Important Message:
The Residents freely admit that the riffs, words, and even sometime the arrangements found on The Third Reich 'N' Roll were shamelessly lifted from their memory of top forty radio of the sixties.

We, as the parent company, support The Residents in their tribute to the thousands of little power-mad minds of the music industry who have helped make us what we are today, with an open Eye on what we can made them tomorrow.

-- The Cryptic Corporation / Ralph Records

Ralph Catalog 1977
The Third Reich 'N Roll is all the more interesting when viewed in light of the second album. It has been speculated that the second LP was so difficult for the Residents to face, that this album was undertaken as an intellectual concept - that concept being to treat Top 40 songs of the 60's as though they were avant-garde. The Residents suggest that there are perhaps 30 songs altered within this high energy mass of swirling riffs.

The Third Reich 'N Roll has the rare ability to be familiar while never sounding like anything one has heard before. The music reeks with abandoned humor which makes one smile but not necessarily feel good. The humoresque suggests a delicate balance between a love of Top 40 Rock and Roll, and a genuine hate of the culture which embraced it. Rarely do the Residents' versions cynically mock the originals, but rather reinforce the naively simplistic attitude which is the absolute foundation of early Rock and Roll.

The Nazi imagery on the cover, with its Dick Hitler on a sort of American Bandstand surrounded by Dancing Hitlers, reflects some cultural deficiencies the Residents see in Rock and Roll Culture, although they realize that they are a product of the same culture they both support and denounce.

Third Reich 'n' Roll Euro Ralph Re-Release Notes
When The Third Reich 'n' Roll first came out in 1976, it was the third album-length project of The Residents. Actually, this re-release is the third product on Euro Ralph. Due to legal problems in Germany, the original cover with swastikas being part of the cover-art, led to a situation where this masterpiece was not for sale legally in Germany. The de-swastikafied CENSORED LP version of the Third Reich 'n' Roll for the German market is now a collectors item and proves that the cover problem has been around for quite a while.

Euro Ralph feels the time has come to bring this issue to an end and as a result you hold the third artwork for the Third Reich 'n' Roll in your hands. Since the layout had to be adjusted to DIGIPAK sizes Euro Ralph took the opportunity to change the front illustration of the cover which is now 100% swastika-free. More than that, we have put effort into the sound too. The original tapes have been digitally reworked by Tony Janssen and yes, they do sound better. Anyway, we hope you enjoy our product.

Euro Ralph, autumn 1993

The Third Reich 'N' Roll Classic Series Re-Release
The Residents third album was released in 1976. The love/hate relationship the Eyeball-Ones have with pop music has, perhaps, never been better stated than in this scathingly satirical look at '60 bubble-gum rock somehow twisted into shocking '70's bubble-gum avant-guard. With a swift kick in the balls, The Residents leave rock and roll as fodder for tomorrows' dough-brains.

Synopsis
This album is the first published example of two things for which The Residents became known: the concept album and music about music. Considered by some to be the cornerstone of The Residents' reputation, The Third Reich 'N' Roll consists of two tracks (one on each side of the LP), each a medley of deconstructed (dismembered?) covers of popular songs from the '60s. It is another expression of the Theory of Obscurity: whereas Not Available was a demonstration of what can be accomplished by removing the audience, The Third Reich 'N' Roll tackled music which was already been corrupted by pandering to its potential audience -- or rather, its potential market -- and the high sales figures demanded by the "fascist music industry", which was represented on the album's cover by Dick Clark in a Nazi uniform, holding a tempting carrot. Rumour has it that Clark thought the cover was hilarious, and has a copy framed in his office.

In the original album liner notes, The Cryptic Corporation calls The Third Reich 'N' Roll The Residents' "tribute to the thousands of little power-mad minds in the music industry who have helped make us what we are today, with an open eye on what we can make them tomorrow." The ESD Classic Series CD liner notes call the album a "scathingly satirical look at '60's bubble-gum rock somehow twisted into shocking '70's bubble-gum avant-guard". Other descriptions included "pop meets dada", "the 60's as done by the 70's German avant-garde". Uncle Willie describes the album as "[taking] all your favourite bubble gum riffs from the sixties, dress[ing] them up in avant-guard drag, and send[ing] them into the streets to break windows".

The album was recorded (for the most part) over two one-week sessions. The first was in October, 1974, and the second one year later. The Residents would take a recording of the original song to be covered on one track with their band-new Tascam 8-track then lay their own tracks over top, one by one. When the cover was complete, they erased the original track. For the most part the songs appear one after the other in a simple medley format, though there are some overlapping numbers. The whole thing ends with a quodlibet (multiple songs played simultaneously and harmonising) of Inna Gadda Da Vida, Hey Jude, and Sympathy for the Devil. The band was joined on the album by Gary Phillips and their favourite guitarist, Snakefinger.

