The Residents

 THE RESIDENTS

Melody Maker, 1989?

by Simon Reynolds

     From the start, The Residents had a parasitical relation

to the pop culture that surrounded them. The sleevenotes to

"Meet The Residents", their 1973 debut, describes how they

spent the Sixties scavenging together a collection of sonic

detritus: "cassettes of soldiers in Vietnam singing songs

with impromptu instrumentation... reels from second hand

shops... sound effects and bird call collections from garage

sales ... even a few bootleg tapes of well-known pop artists

going avant-garde between takes". They were samplers long

before the invention of the Sampler.

     The early Seventies were a time when pop culture had

become so pervasive, so totalitarian, that its myths and

protocols began to replace 'real life' as pop's subject

matter.  Glam was one version of this meta-pop practice

(whether self-consciously articulated, as with Ziggy Stardust

and Roxy Music, or brutally vacant as with Glitter). The

avant-garde vandalism of The Residents was another. "Meet The

Residents", with its grotequely defaced Beatles cover, was

the birth of what has since become practically a genre of

plagiarism and misappropriation (Culturcide, Pussy Calore,

Laibach etc). Musically, "Meet The Residents" makes me think

of The Band, of all people: a polyglot commingling of

American traditional musics (R&B, proto-funk, New Orleans

jazz). But in The Residents' case, it's as though this

poly-rhythmic bouillabaise is being played on invented

instruments, or has been adapted to non-Western scales with

only partial success.

     "Third Reich 'N' Roll" (1976) develops The Residents

idea of the totalitarian nature of pop's rise to the level of

this planet's Esperanto of desire. It turns Sixties pop into

the soundtrack for Hitler's Blitzkrieg. "Swastikas On Parade"

is a segue of bubblegum classics like "Psychotic Reaction",

"The Letter", "Land Of 1000 Dances", competing with

divebombing Stukas, sirens, and machine gun fire, plus free

jazz gibberish and giddy constellations of Sun Ra synth.

"Hitler Was A Vegetarian" is a more downered trek through

songs like "96 Tears", "It's My Party", "Pushing Too Hard"

and "Gloria". Imagine The Clangers aspiring to the poignancyt

of Erik Satie.  "Third Reich 'N' Roll' is probably The

Residents' masterpiece.  As an added bonus, the CD includes

their hell-spawn (per)version of "Satisfaction", and "Beyond

The Valley Of A Day In The Life", in which "samples" of the

Beatles' wiggier moments are reconstructed into a wholly new

work.

     "Fingerprince" (also from 1976) is re-issued for the

first time in its full length. Along with the Hawaian guitar

pastiche "You yesyesyes" and the hilarious "Godsong" ("all

that God wanted to be/Just a normal deity"), there's two

pieces of particular interest. "Jealous Westinghouse" ,

described as a mini-opera, consists of electro pulsations

like Acid House at 16 rpm and doggerel dialogue in a Muppet

hillybilly twang. "Six Things To A Cycle" (a ballet) is an

atypically tropical suite of of crazy percussion and

Creatures campanology.

     "Duck Stab" (1977) is another fine collection of

25th Century nursery rhymes, conceived in the spirit of Dada

and Alfred Jarry. It's accompanied by "Goosembump", a

project undertaken with Snakefinger, whose aim was to bring

to the fore the macabre overtones latent in kindergarten

ditties. All the sounds were produced from childrens' toys,

but were drastically peculiarised by "adult studio toys". The

result is a suite of nauseatingly rubberised nursery rhymes,

that at times ("Three Blind Mice") are creepy almost

beyond endurance.

     Even more unsettling is "Eskimo", The Residents' 1979

elegy for the extinct Inoit culture of the now-thorougly

Americanised Eskimo. While their relativistic tolerance for Inuit

rituals (e.g. exterminating all superfluous

newborn girls) is a tad dubious, the album is a superb sonic

evocation of the irreconcilably alien Arctic lifestyle

(walrus hunts conducted in conditions of

disorientating white-out, 'arctic hysteria' induced by the

sensory deprivation of the long winter darkness).

     "Not Available" was actually recorded in '74, in

accordance with N. Senada's "theory of obscurity": the idea

that creating music in the understanding that it is never to

be heard, is the only way to avoid subconsiously pandering to

an audience. But Ralph Records slipped it out surreptitiously

in '78, when The Residents were falling behind their deadline

for "Eskimo". It's not that radical, actually: its cheapo,

pre-programmed beats making it a distant, Dadaist cousin to

shopping mall or funeral parlour muzak.

     "The Commercial Album" (1980) is probably the best

introduction to The Residents. It consists of 40 pieces each

exactly one minute long. The idea is that, since most pop

songs contain a verse and chorus repeated three times within

three minutes, if you condense that span down to one minute

(the length of most commericals) you get the kernel of the

song without the extraneous matter. Here, the result is a

collection of 'jingles' as intricate and succint as a haiku

poem (one of the prettiest is called "Japanese Watercolour")

and a sound somewhere between the Human League circa

"Reproduction" and the Suicide of "Dance".

     After "The Commercial Album", The Residents seemed to

lose their way. "The Mole Trilogy" and its sequels "Tunes of

Two Cities" and "The Big Bubble" amount to an impenetrable

allegory of something-or-other. Only the most dedicated fan

could be bothered to slog through through the dank, drab

textures of "The Mole Trilogy" to reach enlightenment. Then

there's the flaccid "God In Three Persons", a couple of live

albums, and a fine collection of material by Snakefinger

(their favourite collaborator, the now deceased guitarist

Philip Lithman). The "American Composers Series" (The

Residents 20 year project of tributes) has brought back a

measure of rejuvenation to their sound. It seems we can

apprehend more clearly the nature of their alien-ating method

when they bring their warp factor to bear on something we

know already.  The mystery continues...