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The Residents sing the Blues: Elvis, Hank Williams and some demented cowboys
06.21.2016
01:53 pm
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In spring of 1989, The Residents brought their “History of American Music in 3 EZ pieces” tour to Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in New York for that year’s “Serious Fun” avant-garde music/performance art festival.  It was the second time I would see The Residents live and it was a memorable musical theatrical experience, I can assure you. Either the night before or the night after I can’t recall, I saw Diamanda Galas in the same theater performing her “Masque of the Red Death” trilogy and nearly bringing the walls down with the demonic intensity of her performance. (Ann Magnuson, Eric Bogosian, Spalding Gray and Richard Foreman’s production of Philip Glass’s ‘‘The Fall of the House of Usher’’ opera were also a part of that year’s festival)

Alice Tully Hall is a plush, intimate (1086 seats) recital hall that normally hosts the New York Film Festival and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Because of the “classy” setting, the show promised to be “more” than previous live Residents outings. Seeing The Residents at Lincoln Center seemed irresistible, but I didn’t know anyone who wanted to go with me, so I went alone [I’ve never been able to rope in a friend to see The Residents with me, not once! The first time I’d caught The Residents, also alone, was a few years earlier, during their 13th anniversary tour at The Ritz nightclub (now Webster Hall). About ten minutes into the show, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat arrived and stood near me on the balcony. About 20 minutes later they said something to each other and left immediately.]
 

 
The performance consisted of three-acts: “Buckaroo Blues” told the story of America through cowboy music, “Black Barry” via slave songs, blues and jazz and in the final Elvis section, “The Baby King,” The Residents essayed a senile Elvis telling his grandchildren (“Shorty” and “Shirley,” two freaky ventriloquist’s dummies) about his life before the British Invasion killed him. The show featured elaborately choreographed dance numbers and back-lit sets. As you might expect, the acoustics were pretty near perfect in a place like Alice Tully Hall.

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.21.2016
01:53 pm
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Want to see something REALLY WEIRD? Here’s Renaldo & the Loaf’s ‘Songs for Swinging Larvae’
12.01.2015
11:05 am
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Renaldo and the Loaf are an extremely obscure English musical duo comprised of a pathologist (David Janssen or “Ted the Loaf”) and an architect (Brian Poole or “Renaldo Malpractice”). They met in school and made experimental music starting in the late 1970s that defied description.

On holiday in San Francisco, one of them gave a tape to one of The Residents, who were suitably impressed. They soon made an album for Ralph Records called Songs for Swinging Larvae, which is known as one of the strangest records of all time— (if it is known at all) —and sells for exorbitant prices (when it can be found). The pair fell out of touch in the 90s but have made music together again in recent years. They even have an official website.
 
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Although there is no way this would ever happen again today, believe it or not, this video has actually aired on American television many, many times during the early 1980s on the eclectic “underground” Night Flight programming block on the USA Network. This video, the Residents’ “One Minute Movies” and a couple of other videos (“Big Electric Cat” by Adrian Belew also comes to mind) that I saw on Night Flight warped me badly enough that at the age of 16 I decided I was going to move to New York and “become an underground filmmaker”! (*Ahem*). Directed by Graeme Whifler who made many wonderful videos for The Residents, Tuxedomoon and The Red Hot Chili Peppers in the early 1980s.
 
If you like things like Captain Beefheart, The Residents or Wonder Showzen, you should give this quirky, almost kinda scary, vintage video oddity a look.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.01.2015
11:05 am
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‘Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening tells the story of The Residents, 1979
07.15.2015
03:01 pm
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The Residents, 1972
 
The Residents’ first fan club, W.E.I.R.D. (We Endorse Immediate Residents Deification), was founded in 1978, and one of its charter members was Life in Hell and Simpsons creator Matt Groening. As a member of the Residents’ second fan club, UWEB, I am bound by the most solemn oaths never to discuss any of the secret handshakes, passwords, ciphers, rituals, buttons, bumper stickers or T-shirts of the inner sanctum, but I can point seekers to this exoteric document: Groening’s “The True Story of the Residents.” This phantasmagoric bio of the group, first published in 1979’s The Official W.E.I.R.D. Book of the Residents and reprinted in 1993’s Uncle Willie’s Highly Opinionated Guide to the Residents, gives a wild yet relatively concise account of the band’s founding myth.
 

