Not Available

This article is about The Residents' album. For the term, see N/A.

Not Available
Studio album by The Residents
Released	October 1978
Recorded	started February 1974, finished later this year
Genre	Avant-garde Experimental rock
Length	35:21 (Original LP) / 42:26 (2011 Reissue)
Label	Ralph Records
The Residents chronology
Duck Stab! (1978) Not Available (1978) Duck Stab/Buster & Glen (1978)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
Piero Scaruffi	[2]

The Residents' album Not Available was originally recorded as a follow-up to 1974's Meet the Residents. However, following the Theory of Obscurity, it was immediately locked away in a bank vault with no plans to issue it until the members of the band had completely forgotten about its existence. It did surface in 1978 due to continued delays on the Eskimo album and the Cryptic Corporation's desire to have some sort of Residents release,^[3] as the re-release of the single "Satisfaction" the same year had garnered some attention in Europe. The album itself is a dense concept album featuring a more musical and cohesive approach than that found on most Residents albums from the '70s.

History

In 1978, the "official" word was that The Residents had stated that Not Available could never be released. The group claimed that they had recorded the album in secrecy as a way of exercising their "theory of obscurity" to its fullest, and, in strict accordance with the theory, the work could never be released until its creators no longer recalled its existence. However, the reissued album's liner notes state that the album was an exercise in group therapy, and the Residents didn't want to release it because they felt it was too personally revealing.

In October 2010, The Residents' Ralph Records announced that a special extended version of Not Available would be released on vinyl and CD in January 2011.^[4]

Concept

The concept, vague as it may be, is described in the reissued albums liner notes like so:

By enacting this pseudo drama within a psycho drama, the internal conflict, still not completely understood by all of the participants, became much more clear, as the player characters instinctively acted out their roles. The love triangle between Edweena, Porcupine and Catbird became obvious ("Can two be more than three?") as well as Remus's role as the distant and objective commentator ("The aching and the breaking are the making of a soul."). The purpose of the Enigmatic Foe was of course still unclear when the rehearsals began, but once the Porcupine's breakdown was known ("He thought the end was overdue, but day broke him instead..."), the role of the noble Foe, as Porcupine's stand-in for the operetta's climatic duel scene, became clear.

As the faux piece reached its peak, the trio - two holding pistols while the third hid in a bush - came to a realization that the lovely young Edweena had eloped with the independently wealthy and no longer uninvolved Uncle Remus. At this point, the tension, previously thicker than frozen mayonnaise, was shattered by the Porcupine, emerging from the shrubbery to paraphrase Shakespeare ("To show or not to be shown...").

With illusions of love shattered, the three were then able to forgive, embrace and even welcome the traitorous Remus back to the fold, once he had returned from his less than blissful honeymoon.

Track listing

1. Part One: Edweena
2. Part Two: The Making of a Soul
3. Part Three: Ship's a'Going Down
4. Part Four: Never Known Questions
5. Epilogue

The 1987 CD reissue features the tracks The Residents recorded for their collaboration with Renaldo and the Loaf, Title In Limbo.

6. Intro: Version
7. The Shoe Salesman
8. Crashing
9. Monkey and Bunny
10. Mahogany Wood
11. The Sailor Song

The 2011 CD/LP reissue omits the 1987 bonus tracks, but extends Edweena, Ship's a'Going Down, and Never Known Questions by a combined seven minutes.

References

1. ^ Allmusic review
2. ^ [1]
3. ^ [2]
4. ^ http://residents.com/home/

External links

• Not Available on Prog Archives
• official Not Available page