I've received a few blurbs from fellow fans, which I'd like to share with y'all here.
Renaldo's Trip to Morocco
A medical discovery!
Three more bits of lyrical archaeology
A fan from Chile tells his tale
A call to the Rottcodd
Hambu ly s xpo ed!
Hatless conjecture and clarification
Here's the look of the average RaTL fan
This is New Wave?
Fawnings from Fiona
A Postcard from Morocco
...from the elusive Petunia
Liebling MacPumpkin, who has struck up a correspondence with the more elusive Brian Poole:
I attached my original letter from 1994. [Renaldo] sent Tom a post card to send to me, and at
the time he was on a trip to Morocco, so the post card has a giant pie on the front and about a dozen Moroccans
around it.
It says "AGADIR...le plus grand COUSCOUS du monde!" on the front. This is Brians response:
DEAR MS. MACPUMPKIN Am in Morocco and felt I had to write. Unfortunately I arrived too late for this
(see front) great event. Apparently the food was compressed into blocks after the photo was taken and the blocks
are now used as the cornerstones of new civic buildings. To date no yodeling arabs but plently of covered elbows.
Am digesting letter sent by Tom, your questions are challenging & I may need time. Regards BRIAN RENALDO
So he never wrote back and answered my questions, but I guess that was enough for me. The post card had RENALDO
germs on it, you know!!!
[The Tom referred to is Tom Timony of EMG - IM]
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A medical discovery by Jason Polland:
I made a fascinating discovery no
less than ten minutes ago. The song "A Medical Man" from Songs For Swinging Larvae is a direct reference to the first chapter of the book "The Sign
Of The Four" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The "medical man" in the song is Dr. Watson, and the other fellow in the
dialogue is none other than Sherlock Holmes. The lyric "So hence the cocaine, where is the mystery?" has always
been a puzzle to me, until tonight when I found Sherlock utter the phrase "Hence the cocaine." In reference to his
use of the drug as a way to artifically occupy the mind when he had no cases to solve. "The Sign Of The Four" is
the second Sherlock Holmes novel, from 1889. Other lines such as "your brother was careless" also refer to the
book; Holmes and Watson were discussing a watch that had belonged to Watson's older brother, and Holmes deducted
that he was a careless man because of damage sustained to the watch cover.
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Three more bits of lyrical archaeology, by Anders Moe:
Spratt's Medium: The lyrics "there's no painkiller anymore," "One day you'll
say, 'I'm tired, I'll stop'" and some other bits and pieces are from Samuel Beckett's Endgame.
Ow! Stew the Red Shoe!: The story of young Joe Breem or Breen is quoted
almost verbatim from one of Beckett's four short stories from the 1940's--possibly from a collection called
"First Love".
Green Candle: The "green candle" might be from
Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi. "By my Green Candle!" is one of Ubu's favourite exclamations.
and of
Course the title Songs for Swinging Larvae is a parody of the Frank Sinatra album title,
Songs for Swinging Lovers!
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A fan from Chile tells
his tale from corteza de arbol
"i'm a R & t L fan and it was really great to find
your web pages on them. You can't imagine how exciting it was to find out more details about their history and
their recording career.All i knew about them is what can be found in the book 'Meet the residents' which is not
very much, you know. Renaldo and the loaf and their music have always meant a lot of things to me I really love
their approach to playing and creating music and i've always [...] identified with it. In 1990 I was 17 and had
been heavily into progressive rock until that point. Then i started to discover more obscure things like Henry
Cow, Fred Frith, all of the rio groups, the french ayaa kind of eccentric rock and of course The Residents, their
music really blew my mind and i was listening to their early records all the time. It was a great time for me
because i was really hungry for new and unconventional musics , and it was like discovering a new world. And i had
a musical [friend] and then, one day he showed up and told me: 'i'm going to play you an amazing record, look it
is a ralph records release, these guys are friends with the resi- dents! Renaldo & the loaf, it's a weird name,
isn't [it]?'
