The Residents: C/D;S&D

I'm not sure they were trying to purposely parody Gershwin/James Brown, because they actually have a sincere reverence for them. I guess anything they cover is going to sound pretty strange. But anyway, I saw a show on their latest tour, for Demons Dance Alone, and surprisingly, the lead Resident had a poignant story about meeting James Brown as a child. Apparently, Brown and his entourage needed help with directions after a show, and the Resident guy and his friends helped them out, and when Brown thanked them, it was one of the most treasured moments of his life - but to Brown, it probably was just like any other day. It was an oddly personal moment in the show, which is ironic since of course we (supposedly) don't know who the Resident is or what his face looks like. Then some idiot in the audience shouted out "James Brown stole the eyeball!".

listening to "3rd r&r" made me realise that i was only just old enough to know some of those songs, but i found all the versions of songs i knew very funny, particularly "light my fire" and "sympathy for 'hey jude'", and i found the "eskimo" soundscapes inevitably comical, even if i wasn't strictly meant to. For me, my first "fake ethnic" album.

and forgot to mention, i've found the slightly out-of-tune analog attack of DS/B&Gs "Birthay Boy" perfect for anonymous answering machine birthday messages

It is terrible. They've carved up the original Warner Brothers Album tapes into horrible 4/4 loops, which they drop piecemeal & meaninglessly on top of some of the most tasteless drum loops imaginable. Like a drum library CDROM from 1999. Bad bad progressive house. It's a real disappointment. Two or three tracks are nearly okay, but it's so frustrating to have them put this out instead of the original tapes.

'Warner Brothers Album', is apparently a 40 minute edited tape with 39 songs on it, edited from long group jams. I haven't heard that, but have a cassette dub of a 60 minute master reel that obviously contains elements that ended up on it, their versions of 'strawberry fields forever', 'maggie's farm', 2 versions of 'i hear you got religion', 3 versions of 'oh mommy oh daddy can't you see that it's true', etc. It's one mic in a room catching them playing, no overdubs, then spliced together onto a master reel. And while the vocals are maniacal, the young singing resident in full force, what's interesting is how normal they sound; they're just a bunch of maniacs in san mateo in 1970 'freaking out'. It also puts the myth to the idea that they can't play their instruments; they're not 'tight', but the guy on guitar can play quite well. Clearly, they had two options; to tighten up further, or 'unlearn' their instruments and figure out how to play them in new ways. 'Warner Brothers Album' is for fanatics only, but there are a lot of Residents fanatics out there, and it's wonderful to hear the roots of the band. At least as valuable as hearing the Beatles Hamburg tapes. Even the 'Get Back' sessions.

'Baby Sex' is a different matter altogether. It is a masterpiece, as good as any of the released studio albums and it's kind of upsetting to me that they haven't released an intact edition of it yet. Sections of it have been released on various limited edition fan club CDs through the 90's (the two Liver discs, the Snakefinger tribute and the 'History Mystery' disc of 'Huddled Masses'.) 'Hallowed Be Thy Ween'.

Douglas says above that the Residents work are very inconsistent, but I don't think that's true at all; I think they were absolutely solid from 1972-1981, every album, every ep, every single. In 1981 two core members left, leaving only the singing resident and the composing resident, and a lot of new MIDI hardware and sampling synthesizers; from 1981 onward, the discography grows spotty and the album concepts obviously come before the production of the actual music, the music is manufactured to order as an afterthought.

I have heard just about all the later stuff. I still like parts of 'Tunes of Two Cities', the Sousa side of 'Stars n Hank Forever', and a few tracks from 'Our Finest Flowers'. The 2 CD set 'Live at the Fillmore' documents the 1997 25th anniversary concerts, and has superior live versions of things from 'freak show' and 'gingerbread man', and ends with their fairly incredible cover of 'We Are The World'. The 'Liver' series has some great 70's tracks.

The absolute best best thing they've done since 1981 was their tribute to Snakefinger, 'Snakey Wake'.

oh, also any recording of the '13th Anniversary' show has good sections; generous helpings of Snakefinger. and the James Brown side of 'George and James' sounds _incredible_ when you play it at 45 rpm.

also, wanted to make it clear that I'm not the person responsible for filesharing the WB album; I received the tapes with the promise not to copy them and I've complied. But I'm personally very happy they've turned up online.

