Being an experimental art and media project, researching The Residents is one of the strangest but most interesting experiences you can have online. I don’t think we’ve even touched the the tip of the iceberg on this one. Their whole project appears to be at once a riddle, a hoax and some kind of high concept obscurantism. To quote from liner notes of the album below, “The Residents don’t support racism, Catholicism, fascism, Judaism, cynicism, realism or journalism.”
the brain-numbing catchiness of pop music is fascism in disguise
The Residents are an avant-garde music and visual arts group largely shrouded in mystery and myth. They formed in 1969 but after several decades in music business, and still actively creating and producing to this day, they have never revealed their names or faces. Their best known device for preserving their anonymity has been covering their heads with giant eyeballs tastefully accented with top hats and tuxedos. On trying to find names for the constituent members of the band you are met with a cryptic message of: ‘If the question is “what are the names the parents gave to the people making up The Residents,” then I would say that those names belong to individuals and not the group. The group doesn’t have names within its structure. If the question is the real “who,” meaning the philosophy and outlook, then that is all clearly stated in the work. I would find it difficult to summarize.’ However the same official website does helpfully surmise that the people who started the group are exactly the same as now although the number of people who have been in The Residents is probably over a hundred at this point and still growing. The FAQ of the website (how many bands have a frequently asked questions page?) explains the disguises and refusal to be subjected to interviews thus: ‘Say you have a tank of goldfish. Say you have given each goldfish a name. A stranger wanders into your house and sees your tank of goldfish and wants to know who they are. Considering that he is a stranger, you tell him it is a tank of goldfish.’
Meet The Residents
Like any artist there is early work. However, they consider anything released prior to 1974 as not being by The Residents, but by people who later became The Residents. They claim some older, unfinished and experimental recordings were stolen from studios and a demo tape sent to Warner Brothers was stolen and bootlegged (and now easy to find on the internet). Legend has it that the group sent this reel-to-reel tape to an acquaintance of Captain Beefheart at Warner Brothers, which was sent back with a rejection letter to “the residents” of the house (giving the band their name). As is true for all artists not just The Residents, they prefer not to release stuff that is unsatisfactory or they feel does not represent them. However, the band obviously appreciate the flaws for the beauty they might contain as they still offer many pre-1974 recordings for sale.
Intermission
Historically, one of The Residents primary obsessions has been the creation of “alternative worlds”. This is usually accomplished with sound, often with live performance and sometimes with video. Their most renowned video project is the world of Vileness Fats. The unfinished film consists of a village, a cave, a desert and a nightclub, populated by one armed midgets. The group spent four years between 1972 and 1976 shooting most of the feature length video. As the project headed towards the final stages of production they suddenly abandoned its “all time underground masterpiece”. The dissolution of the production was put down to internal conflicts, technological challenges and post-production problems. Others point to the fact that, since there were no distribution channels for half inch black and white video in 1976, the group’s original naiveté was finally overcome by reality. There are two versions of the unfinished picture Whatever Happened to Vilenes Fats? and Vileness Fats (Concentrate). Both come across as artifacts from some sort of hellish yet mildly amusing nightmare
Demons dance alone
Much of The Residents work can be challenging but a few titles are particularly so. Their early albums have been compared to Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa’s more conceptual and experimental albums as well as the work of Steve Reich. The music consists of deconstructions of countless rock and non-rock styles which are grafted together to create chaotic and formless compositions. You can download The Third Reich ‘n’ Roll here. It is their second (officially) released album and is a parody of 60s pop music and commercials. The album generated much controversy due to its cover (seen above) featuring a popular TV entertainer of the day (Dick Clark, presenter of American Bandstand – the first US national rock program) dressed in Nazi regalia holding a carrot while surrounded by swastikas and pictures of Adolf Hitler in both male and female dress. The German version of the album was marketed in the 1980s which heavily censored the cover art by covering every Nazi reference with the word “zensiert”. The original album contained only two tracks of intense, deconstructed versions of hits of the day. The band found themselves isolated from mainstream bland radio friendly rock, and soon concluded they had created an album about fascism and in particular, the fascism of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s bizarre collection that will appeal to adventurous listeners who are interested in Picasso’s dictum that all artists kill their aesthetic fathers. Find more outsider music here.
