The Commercial Album
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| The Commercial Album | ||
 |
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| Studio album by The Residents | ||
| Released | November 1980 | |
| Recorded | ? | |
| Genre | Rock | |
| Length | 42:12 | |
| Label | East Side Digital | |
| Producer(s) | ? | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
| The Residents chronology | ||
| Diskomo (1980) |
The Commercial Album (1980) |
Mark of the Mole (1981) |
The Residents' album The Commercial Album, released in 1980, pares down the concept and structure of the average commercial pop song and reduces it to a one-minute redux. This compilation of 40 such sixty-second vignettes is probably the best introduction to the Residents for the uninitiated. The album used several session musicians, including Chris Cutler, Snakefinger and Fred Frith as well as two anonymous guest vocalists, Lene Lovich ("Picnic Boy") and Andy Partridge ("Margaret Freeman").
The tracks were listed in the (slightly) wrong order on the first edition LP sleeve. The following list is the actual order of tracks on the record:
- Easter Woman
- Perfect Love
- Picnic Boy
- End of Home
- Amber
- Japanese Watercolor
- Secrets
- Die in Terror
- Red Rider
- My Second Wife
- Floyd
- Suburban Bathers
- Dimples and Toes
- The Nameless Souls
- Love Leaks Out
- Act of Being Polite
- Medicine Man
- Tragic Bells
- Loss of Innocence
- The Simple Song
- Ups and Downs
- Possessions
- Give It to Someone Else
- Phantom
- Less Not More
- My Work Is So Behind
- Birds in the Trees
- Handful of Desire
- Moisture
- Love Is...
- Troubled Man
- La La
- Loneliness
- Nice Old Man
- The Talk of Creatures
- Fingertips
- In Between Dreams
- Margaret Freeman
- The Coming of the Crow
- When We Were Young
- Bonus Tracks (1988 CD release only)
- Shut Up Shut Up
- And I Was Alone
- Theme for an American TV Show
- We're a Happy Family/Bali Ha'i
- Grace Loves Pie
- The Sleeper
- Boy in Love
- Diskomo (Remix)
- Jailhouse Rock
- It's a Man's Man's Man's World
- Hit the Road Jack
[edit] Miscellanea
The album may have been the main inspiration for They Might Be Giants' popular 20-track piece "Fingertips" from Apollo 18. Their song could also allude to "Fingertips," Track 36 of The Commercial Album.
The faces on the cover are John Travolta and Barbra Streisand.
The original LP labels listed the length "1:00" after each of the 40 song titles.
| The Residents | |
|---|---|
| Album era (1972-1980) | |
| Meet the Residents (1974) | Not Available (1974, released 1978) | The Third Reich 'n' Roll (1976) | Fingerprince (1976) | Duck Stab/Buster & Glen (1978) | Eskimo (1979) | The Commercial Album (1980) | |
| Performance era (1981-1990) | |
| Mark of the Mole (1981) | The Tunes of Two Cities (1982) | Intermission (1983) | George & James (1984) | Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats? (1984) | The Big Bubble (1985) | Stars & Hank Forever (1986) | God in Three Persons (1988} | The King & Eye (1989) | |
| Multimedia era (1991-1996) | |
| Freak Show (1991) | Gingerbread Man (1994) | Bad Day on the Midway (1995) | Have A Bad Day (1997) | |
| Band era (1997-2005) | |
| Wormwood (1998) | Icky Flix (2001) | Demons Dance Alone (2002) | Animal Lover (2005) | |
| Storyteller era (2006-present) | |
| The River of Crime (2006) | Timmy (2006) | Tweedles (2006) | |
| Related articles | |
| Snakefinger | N. Senada | Vileness Fats | Ralph Records | |
