FINGERPRINCE
Fingerprince started out as Tourniquet of Roses, which was
to be the world's first three-sided album. This idea was
abandoned due to impracticality.
In the end, the band put only two-thirds of the music on
the album and put the rest on an EP called Babyfingers
which was then several years later once again merged into
Fingerprince.
Fingerprince and Babyfingers have similar structures: each
has one side of short songs with a single longer work on
the second side. Walter Westinghouse, on the EP, is a sort
of mini-opera, while Six Things to a Cycle on Fingerprince
was originally written as a ballet. The piece is similar to
an early conceptual piece of improvisational orchestra
called Number One. The Residents created a work about how
"man, represented by a primitive humanoid, is consumed by
his self-created environment only to be replaced by a new
creature, still primitive, still faulty, but destined to
rule the world just as poorly" for Maurice Bejart, who used
music by The Residents for a dance piece performed on a
barge moving down the canals of Venice. The Residents
created a shortened version of the ballet for this album
and performed an even shorter live rendition at a concert
called Oh Mummy! Oh Daddy! Can't You See That It's True;
What the Beatles Did to Me, "I Love Lucy" Did to You
presented as part of the 5th Anniversary celebrations for
Rather Ripped Records in June, 1976.
The piece draws on many influences: Indonesian Gamelan
(percussion) music, the Minimalist Movement (Philip Glass,
Steve Reich, etc.), and most of all, Harry Partch. Partch
was an American composer who was known for inventing his
own instruments, music theory, and languages. The Residents
indulged in similar experiments, using invented languages
not only in Six Things, but also later on Eskimo and The
Big Bubble. The Residents later acknowledge Partch's
influence with the song Death in Barstow, on Babyfingers, a
reference to Partch's death in Barstow, California, in
September, 1976.
EuroRalph has also released a CD version of Fingerprince.
It consists of two CDs, one full-length, one with the
original album contents, and the other a 3" CD single of
Babyfingers as a salute to the original structure.