I saw them in I guess about 1990 on the King And Eye tour, which was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I liked that album, too, but haven't heard it in about a decade. The Residents are a group I respect a lot, but hardly ever want to actually listen to for pleasure.

also, their 90's CD ROMS set a very high, very strange standard for early interactive media.

Man, those CD-ROMs blew my mind (well, Freak Show and Bad Day on the Midway; Gingerbread Man isn't as interesting). The story of Ted in Midway - making artificial moths out of detritus, wanting to destroy ugliness in the world, then eventually hanging himself because he concludes that he is part of the ugliness - I mean, good lord. Wow. (This is a game?). And the "Harry the Head" story and the Human Mole story in Freak Show...amazing. A disembodied head on the floor, painting angels on a woman's skirt with a paintbrush in his mouth - I like that.

milton wrote: from 1981 onward, the discography grows spotty and the album concepts obviously come before the production of the actual music, the music is manufactured to order as an afterthought.

Yes...and this is a HUGE philosophical shift, for the band. Their lyrical songwriting got better and better, but their music became a lower priority. The epitome of this is God in Three Persons, the lyrics of which are so meticulously written...but the music is probably the dullest and most uninspired of any Residents album. They had forgotten the "Theory of Phonetic Organization":

http://www.rzweb.net/collab/n-senada.html#phonetic

Quote: According to this theory the musician should put the sounds first, building the music up from them rather than developing the music then working down to the sounds that make it up.

You can easily imagine how this theory was used to make music in the earlier days, like "Smelly Tongues" or Eskimo.

You're missing a real return to form with Wormwood and Demons Dance Alone then - best stuff they've done (that I've heard) since The Commercial Album (except possibly God In Three Persons).

Is that fact - because I think the singing Resident IS the composing Resident and that, musically, The Residents is now a one man band. In fact, I think what you have in The Residents now is the musical Resident and the design/multimedia Resident. I could be wrong of course.

I can't be positive, but I'm pretty sure, both from reliable conversation and listening to the records. Listen to 'Stars and Hank' for the clearest example, it's basically a split solo album, each getting a full side.

put on WB:RMX again last night. it's not quite as terrible as I initially thought, it's just that the drum loops are so repellent I couldn't hear through them, there are some interesting things going on if you give it time. still, fans only.

from http://www.jahsonic.com/PierreSchaeffer.html

He also described the composer of musique concrete as one who"...Takes his point of departure the objets sonore, the sound objects, which are the equivalent of visual images, and which therefore alter the procedures of musical composition completely...The Concrete experiment in music consists of building sonorous objects, not with the play of numbers and seconds of the metronome, but with pieces of time torn from the cosmos." (3)

Those '70s albums seem to take apparently seperate 'tracks' within songs and use them as layers, and by then blurring them, twisting them, deftly tweaking the whole nervous system going right up and especially right down the octaves with those beautifully warm tones, these are masterful displays of synth playing, both virtuosity and creativity.

that those 'songs' can have very sharp noises and very curvy noises co-existing with so much else often going on in the mix, i say the residents were quite a way ahead of Kraftwerk (who spring to mind as aprox. peers). The Kraftwerk work rate just doesn't compare to the Residents. So many deft tweakings per song ! Such precision with bass width and sequencing. ! Humour ! Cultural critique ! One of the earliest 'indie' labels !

my point: Stereolab can get as much timbral twist, but they can't wrench as much humour or perversely human/ alien width-of-purpose out of the same machines.
That New Order became the poster people for the post-analog MIDI sound really evidences how retarded synth music became with the new polyphonic toys of the '80s. The wretched 'chorus' effect -- i first saw one on a synth on the Juno 6 and listening to that synth it really sounded like it sucked. Reverb and chorus and the implicit overtone rich chorus-like impact of polyphony itself, as used by Van Halen and New Order (two very similar sounding bands), these early '80s 'digital synth' moments, they have a tenth of the warmth and none of that continual musical rates-of-change sound that make the '70s residents records _the_ synth pop records for the technologies of the times, and still charming and unique (antique as any '60s psych band is saying nothing).

