I’m a huge fan of The Residents. Especially the older stuff. They have got to be the most underappreciated band ever.
Not sure what my favorite album is. I am very tempted to say their first album (Meet the Residents), but I’ve played it so much I’m somewhat burned out on it. (The first 7 or 8 songs are just amazing.) I supposed if I had to pick one album as my favorite it would be Not Available. It’s so… dark and eerie sounding. Words can’t really describe it. (I supposed this can be said about most of their albums. LOL.)
Lately I’ve been playing *Fingerprince *and Duck Stab while going to/from work. Both have a similar sound, and both are equally awesome. It boggles the mind to know that they recorded both in a dinky, musty basement studio under a small flat in San Francisco.
I admit I haven’t heard much of anything after Mark of the Mole. For a lover of their old stuff, what newer albums might I like?
I may not be as big a fan as you, but just being a fan apparently makes me special. I, too, love their first album. Spotted Pinto Bean is such a melancholy thing. Do you have “Uncle Willie’s highly opinionated guide to The Residents”? Is it even still in print? It really gives an “eye” opening perspecitve on them. I’ve seen them in concert many, many years ago, and the most I can say about it is: “I saw The Residents”, which is not insignificant. It wasn’t quite what Meet the Residents promises, but it was all them.
If you are into Bill Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead) and/or They Might Be Giants, you should at least know who The Residents are.
Demons Dance Alone is beautiful. I saw the concert live and when the lead Resident was singing “Life Would Be Wonderful” and added “If Snakefinger had not had a heart attack…” I teared up. My favorite later work.
Buckaroo Blues is a mini CD from the Cube-E era that is top notch. Hell, I’ll play it on my radio show this Thursday morning 1 to 3 am ET at wtju.net . If you have not heard it, you can tune in. I’ll try and play it first.
Snakey Wake: This tribute recording for Snakefinger’s funeral is touching.
Goosebump: About the most awesome recording ever. And the instruments played were all actually purchased at Toys R Us!
Vileness Fats is fun, of course.
Dang! All the old stuff is just beyond awesome. I was a member of Uncle Wiggly’s Eyeball Buddies years ago and owe much of my appreciation for bizarre music to the Residents.
Personal trivia: a good friend of mine used to play in a punk band whose lead singer was Snakefinger’s daughter, Lani. (I forget what last name she went by, but it wasn’t Lithman.) She had a squeaky Betty Boop/Missing Persons thing to her voice.
The Residents are great!
I love their Mole Show albums, and saw them doing it live, with all the scenery changes and Penn Jillette ending up tied up on stage! I’ve even still got my Chubb t-shirt from the gig!!
Despite owning a fair amount of their stuff, I don’t listen to them very much these days, but I picked up their new Voice of Midnight (based on the Tales of Hoffnung) a few months ago and, while it’s not their best, does have some good stuff on it!
I don’t know if it’s worth much, but somewhere I still have the Duckstab 7" single.
16 years ago, when I was a lad of 15, I was in a Blockbuster Music store for the first time*, and wanted to hear something I’d never heard before.
I walked over to a random spot in the alphabet and flipped through the CDs at random. One album cover leapt out at me somehow. I’ve never quite understood why–if I describe it as involving (to my recollection) a lot of blue flowers, that doesn’t explain why I should have been attracted to the cover. But somehow, it did say “listen to me!” to me, and I picked it up.
Back then, a lot of music stores let you listen to their CDs in the store for free. So I took it up to the guy at the counter and asked to listen to it.
This mostly-randomly selected CD, it turned out, contained absolutely the most perfect music I had ever listened to. The thing blew me away. I was shocked and overjoyed to hear that there could be a such thing as the music I was hearing. I liked it that much.
The album was Our Finest Flowers. I still have that CD–probably the only one I’ve managed to keep track of for that long–and I still listen to it regularly.
I love that the Residents are so perfectly up my alley while at the same time the only reason I know anything about them is due to a basically random selection I made on a whim one day as a kid. (Until today, I’ve never seen anyone else independently mention them in my presence except for a quick reference in the movie Empire Records which I would surely never have noticed had I not already known about them).
*Music store for the first time at 15? Yes–it always seems to scandalize people how late I came to the whole “music” thing. I didn’t know of any music I could stand to listen to until I discovered They Might Be Giants at the age of 13, and for a couple of years, yes, they were the only band I listened to. I was that kid.
