THE RESIDENTS - ESKIMO 1979 OUTSIDER AVANT GARDE CONCEPT REMASTERED SEALED LP

$

24

THE RESIDENTS – Eskimo. MVD Audio MVDS 5453. FACTORY SEALED NEW VINYL RECORD LP. Originally issued in 1979. This edition issued in 2012. Licensed by The Cryptic Corporation. Includes a free download code (which may be the bonus tracks that came with the 1987 CD release). MUSICIANS: The Residents (all instruments and vocals) with special guests Snakefinger (aka Phil Lithman) (guitar), Chris Cutler (drums), and Don Preston (synthesizer). TRACKS:  The Walrus Hunt, Birth, Arctic Hysteria, The Angry Angakok, A Spirit Steals A Child, and The Festival Of Death. DESCRIPTION:  The Eskimo album by The Residents was originally supposed to follow 1977's Fingerprince album; recording began in April of 1976 and ran through May of 1979. However, due to many delays and arguments with management, it was not released until 1979. Upon release it was hailed as the group's best record to date. The pieces on Eskimo are generally made up of sound effects, occasional playing on home-made instruments, and a kind of gibberish vocal presumably meant to emulate the creators' conception of the Inuit language. The stories were all created by the group and, despite their claims otherwise, is not meant to be a true historical document of life in the Arctic. Quite adventurous, avant-garde, in-out-sider, one of (if not) their best albums with tongues firmly planted deep in their eyeballs. Highly recommended. A companion piece, Diskomo, was released in 1980 as a 12-inch single, featuring a remix of the songs backed by a disco beat. SIDE BAR:  During a subsequent tour one of the eyeballs, as featured on the cover, was stolen, which was replaced with an ominous skull head piece. Mysteriously it later showed up on the set of Pee Wee’s Playhouse.

For your further reading enjoyment and enlightenment I offer the following which originally came from Gio's blog (first published in September of 1979), but nicked off of The Residents website where I first read this:

The new Residents album is such a departure from what they’ve been doing recently that I have trouble placing it into a coherent narrative of the band. If the liner notes are to be believed, this album began life three years ago, making it the third album (or the fourth, if the liner notes of Not Available are to be believed). It feels like closer kin to Fingerprince than Duck Stab, and it’s almost as if we are presented with an alternative history: what if The Residents were more interested in the second side of Fingerprince than the first?

And not only are we getting an alternative version of The Residents, but they are also giving us an alternative version of Eskimo culture. I don’t have the knowledge to debunk all of the claims this album makes, but I know many are untrue and there are clues throughout that The Residents are making a joke. But the Eskimo are not the target, only the vehicle. The Residents are satirizing how Western culture views anything other than itself. The Other is always seen as isolated and bizarre, and any similarity is purely accidental and must be marginalized. Forty words for snow is often touted as a strange quirk of the Eskimo, but there are two reasons to question that claim. First – and most damning – where’s this list of forty words? The articles I’ve read that cover this topic only manage to provide about a dozen examples. Second – and this drives the point home even without the list – we also describe many different types of snow in English. Snow, sleet, hail, blizzard, flurry, slush. And when we run out of distinct words we use modifiers to extend the language. Packing snow, blowing snow, Spring snow, snowdrift. That’s just off the top of my head, and I’m sure there are many more. It should not be surprising if an in-depth study finds there is a direct mapping of snow words between both languages, but unfortunately that would make The Other more like us, and we can’t have that, can we? The Residents know this, and have turned a critical gaze towards our own xenophobia. Eskimo is not about The Other, it’s about us and our distorted worldview. This record is being distributed in the continental United States, and though it may find its way into an igloo, we are the intended audience. Nowhere is this more evident than at the conclusion of the album when the ceremonial chants (probably having been fabricated the whole time anyway) are replaced with jingles for toilet paper and soft drinks. With that in mind, it’s clear from the cover that The Residents are looking at us and reflecting what they see. They may be wearing “penguin suits” but they are too conspicuous to blend with their surroundings (especially as penguins are found in the southern hemisphere). They represent us and our insincere, lackadaisical attempt to understand other cultures. The elements of the image add up to a formal, cold, uncaring gaze. There is none of the warmth that should accompany an exploration of a group of fellow humans. We don’t see fellow humans; we see The Other. That’s not to say that the album would not be insulting to an actual Eskimo person. But the insult takes the form of being yet another misrepresentation by ignorant Americans. In other words, it’s nothing new to them, and that says much about how we already treat our fellow man. As for the stories printed inside, they ring of enough authenticity to at least be inspired by true legends. But though they may be true legends, they are not true stories. Another society’s mythology should not be mistaken for fact any more than our stories of a giant lumberjack and his blue ox should be presented as truth. Of all the albums I’ve heard that criticize American culture, Eskimo (though subtler about it) is the most scathing, making it the most “punk” record I’ve yet heard. 

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