How ironic that people buy analog synths on eBay today precisely to try and regain that level of control the residents always had, and that the '80s and '90s were blighted by digital synths, with all the noises pretty much sounding the same, all the while the digital synths seen as 'progress'.
(or more importantly, except for a couple of brian eno records, there are no other '70s 'art pop' records containing the sheer sonic detail and invention of the residents artful displays of synth virtuosity and inspiration)

and if you can think of other music with as much timbral artfulness per-beat,
tell me about it please :
(here will do)

somehow the residents got their records distributed. i suppose they were any early college radio favourite. if it is satire or parody, it's not as if that feels predominant or forced. it's nice to think of the residents existing out of CA in the US since the times of Nixon, and managing to annoy him. sound effects are a guilty pleasure, but i do find them danceable. the faster material is earlier in their career. i like that some of them have been around doing that in one form or another for this length of time. like some running gag. i think critics sometimes find it easier to beat up on things that are meant to be funny, but there is still generally goodwill for the residents, even if fans sometimes feel a little let down. i think there's enough fun stuff to happily outweigh their bad stuff.

THE RESIDENTS
BRAND NEW ALBUM RELEASE
ANIMAL LOVER - OUT 14th FEBRUARY 2005

"Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate in their object-relations." - Sigmund Freud

The Residents have announced details of a brand new album, their first for Mute, to be released on Valentine's Day 2005. "Animal Lover" follows the 25th Anniversary re-release of the Commercial Album in the Autumn of 2004.

When Charles Darwin first proposed in the late 1800's that homo sapiens had evolved from and were in fact a species of animal, many humans were horrified. Humans had an unusual need to feel superior, something their fellow animal associates had never quite understood. When Sigmund Freud, a few years later, destroyed the accepted opposition between sanity and madness by locating "normality" on a sliding scale, the poor humans were even more shocked. Taking a step beyond Darwin, Freud believed that the human was an animal in conflict, and informing the human of that very simple concept seemed to only increase the conflict.

In The Residents' "Animal Lover", the creatures who don't really mind if they are animals take an existential look at the upright animal whose normality is sliding toward the wrong end of the spectrum. The human beasts live in a world of primal darkness, their heads forever stuck in the ground like frightened ostriches living in a constant murky dream state.

In creating this picture book of animal tales, The Residents wanted to include a soundtrack that related directly to "animal love." The result is an imaginative CD whose rhythm tracks are based entirely on animal noise mating patterns generated primarily by cicadas and frogs. Also the actual sounds of mating whales and humans were used for longer tonal passages. They weren't mating with each other, by the way.

So the world is filled with tubular entities. Food goes in one end and shit comes out the other. Sperm goes in and babies come out. It's all we've got. That and love.

Animal Lover is released on Mute on 14th February 2005.

The Residents Bog

Of course if the collection had been compiled more recently and included material from Demons Dance Alone and Wormwood (and also didn't fail to include anything from the God In Three Persons album, which is a strangely indefensible omission too imho) it might help to remedy the impression of the material gradually deteriorating in quality as you move backwards though time.

I love the Concentrates on Our Huddled Masses (especially the one for Reich). The editing in some places is so dense that they almost qualify as new pieces. In any case the 4 CD version is worth $60 for the 15 minute excerpt from Baby Sex alone.

That said, I think they're awful--I mean I have respect for anyone trying to do anti-music, and they succeed. But I don't mean it as a compliment; it's not only anti-music but anti-anti-music. I find them very, very puerile, and their later stuff seems infused with some sort of melancholia I don't think they earn at all. My buddy here listens to a lot of stuff I don't like, many things I do, and he's always draggin' out the Residents or the Firesign Theater (not the classic '60s stuff but their later shit, which is just actively unfunny). And I feel the same way about the Residents--they're not funny, their videos are totally geeky (except for the very early short ones), they're a total one-joke band. That whole thing with the eyeballs is just totally lame, they should've stopped that shit years ago. I think they're from Shreveport or somewhere--well, I say Louisiana's pop combo John Fred and His Playboy Band were both more avant-garde and certainly more listenable.