The Official W.E.I.R.D. Book of the Residents (cover by Gary Panter)
 
You’ll notice that most of the fun facts in this true story are lies; for instance, I tend to doubt that “Six Things to a Cycle” originated as a “lengthy ballet” that “was canceled when The Residents were rumored to be selling experimental monkey depressants to grade school children.” But Groening weaves the Residents, the Mysterious N. Senada, Philip “Snakefinger” Lithman, the Cryptic Corporation, and “a squealing Boston terrier on acid flung into a barrel of live albino sand eels” into a tale that will make tears stream from your eyes and snot run from your nose. Look how he gets the band from Louisiana to its early base of operations in San Mateo:

After high school, the gang (which numbered five) split up and went their various ways—college, grunt jobs, draft evasion. They kept in touch with each other’s progress, however, and soon found themselves hopping like rabid Rhesus monkeys to rhythm and blues—particularly James Brown and Bo Diddley. James Brown’s Live At The Apollo is an album which makes them quiver to this day. But they soon found that they needed each other, and re-grouped to plot strategy. They didn’t know what the hell they were doing, but they knew James Brown made their butts twitch, and some how it would all work out. In 1966 or so, after a couple of them had made it almost all the way through college, they decided to escape the slimy Southern scourge of George Wallace. So they loaded up their truck and headed straight for San Francisco, where they had heard all the go-go mod action was goin’ down. As fate would have it, their truck broke down in a quiet suburban town called San Mateo, some 25 miles south of the big city. Behind them they left a few loyal, more balanced acquaintances who would later follow to start The Cryptic Corporation. In California they saw the minds around them already beginning to break down. Youngsters everywhere were growing their hair out and joining the “bushhead” movement. Beach boys frolicked with trained wild seals on the sand, and local cretins began electrocuting themselves with guitars on-stage while thousands chanted, “You endorse our mindless lives,” in unified spontaneity. Charles Manson pierced his nipple with a Love button while on acid, and the Psychedelic Revolution was born. The Residents began licking their lips.

 

 
To read “The True Story of the Residents” in full, go to this page in the “Historical section” of residents.com and click “Matt Groening’s TRUE STORY.” Below, Groening talks about connecting with W.E.I.R.D. and writing his “fanciful” bio in a clip from the upcoming documentary about the Residents, Theory of Obscurity.
 

Posted by Oliver Hall
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07.15.2015
03:01 pm
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San Francisco police need your help locating a stolen Residents eyeball head mask
05.23.2015
06:53 pm
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The San Francisco Police Department has issued a statement detailing the theft of one of the original Residents’ eyeball head masks.

The mask, valued at $100,000 (yeah, OK), was signed for by an unknown person and is now missing. Along with the mask is an original photograph of the Residents which is valued at $20,000 (yeah, OK).

SFPD has included an anonymous tip line, should you happen to see the famous eyeball in your local pawn shop.
 

The missing mask
 

And the case it came in
 

A local San Francisco resident had a famous “Eyeball with Hat” mask and an original album cover photo from the musical band called the “Residents” taken from him by an unknown suspect.

In this incident the victim loaned the mask, which was valued at $100,000.00, to a museum in Seattle for a predetermined period of time. On May 5th, at the conclusion of the loan, the curator sent the mask back to the victim using a major delivery courier service. Unfortunately, the victim was traveling and was not present to receive the shipment.

The package was delivered and signed for by an unknown person using an illegible signature. The mask has been used on a record album cover and is periodically displayed throughout the country. The pictured top hat is now black instead of white and was contained in a shipping crate (photo attached). Stolen along with the mask was the original album cover photo which the victim values at $20,000.00.

Anyone who recalls seeing the mask, photo, or crate or has information on this case is asked to contact the Anonymous Tip Line at (415) 575-4444 or Text A Tip to TIP411 and include “SFPD” at the beginning of the message.

