Background and Recording
Cheap at Half the Price was the third of a series of three solo albums Frith made for The Residents's record label Ralph Records, the first being Gravity (1980), an avant-garde "dance" record that drew on rhythm and dance from folk music across the world, and the second being Speechless (1981), a mixture of folk music, free improvisation, avant-rock and noise. He had recorded with The Residents in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and appeared on several of their albums. Both Gravity and Speechless were well received by critics.
Frith recorded Cheap at Half the Price at his home in New York City on a 4-track machine. Unlike his two previous albums for Ralph Records, where he used backing bands, on this album Frith played all the instruments himself, with the exception of bass guitar on two tracks, and drums. Bill Laswell from Frith's band Massacre played bass on "Same Old Me", and Tina Curran played bass on "Too Much, Too Little". For the drumming Frith used samples that had been previously recorded of drummers he had worked with, namely Frank Wuyts of Aksak Maboul, Fred Maher from Massacre, Paul Sears of The Muffins, and Hans Bruniusson from Samla Mammas Manna.
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