However, I kinda like "Eskimo," in a way; but none of it is anything I listen to for pleasure

Not to mention funnier. The Residents couldn't pull off "Judy in Disguise" if their eyeballs depended on it.

Obviously, they had a certain style. But that's an easy (and inaccurate) criticism that someone might make about any comedians that they didn't happen to like. I mean, if someone didn't like the Marx Brothers, couldn't they make the same allegation?

It's not true of the Residents, anyway. Just thinking of the first album, "Boots" is not the same joke as "Smelly Tongues," which is not the same joke as "Rest Aria," which is not the same joke as "Spotted Pinto Bean," which is not the same joke as "Seasoned Greetings," etc.

No, sorry, I just expressed myself badly - I think / agree that (with the notable exception of the album God In Three Person, which isn't represented on the comp.) there is a distinct overall downward trend between about 1980 and 1997 (when Our Tired Our Poor Our Huddled Masses came out)

"So how would more recent music correct this impression, as you suggest?"

I think 1998's Wormwood and 2002's Demons Dance Alone are major returns to form both in terms of both quality and "relevance" (or, at least, contemporaneity).

Early tapes make it clear that they actually can play instruments, they just made a point of taking instrumental technique apart at the exact moment the rest of pop was calcifying into stadium rock gloss & empty virtuosity. Taking the formulas of glossy, shallow pop, and making it all gloriously ugly and wrong, but still recognizable. And sometimes, so utterly, bafflingly wrong that it comes out far more mysterious and beautiful.

Beautiful Residents: Not Available, Eskimo and "Six Things To A Cycle", the main theme of which is probably my favorite thing they've ever done.

http://www.theresidents.co.uk/articles/books/art_cutler.html

An extraordinarily large number of people have described Trout Mask Replica as ".... possibly the worst album I've ever heard"; so it's entirely possible that - at least as far as I'm concerned - your description may be the highest possible accolade.

It goes for upwards of $50 used when you can find it these days, I should have xeroxed my friend's copy...

http://www.rzweb.org/books/sonic.html

40-something rock critics are loving the album though, so who knows. (I don't think most Residents fans are 21 years old.)

The current live band is incredibly killer!!!

https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/hardy-fox-the-residents/

funny you should bump this, I'm actually pretty mad at them for leaning into their pro-NFT stance:

From the office of The Cryptic Corporation:
The Cryptic Corporation has recently learned of a negative backlash over the offer of NFTs based on DUCK STAB! Alive!, The Residents’ recent appearance on Night Flight +. Fortunately, The Residents DO NOT engage with social media, the great evil polluting the culture with endless and unaccountable negative energy. The Cryptic Corporation has long relished its role of shielding, protecting and enabling these artists and will continue to do so.

That said, GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!

No one beneath the Cryptic umbrella is getting rich, but we do like to pay our bills. The Residents have had FIVE TOURS canceled, postponed and/or rescheduled in the past two years. During that time, The band was invited to revisit DUCK STAB! as part of Night Flight’s 40th Anniversary celebration; the group was happy to accept and the video has received universal acclaim, but the production expense was far greater than we have recouped. A few months later, Cryptic was approached by the video’s collaborators with the idea of creating a limited series of NFTs with the hope of recovering a portion of these expenses.

It’s hard to see this as a greedy or unreasonable position, but we do live in a capitalist culture that offers infinite choices in terms of where one spends their disposable income. No one is being forced to buy anything, but if you don’t like our products, please take your money and spend it somewhere else.

Thanks
Homer Flynn
The Cryptic Corporation

my response, from a comment to a friend:

man what a bummer. old guy doubles down on wrong decision, news at 11. maybe Negativland could offer some pointers, I just saw their tour in November. and yes, I will take my money elsewhere, especially after that disastrously brickwalled "expanded remaster" series.

i cant imagine getting upset at them for this who cares

I do, because NFTs are a scam and suck

also they haven;t made a good album since 1980

yes they have. wormwood is awesome. freakshow is sick. their current live line up is the best one since cube-e. they are awesome. nfts are a scam so dont buy one? im sure people said cd roms are a fad.