The Residents put a lot of effort into the packaging and promotion of the album but, unfortunately, most of their ideas backfired. In keeping with the "Third Reich" theme, the promotional photos featured men in swastika glasses and wearing giant swastika collars. The Nazi references and swastikas were a problem all through the album's history (which isn't really all that surprising).  In fact, the album couldn't be released in Germany at all because the swastikas in the cover art are banned there. The band put out a "censored" version of the album cover in responce, and eventually Ralph Records designed a completely new cover using the figures of Adolph Hitler and Madonna in place of Dick Clark. 2500 copies of that release were printed.

One of the promotional photos is also interesting because it features the first appearance of the giant skull which would one day replace a Resident's eyeball head.

The Residents also made a short film to promote the album -- one of the very first music videos. It is in two parts. The first features The Residents, in newspaper costumes, dancing around to the album's version of Land of 1000 Dances in a newspaper world the band created in their studio. In the second half, a newspaper man is joined by an Atomic Shopping Cart, giant pork chops, and various other props from the Vileness Fats movie in a pixelated dance. The newspaper costumes caused more publicity problems for the band, though, since the tall, conical hoods led some of people to think that the group was promoting the Klu Klux Klan. In actual fact, the costumes were made that way because that was the simplest way to make a head-covering out of newspaper. Fortunately, these rumours didn't begin until well after the album was released, letting The Residents worry about these problems one at a time.

The album did fairly well in spite of the difficulties with the promotional material (in the end, the photos weren't used). It sold out the 1000 copies printed, which was a big improvement over Meet the Residents, and the success of the new album helped revive sales of the older one.

The band performed several excerpts from The Third Reich 'N' Roll at Oh Mummy! Oh Daddy! Can't You See That It's True; What the Beatles Did to Me, "I Love Lucy" Did to You, the 5th Anniversary celebration concert for Rather Ripped Records. As a further promotion, Ralph Records released a special limited release of twenty-five The Third Reich 'N' Roll Collector's Boxes in 1980. The packaging was very elaborate: the disk was hand pressed in red marbled vinyl with a silk-screened sleeve and labels, all wrapped up in a black, velvet-lined wooden box. The box opened by a sliding panel which was hand silk-screened with the cover art, and contained two signed and numbered lithographs by Irene Dogmatic. The whole thing was bundled up in a draw-string bag made from a piece of Christo's work "Running Fence".

Lyrics

Each side of the original album was one track, making the program listing very short.

Swastikas On Parade (17:30)
(00:00) Let's Twist Again (German Version) -- Chubby Checker (sampled)
(00:28) Land Of 1000 Dances -- Cannibal & The Headhunters
(02:23) Hanky Panky -- Tommy James & The Shondells
(04:29) A Horse With No Name -- America (played over Double Shot)
(04:21) Double Shot Of My Baby's Love -- The Swingin' Medallions
(06:30) The Letter -- The Box Tops
(08:28) Psychotic Reaction -- Count Five
(10:15) Hey, Little Girl -- Syndicate of Sound
(11:33) Papa's Got A Brand New Bag -- James Brown (sung in German)
(samples from the original at 12:03 & 12:25)
(12:50) Talk Talk -- The Music Machine
(13:50) I Want Candy -- The Strangeloves
(14:22) To Sir, With Love -- Lulu
(14:30) Telstar -- The Tornados
(14:37) Wipe Out -- The Surfaris
(14:23) Heroes And Villains -- The Beach Boys

Hitler Was A Vegetarian (18:27)
(00:00) Judy In Disguise (With Glasses) -- John Fred & His Playboy Band
(00:46) 96 Tears -- ? And The Mysterians
(01:41) It's My Party -- Lesley Gore
(02:50) Light My Fire -- The Doors
(03:33) Ballad Of The Green Berets -- Sgt. Barry Sadler
(05:12) Yummy Yummy Yummy -- Ohio Express
(08:24) Rock Around The Clock -- Bill Haley & The Comets
(09:02) Pushing Too Hard -- The Seeds
(10:02) Good Lovin' -- The (Young) Rascals
(11:45) Gloria -- Them featuring Van Morrison
(12:51) In A Gadda Da Vida -- Iron Butterfly
(14:02) Sunshine Of Your Love -- Cream
(15:01) Hey Jude -- Beatles
(17:54) Sympathy For The Devil -- Rolling Stones

