The Residents 'Kaw-Liga'

I really hope they wear those giant eyeball heads all the time, at home, nipping to the shops for fags and milk, popping round to feed next door's cat. The Residents have been around for donkey's years, stealing, sampling, and releasing strange records. In 1986 they released this one, a cover of a Hank Williams song but using the bassline off Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. Which makes perfect sense. As does the record being picked up by DJ's in the holiday islands off Spain a year or two later and becoming a Balaeric/acid house anthem. Hank William's Kaw Liga is a wooden Indian who falls in love with the Indian girl over at the antique store. He cannot tell her because his heart is made of knotty pine, and 'poor old Kaw Liga he never got a kiss'. Eventually she goes away, leaving him to pine (pun intended), and 'as lonely as can be, and wishes he was still a pine tree'.

Kaw-Liga.mp3