homer isnt here saying NFTS ARE AWESOME THEY ARE THE FUTURE INVEST INVEST INVEST he's like "dude i need to pay the bills so please be understanding when i get an opportunity that someone wants to give me money for stuff" this is this dude's day job and he has people on the payroll. negativeland isn't a good comparison.

i've not followed the NFT threads on here but have been party to a lot of discussions elsewhere about how NFTs might be subverted into something that isn't a scam and doesn't suck. i guess time will tell. but, i don't think i have an issue with the residents paying some bills from selling NFTs. who is gettimg scammed there?

the buyers, I imagine.

and NFTs are bad because all blockchain technology is bad, there's nothing about the excessive energy usage that can be reformed

that shit has erased literally all the gains solar made w/r/t CO2 emissions over the last decade, god damn right I'm pissed off at these credulous senile motherfuckers

I love both of you guys and would FAP anytime but I am really so mad about this, I'm just gonna unbookmark

ok ilu2 but i already wrote this stuff xpost!

man it's expensive to put on a residents show. the costumes, the sound, the films. its a whole production!

and you are no longer choosing to support one of america's best long running avant garde musical troupes that has never been backed by any corporate money, has been a 100% diy since day 1 independently run effort, mostly by two guys that love to create, but now just one since his best friend died and who has lost thousands and thousands of dollars that they depend on to live because of covid cancelling their tours because... their fans choose to support them? look that's the free market and you're free to do whatever but i feel like your anger is misplaced here and nfts have become an easy thing to hate on. yah they are stupid. big deal. (i made fun of bitcoin when it first came out btw and also im poor).

but ok if they fuckin up the earth than ok

agreed and that's the reason i have declined to get involved with them. i still hold out some hope that there is something positive within the NFT idea that can be co-opted in a non blockchain environment to make artist payments fairer and instantaneous. that of course could be utopian thinking.

They did put out that $100k box set in a fridge, so this kind of seems like a Residentsy thing to do imo. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be mad about it, mind you, just that this one doesn't surprise or shock me.

ks, you should still be making fun of bitcoin.

while NFTs suck and are irredeemable, I do admit that it is, as emily says, a very Residentsy thing to do. I guess I can be a little more forgiving when it's a band that's gone out of its way to sell as few records as possible

this discussion and the Spotify discussion go hand in hand - musicians get paid shit for streaming (and often the label just takes it all), and we're on Year 3 of a pandemic which has stopped most bands from touring, so what exactly are they expected to do?

HE RESIDENTS, NELS CLINE, JOSH FREESE AND IVA BITTOVÁ HIGHLIGHT POLYHEDREN COLLABORATIVE MUSIC PROJECT PSYCHIC FROM COMPOSER AND PRODUCER DREN McDONALD

Streaming/Sales Profits Benefit Bay Area Music Project, an After School Music Education non-Profit Program that Brings Music Lessons to Children who Otherwise Couldn’t Afford Them
...The collaborations for this project started organically, with McDonald seeking out vocalists for the first few singles. As momentum began to build around the release of the singles, he decided to extend the project and release a full length. Next he reached out to friends The Residents and Josh Freese to take part. Because Freese had always been a Residents fan, McDonald saw an opportunity for further collaboration. In fact, the song “Sixteen Gold Candles” was the result of sending files back and forth for many months.

While Dren has collaborated with The Residents many times in the past, it had never been with music. He’d helped design limited edition releases, tour merchandise, stage managed and even been on stage with them - as a costumed glob of human jello! While The Residents remain anonymous (50 years since their inception), they don’t tend to collaborate with too many other artists. They just don’t see ‘eye to eye’ with a lot of other folks, so it was definitely a special occasion to be able to bring about a collaboration that involved them and someone of Freese’s talent. Josh’s latest record, “Just A Minute, Vol. 1” (Loosegroove) is a record of 1 minute songs (perhaps inspired by The Residents’ Commercial Album of all 1 minute songs), including “The Ghost of Hardy Fox” (Hardy Fox was revealed as one of The Residents after he passed in 2018). Freese is no stranger to creating musical oddities, as he’s also been a consistent collaborator with Devo, Nine Inch Nails, Danny Elfman, A Perfect Circle, Weezer, and The Replacements.
...The resulting full-length polyheDren album collaboration is a shared musical vision that lies somewhere between funk, electronic, post-rock and world music with each guest artist revealing an unexpected performance to each track. Track listing as follows:

