THE THIRD REICH 'N' ROLL

Hello, and yes that is Dick Clark in a Nazi uniform on the cover. Welcome to The Resident's 2nd (or is it the 3rd?) full length album 'The Third Reich and Roll'. This album is the original mash-up album, way ahead of it's time. The Residents decided to show how unoriginal rock music was by deconstructing a bunch of old rock and roll classics, mostly from the 60's just to show 2 things: the first was that rock and roll music was pretty much all the same when stripped down to almost nothing and second, that rock and roll was brainwashing the youth of the time. Isn't that wonderful?

So, this album is made up of 2 suites, but the individual songs are not listed. The first half of the album is called 'Swastikas on Parade' and was recorded in 1974. This hilarious suite is made up of 15 songs which are covers cemented together by various other noises, instruments, special effects, war sound effects and so on. Some songs are easily recognizable and some are not and some are played simultaneously. And it all is completely hilarious. The covers on this half of the album are 'Let's Twist Again', 'Land of a Thousand Dances', 'Hanky Panky', 'A Horse with No Name', 'Double Shot (of My Baby's Love)', 'The Letter', 'Psychotic Reaction', 'Little Girl', 'Papa's Got a Brand New Bag', 'Talk Talk', I Want Candy', 'To Sir, With Love', 'Telstar', 'Wipe Out', and 'Heroes and Villains'. To make it even harder, some are sung in German. Now, take all of these songs and put them together in a funny mock up of a noise pastiche and you've got the idea. These songs are all completely ruined, but in such a genius way. Just to make it more hilarious, it is mixed very badly so that some instruments are louder than others and all made to sound amateur.

Side two of this album is made up of the suite called 'Hitler was a Vegetarian' recorded in 1975. This is simply more of the same kind of chaos as on side one, except with different covers and lasting a minute longer. This time the covers are 'Judy in Disguise (with Glasses)', '96 Tears', 'It's My Party', 'Light My Fire', 'Ballad of the Green Berets', 'Yummy Yummy Yummy', 'Rock Around the Clock', 'Pushin Too Hard', 'Good Lovin', 'Gloria', 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida', 'Sunshine of Your Love', 'Hey Jude', and 'Sympathy for the Devil'.

Sometimes, The Residents could carry a joke too far that it usually wears out its welcome before it's over, but other times, such as this one, it just never gets old. The main difference with this one is that the music never remains on one song for too long before moving on to the next section of silliness (except for maybe Yummy Yummy Yummy, but what else did you expect?), and, there is a lot of variation in the craziness that goes on around each cover that they deconstruct. It can be hard to follow along, and don't try to sing with your favorites because you won't be able to. Hopefully, naming the deconstructed tunes will help you follow along a little better. So now you can sit back, listen and laugh while everyone looks at you strangely. This is frankly, the funniest, satirical avant-garde album out there, so it gets 5 stars.