I found her crying in the morning
Sitting in a chair
She was wrapping something up
And wrapping it with care
I did not mean to hurt her
When I fell asleep last night
I was just exhausted
From the act of being polite
Yes, I was just exhausted
From the act of being polite
There is a freak-folk revival occurring at the moment in the form of bands like Grizzly Bear, Animal Collective and Yeasayer – people are trying everything, stuff that wasn’t necessarily cool a few years ago. Andre Bumrocks and Jason Evans of Hey Convict! have linked to create a mix of spaced-out jams with an interstellar groove that harks back yet is essentially à la mode to a sound without scene or definable genre. Australians in former lives, the duo have called NYC home for several moons, respectively cultivating insane record collections shared through transcendental online archives (see bumrocks.com). Abstract themes of transgression, outsider art and the occult are used to create a cinematic feel throughout the mix. Moving through the pounding rock side of disco to loose afro-rock, metallic clang, desert dirge, synth overloads and accented by sound collages with spoken word mysteriousness – the mix is a meditative journey into the dark eye of the mind. Turn on, tune in and drop out to this – to be listened to loud and under the influence. The physical release comes with a 7″ record of custom re-edits from the mix and an original composition, 300 of which are pressed on purple vinyl and are randomly circulating throughout mail and retail orders. Needless to say – we can’t recommend it enough.
The next exciting phase and evolution of the Purple Brain life cycle is a hand crocheted case in three dimensional life size brain form, containing the 7″, CD and poster. There are only ten in existence.
The contract rider includes specifications on stage design, sound systems, lighting rigs, as well as an artist’s wish list – from transportation and billing to dressing room accommodations and meals. In some cases, a promoter will refuse a demand (crossing out the request on the document), though stars usually get what they want, whether it’s clean boxer shorts (Jane’s Addiction), a large selection of top-shelf liquors (Frank Sinatra), or an arrangement of adult magazines i.e. Penthouse, Playboy (Guns N’ Roses). Thankfully, Bob Dylan’s is refreshingly understated…
How many towels must a singer-songwriter have?
The Smoking Gun has what many consider to be the Holy Grail, the most famous rider of them all, the one in which Van Halen stipulated that brown M & M’s were to be banished from the band’s dressing room. The 1982 Van Halen World Tour rider is type-written and 53 pages long. The document containing the M & M stipulation contains some other unique demands including “herring in sour cream” and “One (1) large tube of KY Jelly”. The rider has been described as an example of rock and roll excess, the outlandish demands of multimillionaires. However, the group say these provisions were included to ensure the promoters actually read the lengthy rider. They surmised that if brown M & M’s were in the candy bowl backstage, then more important aspects of a performance – lighting, staging, security and ticketing may have been botched by an inattentive promoter.
'Van hell of a rider
A personal favourite is the requests for Iggy and the Stooges. It goes to 18 pages in total and is a rambling but hilarious take on the tour rider. Demands for an “English language newspaper like the New York Times, Miami Herald or a copy of USA today that’s got a story about morbidly obese people in it,” sit alongside “1 x case of big bottles of big, premium beer. You decide. But remember, I might ask you to taste a bottle so buy something nice! Here’s a clue – it probably won’t start with a letter ‘B’ and end with ‘udweiser’” and “2 bottles of smooth, full-bodied, Bordeaux type red wine. Probably French. And something we’ve heard of, but still can’t pronounce.” As far as food goes: “Dinner for Iggy and two other people should be available at the venue or local restaurant, after the show local cuisine is acceptable (i.e. local food for local people) or steak / chicken, endangered species (excluding moths or anything really cute), snake, whale, nurse shark (nurse on the side just in case. Well we could get bitten couldn’t we?).”
Have a read of page 13 – stipulating how the band feel about video recording of their performances…
