The Residents – The Third Reich 'N' Roll (1976)

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 album generated some controversy due to its cover art and Nazi imagery (promotional photos featured the Residents dressed as giant swastikas and wearing oversized swastika glasses). A window display in Berkeley was met with protests and threats of violence, and the album with its original cover (featuring American Bandstand host Dick Clark dressed in a Nazi uniform clutching a carrot) is still banned in Germany. Regardless, it is considered one of the group's masterworks along with most of their material from the 1970s.

Tracklist:
1 Swastikas On Parade
2 Hitler Was A Vegetarian

Bonus Tracks:
3 Satisfaction
4 Loser ≅ Weed
5 Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life
6 Flying

The Residents – The Third Reich 'N' Roll (1976)

(320 kbps, cover art included)