NBC Bay Area has a story posted about the theft with a short video.

Here, a young Penn Jillette attempts to reveal what lies beneath those giant eyeballs:
 

 
Via SFPD

Posted by Christopher Bickel
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05.23.2015
06:53 pm
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Just imagine how STRANGE this Residents’ radio special from 1977 sounded in 1977
04.24.2015
09:28 am
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“SIAMESE TWIN TAG TEAM WRESTLERS INDEED”: Arf and Omega on the Vileness Fats set
 
In 1977, the Residents marked their fifth anniversary with an hour-long radio special. It purports to be a broadcast from RAO (Residents Arf Omega?) Studios in Houston, Texas. Along with a number of obscurities—such as the entire The Beatles Play the Residents and the Residents Play the Beatles 7-inch, the B-side of the “Satisfaction” single (“Loser ≅ Weed”), and Snakefinger shredding Zappa’s “King Kong” in the style of Les Paul—the program includes incidental music performed by the Residents, who are, we are told, “content to walk around the studio, banging on instruments and making strange noises.” Meanwhile, a hostile interviewer, one “Sid Powell,” asks Jay Clem of Ralph Records Cryptic Corporation a series of insulting questions about the group. (“Now, don’t you feel a little foolish in this position? You’re no more than babysitters to a group of malcontented young fops.”) While I generally avoid speculating about the Residents’ identities in print, I can’t help but observe that Powell sure does sound an awful lot like one member of the band.
 

The J-card from the cassette release of The Residents Radio Special
 
Ralph Records released the program on a few small cassette runs in the early 80s. In 2002, Ralph re-released the radio special on the limited-edition CD Eat Exuding Oinks (named for a lyric in “Walter Westinghouse”), now equally scarce. Long ago, at one of the Bay Area’s gigantic record emporia, I snagged one of the original unmarked white tapes, still in the J-card printed on blue construction paper, for less than one dollar. Granted, that’s more than what it’s going to cost you to listen courtesy of YouTube, but it’s significantly less than what today’s junior Residents collector will expect to pay. I bring this up not so much to illustrate a point, as to gloat.
 

 
Anyway, this Fingerprince-era artifact is a delightful piece of radio theater. You’ll hear Clem and Powell discuss the relationship between the Residents and the Beatles and the possible identity of same; the Theory of Phonetic Organization developed by the Mysterious N. Senada, who, we learn, sat in on “Kamikaze Lady” from Baby Sex; and the band’s work-in-progress Eskimo.

Hear the broadcast after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Oliver Hall
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04.24.2015
09:28 am
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The Residents demolish ‘We Are the World’
01.08.2015
08:37 am
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Posted by Oliver Hall
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01.08.2015
08:37 am
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‘Oh Mummy! Oh Daddy!’ The Residents’ first show as The Residents, 1976
10.16.2014
09:08 am
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This photo, reproduced in Ian Shirley’s Meet The Residents: America’s Most Eccentric Band!, first piqued my curiosity about the 1976 show the Residents had played in mummy costumes. (Or did I first see it in Twenty Twisted Questions?) I read Meet The Residents in 1993, and a few years passed before I learned this had technically been The Residents’ first show, that the show had taken place at a celebration of the Berkeley store Rather Ripped Records’ fifth anniversary, and that the performance had been titled “Oh Mummy! Oh Daddy! Can’t You See That It’s True? What The Beatles Did to Me, I Love Lucy Did to You!” There was not even a rumor of any recording of this show, and it seemed so mysterious and significant to me that, at one point in my life, I would have parted with vital organs just to hear a tape.
 

 
Now, of course, thanks to the miracle of science, anyone can hear the whole show for free on YouTube. There is even a snippet of footage a mouse-click away. No surgery required. (If memory serves, the minute-and-a-half clip was first released in 2006 as an “easter egg” on the DVD that came with the Kettles of Fish on the Outskirts of Town box set.)

