Historical

Residents Radio Special(1977)
OverviewTracks


1977 was The Residents' 5th anniversary. What better way to celebrate, they thought, than to do a radio special, and what better way to do a radio special than to set up an interview with a person who is belligerent towards the group's musical aspirations.

A close friend of Ralph Records spokesman, Jay Clem, worked at Houston's RAO Studios and had had a discussion with the main guy at RAO, Sid Powell, regarding the group's innovative music. Sid liked to think of himself as an open-minded lover of the arts and was always interested in proving it. When confronted with The Residents in 1976 he was taken aback to such a degree that when the group heard about it they insisted Jay set up an arrangement with Sid Powell to host their fifth anniversary radio special.

The interview was successfully taped and if anything, Sid proved to be more up to the task than anyone expected. The man adopted an interviewing personality that was pure Texas redneck, while underneath he seemed as sophisticated as he purported himself to be. He played along beautifully, and ultimately, after tapes stop rolling, picked up an old bent trumpet and joined the band in a decidedly crooked rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In."

He even invited them to come back for their 10th anniversary, "if they make it that far." They did make it that far, and much further, but never met Sid again. They did save a photo of him from the Broadcast Views obituary column when he died in 1988. What caught their attention in the column was that, when he died, he was station manager at KXXZ in... Barstow.

The radio special was duplicated on 1/4 inch reel-to-reel tapes and sent to a dozen or more college radio stations in 1977. Later, cassette copies were made available to the public, and in 2002 Ralph America issued a limited release on CD, retitled Eat Exuding Oinks. The CD was sourced from a somewhat mangled copy of one of the tapes sent to college stations (for original masters were not to be found), so bonus tracks of pristine versions of the music were added.