Not Available

"The Residents' 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, as the re-release of the single "Satisfaction" the same year had garnered some attention in Europe.

In 1978, the "official" word was that The Residents had stated Not Available could never be released. The group claimed that they had recorded their musical film noir masterpiece 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.

But those steeped in the lore of The Residents' milieu have long known that the recording of the album was in realty an exercise in group therapy. The real reason that the band wished to deny its existence was the fact that they felt that the work was too personally revealing.

What is not generally known, though, is that, as part of their theraputic process, The Residents actually considered the idea of creating an operetta based on Not Available. Castng the primary roles with the actual inhabitants of the group's internal drama, they then began a series of loosely structured "rehearsals" with those players enacting the principal roles of Edweena, The Porcupine, The Catbird, Uncle Reemus and Enimatic Foe.

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.

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. - Never Needed Answers, Not Available liner notes.

Tracklist

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