The 180 Gs’ ‘Commercial Album’
When Negativland’s DVD Our Favorite Things appeared a dozen years ago, it came with a bonus CD called 180 d’Gs to the Future! The Music of Negativland as Performed by the 180 Gs. Negativland claimed the disc’s astonishing a cappella interpretations of “Christianity Is Stupid,” “The Playboy Channel,” part of Helter Stupid and other catalog classics were the work of a “talented posse from inner Detroit” known for its gospel, R&B and doo-wop stylings.
Naturally, I suspected these were lies. While I marveled at the technical skill of the 180 Gs’ performances, the expert blending of their vocals and the creativity of their SATB arrangements of essentially unmelodic material, I thought Negativland had probably hired some guy for scale who records call signs for radio stations, or maybe processed and layered the honeyed voice of Richard Lyons using some 21st century harmonizer as yet unknown to me. The novelty record seemed to be another Negativland hoax, along the lines of their supposed role in a multiple axe murder in Minnesota, or their supposed discovery of a new primary color.
Even today, the 180 Gs’ Manhattan Transfer-ized rendition of “Christianity Is Stupid” sometimes gets stuck in my head, but I hardly thought about the group until last month, when the excellent Klanggalerie label associated with the Residents released the 180 Gs’ Commercial Album, an a cappella performance of all 40 one-minute songs on the Residents’ 1980 LP. A Google search led me to the Bandcamp page of one David Minnick (who actually does, it seems, hail from Motor City), where the 180 Gs’ cover of the Cardiacs’ Sing to God also resides in its double-CD entirety.
The 180 Gs (via Soundcloud)
The Residents covers are a gas, as Homer Flynn of the Cryptic Corporation affirms in his liner notes for the 180 Gs’ Commercial Album:
WHY? What inspires someone to take on such a monumentally demanding and difficult job, especially one so highly unlikely to escape the shadow of the original. After tossing this question around for a couple of days, I could only come up with one answer - FUN! And it sounds like fun, making me smile again and again, hearing their voices imitating synthesizers, guitars and basses, whistling to re-create keyboard parts and beating their bodies as mock percussion. But the thing that’s most impressive about the album is that the Gs are not merely imitating the Residents’ masterpiece of minimalism, but reinventing it, while staying completely faithful to the source material. Like the originators, the 180Gs are creating their own alternate musical universe, just as curious and original as that of The Residents. […]
Listening to the 180Gs singing Fred Frith’s singular guitar solo, while imitating Andy Partridge’s eccentric phrasing on Margaret Freeman is a delight, not unlike their mimicking of Snakefinger’s vocal and Frith’s bass playing on Ups and Downs. And sometimes they add their own little twists, like making Give It to Someone Else a bit less sinister while creating a curious exercise in joyful voyeurism.
Below, I’ve embedded the 180 Gs’ take on “Frownland,” the first cut on Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band’s Trout Mask Replica, and further down is the entire Commercial Album. Find more at David Minnick’s Soundcloud and Bandcamp pages.