird' enough: the part with the early computer processed vocals of Garcia, Grace Slick, etc.
is quite strange.)

[JKL2000]

I had never heard of number stations until I bought the Curtis Hasselbring CD that came out on Cuneiform last year. Even the first few times I read the liner notes I thought it was just a fictional concept around which he composed the CD. After a while though I figured they were real...

What purpose could these possibly serve? Are they still operating? Why?

I assume it was some sort of code or maybe just to mess with the enemies minds. I'm sure I've read an article or two but don't remember. Should be plenty of opinions online.

[Lopez]

The weirdest I own is I Hear a New World by Joe Meek and the Blue Men (1959). It sounds like more of one of those old stereo demonstration records than a bonefide musical concept.

Anything put out on CD by Hasil Adkins and by Wesley Willis is weird enough.