Reviews
Moles: Probably the most radical album ever recorded. A declaration of intent by the Residents. In a way it kick-started a 25 year long habit of messing around with other people's music. Better get used to the idea. A very agressive and ugly record! Very hard to access! Pop music of the sixties is lovingly warped and mangled to their design and interspersed with the sound of machine guns and crashing warplanes. The video of their manic interpretation of "The Land Of A 1000 Dances" now resides, along with other innovative Residential efforts, in permanant exhibition at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York. Looking back, the LP makes more sense if you think of it as two separate LPs. The first side, recorded in 1974, was a sonic progression from Meet The Residents. It is a grand experiment in recording technique as a musical instrument. Those guys must have had a ball, playing with their gadgets saying "Whoa what a great noise, let's use that!". After completion of Swastikas On Parade, I suspect it was shelved while they started work on Not Available (there's no way they were recorded on the same equipment). A year later, they must have decided to pick up the Third Reich again and started on Hitler Was A Vegetatarian. This side is much more similar to Not Available in production. They seem to have acquired a bit of expensive gear for this project, including synthesizers and quality tape recorders. The composition is much less disguised, opting for a more straightforward duplication of the original songs. It actually sounds like you sometimes hear music in your own head - not separate instruments, but a homogenised organic mass of noise. Not only are the songs parodied but the instruments are too.

Allmusic: Technically the third album from the group, though released as a follow-up to Meet the Residents, this 40-minute assault on the music of the '60s follows Picasso's dictum of all artists killing their (aesthetic) fathers. Two side-long medleys of songs both classic ("Papa's Got a Brand New Bag") and obscure ("Telstar") are destroyed, deconstructed, mangled, spat on, spit out, ground up, and injected with gleeful humor. If there's any concept here, it's that the brain-numbing catchiness of pop music was fascism in disguise, keeping teenyboppers docile while selling them rebellion, hence the cover art of a gestapo-uniformed Dick Clark holding a carrot. Whether it's only much-suppressed love for these songs (as they went on to return again and again to the themes and artists examined here, including James Brown, "Land of 1000 Dances," and "Double Shot"), it's up to the listener to decide. Mostly any fan of the group will spend many hours trying to decode all the songs here, all the time with a smile on their face. (Officially, there are 29 songs, but there could be more). The first CD release (on ESD) added two essential singles plus their B-sides from around the same time. Their cover of the Stones' "Satisfaction" reduces the concepts of the album to three highly unlistenable minutes, guaranteed to tax the patience of any non-fan, a guaranteed lease-breaker, and therefore highly recommended. And their Beatles collage "Beyond the Valley of a Day in the Life" cuts and pastes the Fab Four's output into something wondrous and strange. The 1997 rerelease drops these tracks, making the first CD worth hunting out if possible.

Mark Prindle: This was the first Residents album I ever heard, and resulted in me spending the next decade buying up every Residents album I could find and subsequently wondering why nothing else they've produced in their entire career comes anywhere near this level of brilliance. The "concept" is that rock and roll is brainwashing our youth. But forget the concept. The real treat here is the product: The Residents have created two twenty-minute suites that completely TERRORIZE the greatest garage rock tunes that the '60s gave us. "96 Tears," "Psychotic Reaction," "Talk Talk," "Pushin' Too Hard" -- you name it, it's here. And it's RUINED. With slightly skewed, incorrect tunes, echoey discombobulated vocals and hoards of stiff fake horns, strings and the like butting into each number WAY too loud in the mix. Plus, they do a hilarious job of stringing together snippets of songs that sound kinda similar, making it a little embarrassingly obvious how few classic riffs there actually ARE in rock and roll history (example: "na na hey hey goodbye" and "hey jude" being mixed together -- or "in a gadda da vida" and "sunshine of your love" being demolished at the same exact time on different instruments). When I was a child, I couldn't even begin to understand how a group could have made a record this weird and perfect. It never ends -- one brilliant, deconstructed "interpretation" after another, mixed in with what sound like German tunes every once in a while. I'm now 27 and still have a hard time figuring out how the heck they did it. What in Sam's Hill are all those weird noises? What in Pete's America did they do to the guitars in "Psychotic Reaction"? How in Bert's Convoy didthey get such a bizarre, crisp yet fake drum sound? And, most importantly, why the hello kitty can't the band make MORE records this astonishingly brilliant? If you know your Nuggets, this masterwork will have you rolling on the floor in tears, laughing. Especially if you already have a floor of tears. If you aren't very familiar with '60s rock, the LP will still freak you out while hopefully compelling you to hunt down some of the original tunes!