The name itself sounded great to my ears. Well, if it's on their label it must be good. Do
they sound like them Which is the residents song you like the best ? he asked and i replied 'YOUYESYESYOU' ( he
knew it was ) and then he said ' you'll love this ' And we listened the entire record in one sitting. It was
another mind blowing experience. I'm a musician myself and i thought 'THIS IS FOR ME, THIS IS DEFINETLY MY KIND OF
SOUND' Songs for swinging larvae became a real obsession to me, i was dazzled by it. I had taped it and carried
everywhere, i thought things like 'this is amazing, I have never listened to anything like it, there are so many
ideas per minute those weird tapes and loops going backwards, the childish melodies, the dislocated song forms,
etc.' I was impressed by their originality, their naivety, their sense of humour and because [they] were not
afraid of being ridiculous. I learnt a lot from them. With the passing of time i became very much inte- rested in
other kinds of music, mostly free improvised and contemporary classical, electronic and minimal and today i'm
-ironically- under the spell of Robert Wyatt and the canterbury scene again ( a kind of music i had been into by
the late 80's ) But this seems to be the way it works when you really like music, you're always evolving. But
Renaldo and the loaf is and will always be one the most important things that i happened to find. An important and
strong link with my past.
boom boom crash crash boom boom crash crash !"
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A visit from the Rottcodd from divaD
"ROTCOD, apart from
being DOCTOR backwards is also the name of the curator of 'The Hall of Bright Carvings' in Mervyn Peake's
Gormenghast; who spends most of his time asleep in a hammock as nobody is partcularly interested in
visiting the collection."
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Hambu ly s xpo ed! from Neville Harson
"I have a Renaldo-related lyrical archaeology question of my own, concerning the song "Hambu Hodo." I've already
heard that it was named after a run-down fast-food stand (or something) that used to read "Hamburgers, Hot Dogs."
But what do the other lines refer to? I've figured out two of them so far, perhaps someone could help me figure
out the rest.
"ZE AN HE AR O MOTO" could be "ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYLCLE MAINTENANCE."
And "SRAGE EWS FRO AN O HE SAR" is probably "STRANGE NEWS FROM ANOTHER STAR," a book of stories by Hesse.
Could it be that the lyrics are comprised of butchered book titles from the collection of either Renaldo M. or Ted
the Loaf?"
an addition from Dawud Kuttaab:
In support of Neville Harson's archaeolyricological hypothesis regarding
Hambu Hodo, "HE ON SHO WAY FRO OMELA" could well be "The Ones Who Walk Away
>From Omelas" by Ursula K. LeGuin.
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Hatless Conjecture c/o Dawud Kuttaab
"Speaking of obscure hypotheses: as we all know, the RATL piece "Hats Off
Gentlemen" [from SONGS FOR SWINGING LARVAE] is constructed of short tape snippets, mainly of some solo piano
recording(s). Now, the phrase "Hats off, gentlemen" is (of course) the
phrase that kicked off Robert Schumann's famous review in which Frederic
Chopin was officially "discovered." So...it would follow that the sampled
piano work(s) in the RATL piece would be Chopin work(s). Wouldn't it?"
CLARIFICATION
responds Mr. Renaldo M:
"The Sob Story Hatless Conjecture...is very inventive but incorrect. Hats Off was made up from loops from Debussy's
'Drowned Cathedral.'