The untight performance (cut them some slack—they are playing their instruments while totally swathed in bandages) includes a bit of “Six Things to a Cycle” from Fingerprince, but the performance as a whole is closer in spirit to The Third Reich ‘n’ Roll. The Eye Guys demolish “Satisfaction,” “It’s My Party,” “Wooly Bully,” and “Wipe Out” before treating the audience to an extended version of their own “Kick A Cat” from Meet the Residents.

A description of the show from residents.com:

Oh Mummy! Oh Daddy! was a special show put on for the fifth anniversary of Rather Ripped Records on June 7th, 1976. The Residents were joined by Snakefinger and Zeibak in performances of short versions of Satisfaction and Six Things to a Cycle from Fingerprince. For this show The Residents wrapped themselves up in bandages like mummies and Snakefinger dressed as a giant artichoke. These costumes proved to be a problem, though, as the foursome had rehearsed without them and when they took to the stage they found that it was rather difficult to play their instruments in such restrictive outfits.

Aside from that small oversight, the concert was planned out very thoroughly. Amazingly enough all the music was performed live, except for some pre-recorded backing vocals from the Pointless Sisters who couldn’t attend the performance in person. In addition to Snakefinger’s guitar and The Residents on an assortment of marimbas and xylophones, the band included Don Jackovich on drums and Adrian Deckbar on violin. Vileness Fats’s Arf & Omega put in an appearance performing Kick a Cat.

Bay Area readers, the Exploratorium is presenting the Residents’ Eskimo tonight!

A short video clip of “Oh Mummy! Oh Daddy!”:

 
Audio of the complete performance:

Posted by Oliver Hall
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10.16.2014
09:08 am
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The Residents covered Led Zeppelin in 1971!
06.30.2014
04:49 pm
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Although I suppose it’s better than being haunted by something by Cher, Kylie or Justin Bieber, I have to admit that I’m getting really sick of hearing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” wherever I turn. In restaurants. At supermarkets. The gas station. At Trader Joe’s. The airport. At red lights being pumped out of someone else’s car… You can’t escape. I know those new Led Zeppelin remasters are out, but it’s not like this song was exactly scarce before that!

Yikes, I need some mental floss… wait, I know…

Long before they covered The Beatles, Cannibal & the Headhunters, James Brown, Elvis, George Gershwin or Hank Williams, in 1971, the Residents rudely took on Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” (rechristened “Holelottadick” and letting the intention of Robert Plant’s lyrics really hang out there) on their unreleased (but widely bootlegged) Baby Sex album.

Baby Sex was once broadcast in its entirety on Oregon radio station KBOO-FM during their “Residents Radio Festival” in 1977. The album’s second side is an astonishing studio collage piece titled “Hallowed Be Thy Wean” which includes a live recording of The Residents at San Francisco’s Boarding House in October 1971 with Snakefinger, the first time that “The Residents” moniker was employed by the group.

Baby Sex also features a ripping cover of Frank Zappa’s “King Kong,” that could almost be the Mothers of Invention themselves playing. The Residents’ direct musical and sonic debt to Zappa (and Pink Floyd’s “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict,” for that matter, “sampled” at length in “Hallowed…”) becomes much more obvious after you’ve given Baby Sex a listen. (Original Mother Don Preston would later collaborate with The Residents on their epic Eskimo album).

Elsewhere on the album, the cryptic ones “steal this riff” from Tim Buckley’s “Down By The Borderline” (from Buckley’s Starsailor album, which was probably not so coincidentally released by Zappa’s Straight Records) and manage to sound like a geeky version of Santana!
 

 

The Residents live at The Boarding House in San Francisco, October, 1971

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.30.2014
04:49 pm
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Residents reissue features never before seen photos of their early studio. We’ve got a few of them.
03.28.2014
11:41 am
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Superior Viaduct, the excellent archivist label from whom you got your copies of Hardcore Devo Volume 1 and Volume 2—you DID pick those up, right?—is taking pre-orders for their forthcoming 2xLP rerelease of 1984’s Residue of the Residents, the compilation of outtakes and rarities that housed Residents essentials like “Shut Up! Shut Up!,” “Diskomo,” and their cover of “Jailhouse Rock”. The track listing encompasses both the original release and the long list of bonus songs included in the 1998 CD version Residue Deux, and the package will also feature a fine treat for the übergeeks: a number of never before seen photographs from the group’s first studio in San Francisco, the laboratory/sanctum where the early “Santa Dog” 2x7” (also being reissued by Viaduct next month) and their albums Meet The Residents and Third Reich ‘n’ Roll were recorded. Their early films were shot there, as well.
 

