I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: March 31, 2021] The Residents 

I’ve been an admirer of The Residents forever.  I’m not a fan exactly–I have some of their records.  I also have some of the CD-ROMS because they were one of the first entities to really make good use of CD-ROM technology.

Their music is bizarre.  Sometimes wonderfully so.  Sometimes not.  I’ve thought about going to see them for years now.  They played Philly in 2018, but i was going to see Built to Spill that evening, so there was no thought of The Residents.

Then in 2020, they announced a new show.  And that and all subsequent attempts were put on hold.

Then my friend Garry sent me a notification that The Residents were going to do a Free at Noon. What?!  I took half a vacation day and drove to Philly to see this remarkable opportunity.

Since their promo material still shows the giant eyeballs that they wore when they came out, I assumed we’d see at least one.  But instead, each member of the band had on a gaiter over their head which perfectly matched their eyeball-filled suits. Anonymity is key!

So the band came out in their fancy suits–keyboards, drums (electronic, even the cymbals), guitar and vocals.

This tour marks the 50th anniversary of the band, but is also a tour of their 1972 EP Duck Stab which was re-released in 1978 as Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen.  I’d never heard of either version.  But that’s fine.

The band came out in their full suits and started playing “Hello Skinny.”  It quickly became apparent that the singer was using a pad of some sort to distort his voice.  There was a video screen behind them showing a series of weird videos to accompany the song.

“Hello Skinny” had a kind of disturbed carnie feel.  In fact, most of The Residents music sounds like it comes from a Carnival that has closed down.  It was about 2 minutes long–I didn’t even realize he was singing “Hello Dolly” at the end until watching the video afterwards.

This tour also showcased their most recent album, 2020’s Metal, Meat & Bone: The Songs of Dyin’ Dog which is supposed to be an album of covers from the fictional Dyin’ Dog. The first of these songs “Cut to the Quick” saw the singing dancing menacingly around the stage and singing with a hugely distorted voice the dark lyrics of how bad the narrator has always been.  It was about 2 minutes long.

During these two songs the guitarist was playing some really interesting chords and solos.  I wished I Could see him better, but he was behind a music stand.

“The Laughing Song” was indeed full of laughing and really creepy videos of people in weird masks laughing.  It segued right into “Bach is Dead” also from the Duck Stab album, but I didn’t understand anything he was saying (even when comparing it to the recorded version, I would never have guessed they’d played it).  (It was about one minute fifteen seconds).

When the DJ came out to re-introduce the band, I couldn’t believe fifteen minutes had passed already, somehow.

They moved on to two songs that weren’t on either album.  “Boxes of Armageddon” from 2008.  This song was very percussion heavy and also ran about two minutes.  There was some wicked soloing in this song too.

Now, The Residents don’t talk between songs (anonymity) so aside from jamming these songs out a little bit, there’s not much else going on to stretch the songs out.

“Would We Be Alive” is a song from The Mole Trilogy, spoken in a kind of intense whisper until the chorus which was screamed in a distorted creepy voice.   He must have a full array of vocal distortions on that pad in front of him.  It runs to about five minutes and ends with the frantic cries of “help us!” “help us!”

They returned to Duck Stab with “Semolina” a song that was almost three minutes long.  It was full of high pitched vocals and noises.

The final song was the darkest and lasted over four minutes.   Called “Die! Die ! Die!” the singer was pretty much shouting right at us in the front as he told us he wanted us to Die Die Die.  It was the most intense music of the set–very heavy and industrial with the most distorted vocals of the afternoon.

And then they were done.

I wasn’t sure how long they would play.  I had imagined they might play for 45 minutes or more, but, they went shorter than most Free at Noons, and played for only 25 minutes.

But boy did it give me an idea of what their show would be like that night.  And I didn’t feel that I needed to see them anymore.  Not because it was bad, but because it scratched the itch that I had had.

Their mini set here was almost the beginning of their full length show that night.  The did not included the opening song (a Hank Williams cover) but did play songs two through 7 in order.

Then they jumped down to the middle of the set and ended with the final song.

It was certainly an encapsulation of the full show.

You can stream both the audio and video of the Free at Noon here.

1. Hello Skinny &
2. Cut to the Quick ϖ
3. Laughing Song &
4. Bach Is Dead &
5. Boxes of Armageddon ♣
6. Would We Be Alive? ♦
7. Semolina &
8. Die! Die! Die! ϖ

1. Jambalaya (On the Bayou) [Hank Williams covers]
2. Hello Skinny &
3. Cut to the Quick ϖ
4. Laughing Song &
5. Bach Is Dead &
6. Boxes of Armageddon ♣
7. Would We Be Alive? ♦
8. Cold as a Corpse ϖ
9. Smelly Tongues Ø
10. Moisture ©
11. Constantinople &
12. The Monkey Man ∀
13. Semolina &
14. Kill Him! ψ
15. She Called Me Doggy ϖ
16. Blue Rosebuds &
17. The Theme From Buckaroo Blues ß
18. The Stampede ß
19. Lizard Lady &
20. Dead Weight ϖ
21. Hungry Hound ϖ
22. Die! Die! Die! ϖ

    Encore:

23. When We Were Young ©
24. Diskomo ‰
25. Nobody Laughs When They Leave €

After four tries and almost three years The Residents finally came to Philly.

And somehow I missed the announcement entirely.  Whoops.

I actually had several options for shows on this night, so The Residents problem were never going to be on my list, but it’s always nice to know that they’re out there, Holding up the Underground.

Plus, I was lucky enough to see them for a Free at Noon earlier that day.  So I got to experience some (25 minutes) of a Residents show.  And that was probably enough.  Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I don’t need to see more after my experience.  (I thought it would be a little more insane, to be honest).

Opening for the band was a screening of their film Triple Trouble.

I don’t know anything about the film except for this review here

Loosely described it’s the story of Randall “Junior” Rose, son of a recently deceased rock star Randy Rose (a key figure in recent Residents mythology), a priest who has lost his faith, who is convinced a fungus is about to destroy humanity (it’s not particularly hard to see the connections to Covid here). This record is ostensibly the soundtrack but more correctly feels like an audio companion: part drama, part conspiracy in and of itself and dense with meaning and references.

When I saw St. Vincent a while back, she opened her show with a movie she had made.  It was fun to watch, although it was also weird watching a  movie standing up.

I imagine this would be just as odd.

But that’s The Residents for you.

And here’s a trailer for that film.