It took another couple of years before the Residents would re-emerge with Album #2, but The Third Reich ‘N Roll (1976) went even further in Frankensteining eminently listenable radio hits. They overdubbed on dozens of sixties hits and then pulled out the original hit recordings, leaving behind just their macabre embellishments. It was innovative genius. Back when we ran a weekly feature called WTF?! Wednesdays, it was impossible for me to think that we could highlight songs that were way beyond the norm for music and not include something from the Eye Guys, so I had to oblige with the entirety of Third Reich being featured. The proper album is followed by a couple of singles that were issued around the same time as the album; their satanic version of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" boasting a vocal that approximates Captain Beefheart in a particularly threatening mood, something that didn't catch on as a limited, 200 copy release in 1976 but was perfect for punk-crazy audiences a couple of years later, and 30,000 more 45's were printed up then. "Beyond the Valley of a Day in the Life" is essentially a Beatles mashup imbued with the Residents' own freaky overdubs, anticipating the Fab Four's Love album by some thirty years and way more adventurous. On the flip side, the rare Beatles instrumental "Flying" gets covered with — what else? — a colorless vocal chorus, transitioning into demented circus music. "German Slide Music," with that ever present dinky piano, was a long and winding instrumental recorded in between the two Reich sessions. No theme, no vocals to speak of, and yet still impossible to place within the realm of music outside of which the Residents resided. The bulk of the extra stuff consists of alternate recordings of the pop songs tortured on Reich done either live or remixed, as well as a gonzo, half-hour stage performance of the "O Mummy" show from around the time of the album's release that sounds like an undisciplined Mothers of Invention. A live 1983 version of "Satisfaction" is even more mind-blowing than that 1976 single, done over a backing track that vaguely seems lifted from Hall & Oates' "I Can't Go For That." And there's more! Sure, the music of the Residents sits way outside the accepted world of music, but outsiders like them play a very important role but challenging us to rethink our notions about music and shake it at its foundations. Much like astronomers look well beyond our Earth and solar system to get a better sense of how we fit in the whole scheme of things, these fearless sonic explorers puts the music we've grown too comfortable with into better perspective. A few of these rabble-rousers like Charlie Parker and the Ramones became hugely famous and influential. That was never going to be quite the fate that awaited the Residents but in the first few years of their existence when they were fooling around in a shitty studio playing shitty instruments, they stumbled upon a notion of art made in opposition of accepted art and damned if they didn't master it from the start while having fun doing it. The extra tracks unveiled in these pREServed Editions uncover more of that fun. (http://somethingelsereviews.com)