 
For the Residents in the early ‘70s, a dedicated, personal studio was no mere luxury, it was integral to the group’s concept and identity. It’s not just that it offered them the ability to maintain their tightly guarded anonymity, and it’s not just about the obvious creative and commercial freedoms that come with ownership of the means of cultural production. It’s that the Residents were intrinsically studio creatures in a way that was almost entirely novel in that era. I quote here from Chris Cutler’s insightful essay in his essential File Under Popular (and I’m putting out the call here for all to see, to whoever I lent my copy of that book—give it back, dammit):

The Residents belong to the story of the investigation of what is productively unique in the medium of recording. They came, not as composers or performers seeking to extend their skills, but as artists, in a crucial sense musically unattached but able to see—indeed fascinated by—the largely ignored potential of the new technology. The Residents were a group born, educated and nourished in the recording studio. And not unconsciously; it was because they quickly recognized what a studio was and how it could be used to compose, construct and carry from conception to completion soundworks that had little or nothing to do with played music that, at the first opportunity, they built their own. It was this insight that gave birth to ‘The Residents,’ and it is an indispensable key to the understanding of their work.

So yeah, dear reader, the Residents are important for reasons that have nothing to do with eyeball masks. They were amid the front guard of a drastic values shift that, among other positive outcomes, cleared a path for the likes of Devo.
 

 

 

 
Astute readers who also happen to be Residents fans going back a ways may recognize that last shot. That set was used both in their abandoned film project Vileness Fats and in the intro to their video for Third Reich and Roll.

Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?, part 1
 

Third Reich and Roll

Superior Viaduct on DM previously and previouslier

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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03.28.2014
11:41 am
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Residents mega-fan takes delivery of their $100,000 ‘Ultimate Box Set’
10.24.2013
05:41 pm
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Last year The Residents announced their “Ultimate Box Set,” an actual refrigerator filled with 154 Residents multimedia products including first pressings of practically every album, single, video, DVD, and CD-ROM they’ve produced in their long career. And more! The box set’s pièce de résistance, though, and the thing that justifies most of the price, is a genuine Residents eyeball mask.

“The Residents’ Ultimate Box Set” would only set the buyer back a cool $100,000…

But (apparently) they’ve sold one, as was announced back in September by the Cryptic Corporation’s Homer Flynn, to someone called “Tripmonster,” who lives in Bloomington, Indiana. Now it’s been delivered and the delivery was shot for an upcoming Residents documentary with the working title Theory of Obscurity.

Via NBC Bay Area News:

“For The Residents, the delivery of their “Ultimate Box Set” was both a profound and satisfying experience,” Flynn said. “The expression of joy on the face of Tripmonster, as he held Mr. Green, the eyeball mask from his UBS, was worth every minute of their 40-year existence.”

“This past weekend we captured a phenomenal event for our film Theory of Obscurity,” documentary director Don Hardy said. “The Residents’ “Ultimate Box Set” is a living testament to the amazing creative output that these one-of-a-kind artists have had over the past 40 years. Seeing all of their creations in one place was fantastic and so was meeting the proud owners of what has to be the coolest refrigerator ever made.”

 

 
Below, the trailer for Theory of Obscurity. With all of the amazing material they’ve produced over the years to draw from, as this brief clip ably demonstrates, this should be a really fun film:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.24.2013
05:41 pm
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Ke$ha rips off The Residents?
06.19.2013
02:48 pm
Topics:
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During a recent concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, pop singer Ke$ha performed her song “Blah Blah Blah” with six backup dancers dressed in The Residents’ iconic imagery of tuxedo-wearing eyeball heads sporting top hats

Although The Residents haven’t used that look onstage for some time, it’s practically their logo… What gives?

