Uncle Remus
|
Won't you keep us working? Working down below? This page needs work to reach an encyclopedic standard. If you see something missing, you can help The Mysterious Spanish Ladies by joining the wiki and expanding the article. |
Uncle Remus is a character created by The Residents, who acts as the occasional narrator and "Greek chorus" of their operetta Not Available,[1][2] originally developed and recorded in 1974 and released in 1978.
Supposedly developed by The Residents in a series of psychodrama-influenced "rehearsals" intended to resolve real-life tensions within the group, Uncle Remus is depicted by an unidentified man - presumably a Resident - both on the album and in an early 1970s Denise Byroads photograph which has been claimed (in more recent years) to depict the character.
In the operetta, Remus acts as a "distant and objective" narrator,[3] providing occasional commentary on the proceedings without becoming directly involved until the conclusion, where it is revealed that the "independently wealthy" Remus has eloped with Edweena, the central figure of the love triangle which drives the operetta's plot. Finally, the "traitorous" Remus is welcomed back to the fold after returning from his "unexpected" honeymoon.
The character was inspired by the fictional narrator of a series of collections of African-American folk tales of the same name, compiled between 1881 and 1908; the earlier character - most famously depicted by James Baskett in the controversial 1946 Disney film Song of the South - is now commonly considered to be a racist stereotype.
In the year that Not Available is said to have been developed, a song named after the classical Uncle Remus appeared on the Frank Zappa album Apostrophe ('); although The Residents are often (somewhat apocryphally)[4] said to have been heavily influenced by Zappa, it is unconfirmed whether Zappa's song influenced the creation of their character of the same name.
See also
- Not Available
- Edweena (character)
- Porcupine
- Catbird
- The Enigmatic Foe
External links and references
- Not Available at The Residents Historical
- Not Available at RZWeb (archived via archive.org)
- Uncle Remus at Wikipedia
- ↑ Jim Knipfel, "Some Answers That Are Guaranteed To Shake You Up", Not Available pREServed CD edition liner notes, 2019
- ↑ Not Available pREServed vinyl edition liner notes, 2023
- ↑ Not Available pREServed CD edition liner notes, 2019
- ↑ Hardy Fox, Hacienda Bridge no. 19, July 1st 2017
|
Not Available (1974 - 1978) Side A |