In 1979 "punk" music was all the rage. The Residents had
gone though the punk stage three years earlier with the
release of "Satisfaction" and were ready for anything that
was not punk.
They decided it was a good time to make the jump into world
music, since by their own calculations it would not become
popular for several more years. They scanned the map for a
proper culture to exploit and, not finding one, became
discouraged until seeing a large Coke sign featuring Santa
Claus. Immediately they realized they had overlooked the
North Pole because it is made of ice and therefore didn't
exist on their world map.
Immediately rushing out to a library, they gathered all the
information they could find on Eskimos. What they found was
a government-issued book on Eskimo sanitation, a book of
Eskimo legends, and one scratchy record of someone hitting
a drum and chanting. Not exactly the rich cultural vein
they had hoped to mine.
But it was enough, for it set the Eyeballs spinning off
into their own imaginary world of six-month nights,
marimbas made of frozen fish, and Eskimo sex lives. For
almost four years the ideas tumbled around. Sometimes they
would feel elated at some new breakthrough, but usually
they moaned that the album would not only make dreary
listening, but be pretentious beyond belief.
But when it was finally released ESKIMO was a hit, both in
sales and in reviews. Andy Gill of New Music Express said,
"I'm not sure quite how to convey the magnitude of The
Residents' achievement with Eskimo. What I am sure of is
that it's without doubt one of the most important albums
ever made, if not the most important, and that its
implications are of such an unprecedentedly revolutionary
nature that the weak-minded polemical posturing of
purportedly 'political' bands are positively bourgeois by
comparison."
He says this because the album tells the story, without
relying upon words, of the assimilation of a ritualistic
society into consumer culture. This story unfolds as Eskimo
fables, a lived experience, set to the grinding of sound
effects and music. It is a mind movie rich with detail.
ESKIMO is, quite literally, a unique experience.