1. Two Sweet Sixteens and Four Weddings (feat. Rini)
2. Tethys Express (Album Mix) (Feat. Rini)
3. Sixteen Gold Candles (Feat. The Residents & Josh Freese)
4. Film Stars (Album Mix) (Feat. Moorea Dickason & Daria Novo)
5. Lonely Lullaby (feat. Iva Bittova)
6. Scorpions a Lot (feat. Nels Cline & Rini)
7. Buckaroo Moon (Album Mix) (feat. Sangin Sara & Daria Novo)
8. Planted a Flower (Album Mix) (feat. Ali Paris & Misha Khalikulov)
9. NelsScorpions Altered a Lot (feat. Nels Cline & Rini)

Polyhedron definition: poly=’many’ hedron=’base’, a 3 dimensional shape with polygonal faces and straight edges. New shapes in music.

josh at itsalivemedia.com
http://www.facebook.com/itsalivemedia
http://www.twitter.com/itsalivemedia
http://www.instagram.com/itsalivejosh

http://www.itsalivemedia.com

thinking a lot about this insane cover of Burning Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_KgRMLUTuk

feel like this belongs in the pantheon of totally transformative covers. as the first comment says it makes you look it up because it's hard to believe those are actually the real lyrics - now it's the Elvis version that sounds weird, not this one. also my favorite Residents outfit. wonder if those were the actual guys.

The Residents' Triple Trouble is having its New York premiere tonight at MoMA at 6:30 pm:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/8565

It's the only screening they're holding, then beginning tomorrow it'll stream online for all MoMA members.

every time I listen to Residents stuff I'm struck by how ahead of its time it is. maybe not musically, like I know Devo were doing similar things around then, but in some other ways. like their graphic design - I cannot believe that Eskimo is from 1978, that album cover looks so much like something you'd see hanging up in the shop in like, 2002. they have 70s albums where it sounds like they're imitating Simpsons characters. even the concepts of stuff like Third Reich and Roll & The Commercial Album seem to me like internet-era projects. a lot of their videos remind me of like, Cool 3D World stuff. pretty remarkable really

More about Triple Trouble:

https://mcusercontent.com/d4b46e5c4250d808643c6623a/images/9dbec8d4-343a-2ea2-c5ce-aafadb822a0b.jpg

Virtual Box Office Premiere: The Resident's Triple Trouble
We are proud to announce the exclusive virtual box office premiere of The Resident's new feature film tonight at MIDNIGHT ET on Night Flight's The Movie Store. In Triple Trouble, directed by Homer Flynn, dive deep into the psyche of Randall "Junior" Rose (Dustin York) who is convinced that a fungus is a threat to humanity.
The film premiered theatrically earlier this month at the MoMA and arrives on Night Flight's The Movie Store for purchase and rental one week before anywhere else.

The Residents are including a FREE DOWNLOAD of two unreleased versions of classic tracks from the Residents' Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen opus with every purchase or rental of Triple Trouble, only on The Movie Store.
"The Residents continue to raise the bar by taking chances and pioneering new skills." — Kelly Park

What is this, "The Last of the Residents" or something? Looking forward to those dance numbers with the clickers making music with their sonar noises.

I see Fingerprince is getting a 2xLP + 7" reissue, if the price is right I might get it. its one of the most "cursed" albums I can think of

How do you mean?

well for one there are these promo images

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/meettheresidents/images/2/21/Fingerprincepromo.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170130074653

https://i.redd.it/z9d75qdshvw61.jpg

for two idk what it is exactly but I think it actually accomplishes the goal of sounding very off without necessarily trying to. its not just using prickly series of notes its layering a bunch of them on top of each other

furthermore it has the Marge Simpson voice in it which in itself is kinda freaky for a 70s album

wtf I love this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF2o5RDkq9A

God In Three Persons is not an amazing album overall but "Kiss Of Flesh" is incredible. Love a few others like "Hard And Tenderly"