The Warner Bros. Album

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The Warner Bros. Album is a demo tape by the group that would later be known as The Residents. Recorded in 1970–1971, it wasn’t released until 2018, when a Record Store Day edition of 900 copies appeared as The W***** B*** Album in the pREServed series. The tape was created as a demo reel and sent anonymously to Hal Halverstadt, the Warner Bros. executive who had signed Captain Beefheart. He described it as “okay at best” but gave it an “A for Originality.” The package arrived addressed to “Residents, 20 Sycamore St., San Francisco,” which helped the group briefly adopt the name Residents Unincorporated before becoming The Residents.

Parts of the early recordings, including The Warner Bros. Album and Baby Sex, were broadcast in full on KBOO-FM in Portland in 1977, and later circulated as bootlegs. In 2004, The Cryptic Corporation released WB: RMX, a remix album that reworked several tracks. Edited excerpts from the original tape appeared on ERA B474 and The Delta Nudes’ Greatest Hiss (2012–13), with some previously unreleased alternate takes.

The 2018 remastered release restored the original unedited mix. In 2019, Cherry Red Records put out A Nickle If Your Dick’s This Big (1971–1972), a double-CD anthology that includes both The W***** B*** Album and B.S., remastered from the original tapes. All songs were written and composed by The Pre-Residents, except where noted.