The NBC Bay Area website canvassed reaction on The Residents’ Facebook page:

Some fans think it’s an outrage, including Sara Creamcheese Brandau. “I’m not a naturally litigious person but if you can sue her you really should. Unless you guys are, honored by this tribute? Alright, I gotta throw up,” Brandau posted.

Others, like John H. Felix, don’t see a problem. “Fans of a band who have been maniacally appropriating pop culture for their own needs complain about musician appropriating band for her own needs, film at 11,” Felix posted.

Rick Gawel said, “She’s using the eyeballs and tuxes, so what? If it were Primus, who are huge Residents fans and have played with them, people would probably be OK with it.”

Chris Mathew, who shot the video, said he think Ke$sha is a Residents’ fan herself. “If I had to guess, Ke$ha’s secretly a fan of their [The Residents] stuff… the way she introduced everything, it sounded like she was trying to shoehorn eyeballs into the equation.  And then, viola!  Residents dancers,” Mathew said.

“They were so accurate that, for a second, I thought it was really The Residents onstage and this was just their latest stunt.  But then they started moving wayyyy too young-like for that to be the case.”

Loving homage or rip-off, the idea of Ke$ha being a big Residents fan seems likely since she was also seen wearing a Duck Stab! tee-shirt on her MTV reality show.

One fan, Neal Burgess, wondered if “Maybe Kesha bought 5 of those Ultimate Boxed Sets?”
 

 
H/T WFMU on Twitter

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.19.2013
02:48 pm
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Buy or die! The Residents release ‘The Ultimate Box Set’ for only $100,000
12.07.2012
02:42 pm
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When you search for images of “the residents” and “christmas” you get mostly depressing pics from old folks homes.
 
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of their first record release, 1972’s “Santa Dog” 45, The Residents are putting out the Ultimate Box Set which includes practically everything they’ve ever done and more, even a replica of one of the eyeball masks!

On Christmas Day, the set—it all comes packed inside of a 28 cubic ft. refrigerator—will go on sale at The Residents website. The $100,000 package includes the first issue of every Residents album, 45, CD, CD-ROM, video and DVD in the group’s 40-year career—even the stuff on dead formats, I’d guess—including the festive 2012 Residents’ Christmas single.

“Have a bake sale. Break open those penny jars. Sell a goddamn kidney if you have to,” Residents lead singer “Randy” suggests in the infomercial.

The Residents are selling just ten of these “box sets.” If all ten sell, that’ll add up to one million dollars for “Randy,” “Chuck” and “Bob.” There’s even a special “mystery box” edition that sells for, gulp, $5 million.

In honor of their 40th anniversary, The Residents will be embarking on their “Wonder of Weird” twenty date tour in January (I saw them on their 13th Anniversary Tour. Christ I’m getting old).

“Randy Rose,” lead singer for The Residents, hosts an infomercial where the group presents its entire catalog of music in an uplifting once-in-a-lifetime offer:
 

 
Thank you Chris Campion!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.07.2012
02:42 pm
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Holelottadick: The Residents do a rude Led Zeppelin cover, 1971
06.04.2012
12:18 pm
Topics:
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image
 
Long before they covered The Beatles, Cannibal & the Headhunters, James Brown, Elvis, George Gershwin or Hank Williams, in 1971, the Residents rudely took on Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” (rechristened “Holelottadick” and letting the intention of Robert Plant’s lyrics really hang out there) on their unreleased (but widely bootlegged) Baby Sex album.

Baby Sex was once broadcast in its entirety on Oregon radio station KBOO-FM during their “Residents Radio Festival” in 1977. The album’s second side is an astonishing studio collage piece titled “Hallowed Be Thy Wean” which includes a live recording of The Residents at San Francisco’s Boarding House in October 1971 with Snakefinger, the first time that “The Residents” moniker was employed by the group.

Baby Sex also features a ripping cover of Frank Zappa’s “King Kong,” that could almost be the Mothers of Invention playing. The Residents’ direct musical and sonic debt to Zappa (and Pink Floyd’s “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict,” for that matter, “sampled” at length in “Hallowed…”) becomes much more obvious after you’ve given Baby Sex a listen. (Original Mother Don Preston would later collaborate with The Residents on their epic 1977 Eskimo album).

