The Residents - A Nickle If Your Dick’s This Big 1971–1972 [2CD Remastered Preserved Edition] (2019)

Amazing early work from The Residents – unreleased tracks from the first few years of the 70s – partly done as demos, but work that already shows the mixture of wit and sonic experimentation that would mark the group for decades to come! It's a bit hard to sum of the quality of these tracks in words – but that's usually the case with any Residents album – but to our ears, it almost feels as if the music was created by kids who might have loved the mad universe of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, but who could never play their instruments that well – and who were also trying very hard not to be mistaken for hippies! Instead, there's almost this mix of noise, art, and wit that prefaces some of the experimental Ohio work that would come out on 7" singles a few years later – although maybe less song-based overall, especially on the first album of material here. The 2CD set brings together work issued on vinyl as The W***** B*** Album and BS, with two unreleased tracks too – titles that include "We Stole This Riff", "Deepsea Diver Song", "King Kong", "Chris' Party", "Phillip's Wedding Concentrate", "The Boarding House Show", and "Mad Sawmill Of Copenhagen", in many parts.