And we have not even mentioned The Commercial Album, consisting of 40 one minute songs. Most are made up of bizarre little koans that are puzzling, witty, and often a bit sad.
and
Eskimo: One of the all-time strangest album. Eskimo rituals and daily life as told through chanting and assorted grunts. Supposedly some of the sounds were made from instruments created from Arctic animal bones. But with The Residents, you never know what is real and what is illusion…
and of course
Freak Show: An absolutely weird and unsettling look at circus freaks. Each song on this CD is either told from the point of view of, or about, some twistedly deformed human.
I mean, this is a band that has been around for well over 30 years and never revealed the names of any of the members. We don’t even know if it is the same folks or not. Their identities are always concealed in masks or heavy make-up. The band seems to have four members, but there are sometimes more Residents when they play live. Indeed the “four members” look may have been part of the whole Residents/Beatles thing (A “band” should have 4 members).
But it isn’t about the gimmick. The band’s music is awesome and has influenced much experimental music produced today.
+++
Correction: I should have posted Uncle Willie’s Eyeball Buddies above instead of the other. Uncle Wiggly, I believe, is some sort of rabbit. (A Bunny Boy?)
Great fun; and if you didn’t like one song, there was another just about to start!
I didn’t buy Eskimo, but I did pick up Diskomo, where they apparently play some of Eskimo on toy instruments bought from a big department store! Eventually I got Eskimo on dvd (probably the 1st dvd I ever bought) which has interesting footage of eskimo myths and legends as created by The Residents!
I hesitate to call it a computer game, but there’s a cd you could get with state of the art graphics (for the time) and you could take a walk-through of the freak show, watch the acts, listen to the music, and sneak out and visit the freaks in their trailers! Good fun!
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If you listen to the two earliest Yello albums, back when they were on the same label, (Pore Know Graphics? Pale Pachyderm? They’re all in boxes at the moment) you get a Residents vibe from some of the tracks…
I recall a persistent rumor that Penn Jillette was one of the Residents, or at least a part-time member. He does play a swingin’ cello, and has (according to Wikipedia) been affiliated with the Residents as a narrator for shows.
I think the Commercial Album is my favorite, although The Third Reich & Roll is conceptually just as wacky.
Penn is not one of the Residents. I am acquainted with Penn and have been for more than 22 years, and can state categorically that he is not a part of the group nor has he ever been. He is, like many of us, a huge fan and supporter and sometimes has narrated for them on stage.
And just to make you all even more jealous, Tim Kane, their Lighting Director, is a friend and colleague of mine.
True, but a few minutes of research will reveal their names. It will also reveal that the band came very close to disbanding around 1982 amid turmoil over the expenses of the Mark of the Mole tour. Two members got so fed up that they left the band. Today the band is primary comprised of only two of the original members.
At any rate, one thing I’ve learned about their music is that most of it can’t be fully appreciated unless it’s played through a high-quality stereo system, one with lots of frequency range and dynamic range. This is more critical with some albums than others. The Third Reich & Roll sounds like crap (IMO) when played through a cheap boom box, but awesome when played through a good stereo. Not Available has some of the lowest bass I’ve ever heard. A subwoofer is a required component for properly playing the album.
An ex-gf got me into the Residents twenty-some years ago. Although I am a fan of the earlier stuff, I really like the more recent stuff where they revisit American music; The King and Eye, Stars and Hank Forever. God in Three Persons is excellent, as is Freak Show, Cube_E.
…At the breakup, I got the Res and the Brian Eno collections. She talks to me now.
Since I got family (wife and 2), I haven’t been buying, so I don’t know their current line-up and discs. I am ashamed and maybe will rectify this, but as I approach my 5th decade, music isn’t as important to me.
That being said, I prefer Renaldo and the Loaf to most of the Res.
It is a shame that homies from Louisiana (sister state) are more popular in Europe than here.
You’d know it if Penn was a member. I’ve met him, and he is a monster of a man. I’m a solid 6’4-- actually a hair over (no, I really am; I’m not one of these 6’2 and a half guys that says they’re 6’4) and he towered over me. He was wearing boots, but still. Big head, big hands and feet, big trunk, and I’m pretty sure he’d still be noticeably taller than me without the boots.
Did anyone get into River of Crime? I waited anxiously for its release and then forgot about it :smack:.
This thread has inspired me to play two hours of Residents music on my show tonight — approx. two hours from now (1am ET) at wtju.net. Let me know if you have any requests. I’ve got most of the Residents catalog.