Elsewhere on the album, the cryptic ones “steal this riff” from Tim Buckley’s “Down By The Borderline” (from Buckley’s Starsailor album, which was released by Zappa’s Straight Records) and manage to sound like a geeky version on Santana.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.04.2012
12:18 pm
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Beyond The Valley of a Day in The Life: The Beatles play the Residents (and vice versa)
04.24.2012
11:47 am
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Long before there was “Love,” Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas spectacular set to a score of Beatles mash-ups, and even before there was Danger Mouse’s illegal Grey Album,—a meeting of the minds between The White Album and Jay-Z’s’s Black Album—an earlier and far more radical deconstruction of the Beatles’ oeuvre was done by the Residents.

This was not The Residents first stab at the skewering the Fab Four—their 1974 debut album, Meet The Residents, featured a demented pastiche of the first Beatles album cover that John Lennon was apparently quite fond of. Knowing of course, that they were foolishly risking an expensive lawsuit for copyright infringement this time out, The Residents released the song on a 7-inch record, in a limited edition of just 500 singles, as “The Beatles Play The Residents & The Residents Play The Beatles,” in 1977.

The A-side, “Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life,” contains about twenty Beatles samples, one from John Lennon and a line from one of their fan club only Christmas messages. The B-side was the Residents cover of “Flying” which they chose because it was one of the only Beatles songs (along with “Dig It”) attributed to all four members.

Folklore at the time imagined the Residents as the Beatles reformed undercover, making a mockery of their back catalog. The two songs were available at one point as CD extra tracks, but now it looks like they’ve been withdrawn.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.24.2012
11:47 am
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God of Darkness: The Residents’ amazing ‘Mole Show’ concert, Madrid 1983
04.12.2012
11:16 am
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“Ignorance of your culture is not considered cool.”—The Residents

I’ve been listening to The Residents a lot recently, so expect some Residents-related posts here in the coming days/weeks. You have been warned.

To kick things off right, here’s a fantastic, little-known record of their 1982-83 “Mole Show” tour, the live unveiling of The Residents on the world concert stage. “The Mole Show” was a progrock opera that began with their Mark of the Mole album in 1981, but was never really finished, unless the band was just pulling our legs.

Like The Gun Club material I posted earlier this week, this footage comes from the Spanish TV show La Edad de Oro and was taped in Madrid and broadcast originally on Jul 21, 1983.

Here’s the gist of what is going on here, via The Residents.com

The Story So Far: The Mohelmot people live underground in the desert in gigantic ant-like colonies. They are primitive and superstitious. Music has a ritualistic purpose that supports their love of darkness and their belief in work. A quirky storm causes water to fill their holes and forces them to cross the desert to seek another land. On the coast they meet the jolly Chubs who seem eager to welcome the exotic “Moles.” Soon it is apparent that the welcome has more to do with cheap labor than true acceptance. The Chub culture as reflected through their music is superficial and pleasure oriented. Tension eventually mounts [due to a scientist who invents a machine that makes the Mole’s work unnecessary—RM] and a form of war breaks out between the two groups. As usual, war solves nothing. Time passes. The Mohelmot are forbidden to use their language due to deeply paranoid Chub fears. Racial intermarriage has created a new lifeform referred to as a “Cross.” A pop group of Cross youth named “The Big Bubble” creates a sensation by singing in the forbidden Mohelmot tongue. The singer is jailed and begins to see himself as the new Messiah of traditional “Zinkenites.” The Zinkenite wished to form a new Mohelmot nation. Truth be known, the singer is merely a naïve puppet of an aggressive Cross named Kula Bocca. In fact, Bocca arranged the arrest just to stir up trouble. The story abruptly ends, but there is plenty of basis for a dynamic conclusion, if The Residents ever get around to it.

The audio/visual quality here is top notch, but the camerawork is pedestrian at best. All of the cameramen are holding wide shots. It cuts from one wide to another slightly more or less wide shot, throughout.
 
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Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.12.2012
11:16 am
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