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This
This is New Wave? from Mervine
If I write that I can't believe that I've finally found a site for
fellow loafers it will be the equivalent of writing to Penthouse Forum
and saying "I never thought I'd be writing to you before but..." but who
cares. I can't believe I finally found a site for fellow loafers and
I'm glad I have. Here is my tale:
In about 1981 I was 17 and had just been turned on to the B-52's, Devo,
Ramones, etc. Overnight I went from a Judas priest/Ted nugent/AC-DC
freak into a dedicated new waver. I come from Delaware, USA which at
the time and probably still, wasn't exactly the center of alternative
culture and I was desperate for new and unusual sounds. I had almost no
friends in the know about anything off the beaten track so I schlepped
down to the record store in the mall and went searching. I found the
"new wave" section, which contained about 20 records and just started
looking. I'm sure that if I could see those titles today they would all
be familiar to me but at the time it was just a big pot luck. As my
naive and eager young fingers pored avidly through the stack I came
across a curious and beautiful album. The cover was odd and intriguing
and I thought the name of the band was hilarious, Renaldo and the Loaf.
I didn't make the Sinatra connection with the title either(all my folks
listened to was bad, white gospel) so I thought that was a scream, too.
This was the album for me!!!
When I took it home I put it on and waited for something like "Rock
Lobster" or "Are we not men". Needless to say that's not what I heard!
I guess my little redneck mind was not as open as I had hoped. I HATED
IT!!! "This is new wave?" This sucks!
Coming up shortly was the birthday of the guy who turned me on to all
the new stuff so I gave it to him. He hated it too! He hated it so
much that he gave it back to me and said, "no thanks!" So I stashed it
in the back of my record collection and pretty much forgot about it.
I guess some of those freaky melodies stuck in my brain somehow and
every now and then I would take the album out and listen to a few
songs. It wasn't what I had expected but it was kind of funny and humor
is very important to me in music. Ever so slowly I started liking this
madcap album. By '82 I was in college and was beginning to meet all
kinds of new weirdos that I really clicked with. A couple of guys I
started to party with were into the Residents, Throbbing Gristle and
stuff like that and by now my chemically enhanced mind was expanding at
a breakneck pace so I turned them on to Renaldo and by this time I had
finally recognized the insane geniuses that I had discovered so many
months before.
Needless to say it is now one of my favorite albums of all time and I'm
glad I have finally found a forum to share my passion.
I live in London,England now and am wondering, do they play live at
all? Are they still making beautiful music together? I would love to
know any new info on them.
Thanks for doing this site.
Any Renaldo fans can e-mail me.
Also if anyone who lives in London maybe wants to do some wacked out
improv jamming drop me a line. I play drums and anything else lying
around. I'm into all sorts of stuff besides RTL, too, like the Osmonds,
Prince, Kyuss, all Gangsta rap, Dolly Parton, whatever.
Hail Satan,
Mervine
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This
Nothing ever Came of his Love Chase
from Fiona
I have just discovered your web site (if you need to know, the link is up in
the Residents Smartgroup at
www.smartgroups.com/groups/residents) Amazed to
find there is such a thing as a RatL site of any description. I, perhaps
typically, got to hear RatL through my listening to anything Residential. I
had a friend who found himself living round the corner from Renaldo and/or
Loaf for a time. I live in Manchester, and so had he. He ran off to Southsea
in love with a certain person from his old workplace who got a job in the
area. Nothing ever came of his love chase, and I (and other friends) would
visit him, to cheer him up and to persuade him to come home to Manchester.
We managed that in the end, and I ended up living in a rented house with him
for some time. We would always plan to call round to see the chaps round the
corner - my mate especially was producing loads of music at this time, and I
was involved in some of the recordings and film making round the area
(Southsea, and later Manchester) - but we always ended up just a little too
stoned, and couldn't quite get it together. My mate is now Matt Wand of
Stock, Hausen and Walkman. Now if he had collaborated with RatL, it could
have been very interesting...Maybe if you have any influence or contact,
Matt could still work with Renaldo or the Loaf..?
Anyway. Great site. Not enough visitors, but I'll pass yer URL on to a few
folk (including Matt Wand).
Fiona.
"There are twelve people in the world.
The rest are paste."
Mark E. Smith
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go ahead and send me a sob story! but be forewarned, I'll probably post it here, in your (slightly touched up) words
and put your name on it, unless you tell me otherwise!
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