The Residents first came to my attention with their barely recognisable version of the Stones’ song Satisfaction in 1977,

This was the first time I heard them, performing the oddest cover version you’ll ever hear of the Stones. Or anyoe else.

They supposedly formed in Louisiana in the late Sixties (their whole history is shrouded in myth), and subsequently moved to the Bay Area of San Francisco.

Ever since then the enigmatic group have remained staunchly anonymous, given no interviews, performing only in disguise, and only three times at all in their first decade together – wearing top hats and tails, with their heads covered by giant eyeballs.

They have released more than 35 studio albums and about the same number of live albums, plus about a dozen soundtrack albums and the same number of instrumental and remix collections, all under the aegis of their own Cryptic Corporation.

When this single came out in 1977 I believe it was only released (without their permission) to compete with another cover version by fellow oddballs Devo, though the Akron band’s jerky version seems positively faithful to the original by comparison to this melange of dissonant distorted guitar and mangled vocals.

I bought both singles straight away.

Quirky and controversial from the start, Their 1974 debut album Meet The Residents prompted a lawsuit for its cover art (a Dadaesque parody of The Beatles’ debut), while the second, Not Available, lived up to its title by remaining unissued, with the music literally locked in cold storage (at least until a legal contract forced them to release it).

Satisfaction came from their third album, The Third Reich’N’Roll (cover art: a cartoon Nazi clutching a carrot). Consisting of one long medley of barely recognisable pop covers, the single itself was not included on the album.

Future releases included 1979’s Eskimo, marketed as a collection of Inuit folk tales and melodies (though this turned out to be untrue) and the following year’s Commercial Album, featuring forty 60-second pop songs, accompanied by short films.

Others reworked the music of George Gershwin, James Brown and Hank Williams and, most recently, a fictitious bluesman called Alvin Snow (aka Dyin’ Dog), which included a track (Die! Die! Die!) with vocals by Pixies frontman Black Francis.

Anyway, here’s their “blowtorch evisceration” of Jagger and Richards, with Philip ‘Snakefinger’ Lithman on guitar and backing vocals by the wonderfully named Pointless Sisters.

I can not improve on the review in The Wire magazine’s 1998, article “100 Records That Set The World On Fire (While No One Was Listening)” that describes it as a song that reduces the original to “a piece of marketable rebellion fluff… with unbearably off-key guitars and a vocal that sounds like the most haunted, driven, raging man alive.”

They added: “It’s excruciating, purifying and hilarious, and if inflicted on friends it usually receives two of the highest possible accolades: ‘Take that fucking thing off’, and ‘They weren’t being serious, were they?'”