I'm just as excited about this re-issue as I am tired of buying albums I already have, just because I'm powerless against neeto packaging and bonus tracks!!!

This is a quite brilliant album by the legendarily anonymous avant garde band The Residents - they recorded 40 songs that are each one minute long, and the idea is that if you repeat any given one of these songs three times, you have the formula for a perfect pop song.

This album first came out in the '70s...imagine a vinyl record with 40 tracks on it.

And they filmed several videos for this album, which if memory serves, are on permanent display at the MoMA.

And now, the album is reissued as a fancy remastered jobbie, complete with hardback-book packaging and all kindsa liner notes and pictures.

And there's also a new DVD of the album, where The Residents asked a bunch of different video directors to make videos for every one of the songs...I'm SO chomping at the bit to see this. Anyone have it already?

some screenshots, for those interested:

http://www.theresidents.c...mmdvd2.htm

Do they appear without their eyeballs and tophats at all? Does anybody know what these guys look like?

I've heard of the residents but am basically clueless about them. I've been meaning to check them out...

[color=blue]What happen to these guys? I haven't heard much from this group since the 80's. I used to really dig thier music and eyeball costums.[/color]

WOH! The Residents take me back to the late 70's when i first heard of them. A friend had a 8mm filmclip and we would laugh our heads off watching it. Very cheap and silly, but fun. Also had an Album and some singles. Their clip which i was refering featured a Safeway trolley if i remember rightly. They got better quikly, and i have to say hadn't heard of 'em for many years . Thanks Anxiety 4 jogging the brain cells. And 4 the link. These guys are fabulous !

In the 90's, the Residents were collaborating with some guy making interactive CD roms when the whole interactive/web thing was still avant garde. I took a class in website design/interactive cinema techniques and our teacher showed it to us. It was a very surreal mazelike experience not undifferent from the NPG Music Club website. I think the NPG Music Club stole its format and mood from the Residents.

GangstaFam said:

Nope, it's one of the few closely guarded secrets in the music biz from all I know. Sometimes they'll dress up in different costumes depending on the concept of their shows - I saw their last tour and they were dressed up as beekeepers with vines and netting covering their bodies, and the lead singer looked like some kind of crazy lounge singer with a crazy elvis mask and a turban...I was pretty close when I saw 'em so I could kinda see the main guy's face, but not enough that I would recognize him outside of the costume. I think some of the Residents have been replaced with younger members and some of the originals members are still in the band, but I also think the band is more of a collective of musicians and artists and they give the illusion of it being just the same four people. That's just the sense I get of 'em, though...

Anxiety said:

What are their shows like?

GangstaFam said:

if you have netflix you should check out the residents' "demons dance alone" live DVD - it's exactly like the show i saw - a perfect recollection of the tour, in my opinion.

their shows tend to be concept oriented - their last album was about the stages of grief and, on a more personal level, the residents looking back on their three decades as a band. there's a lot of performance art and dance going on - the costuming is always very elaborate - but the music is played live by the residents, and a handful of performers do the singing and performing of the songs. the end of the show i saw consisted of the band joining the performers for a very wild, pagan, tribal jam session that crescendoed into one of the wildest clashes of noise i've heard in a long time - very hypnotic, very intense, but also very celebratory and kinda charming in their own weird way.

Anxiety said:

Nope. No Netflix. They have stuff that obscure?

GangstaFam said:

yeah! they have all the residents' recent DVDs in their inventory.

if you don't wanna make the plunge to buy the live "demons dance alone" DVD, i'd still highly recommend the album the tour was based on, which goes by the same name. it's weird and creepy and like nothing else being released these days, but at the same time it's amazingly poppy and melodic and at times, downright danceable. listening to it reminds me kinda of how i used to feel when i listened to prince albums for the first time - somewhere between "hell yeah!" and "WTF?!?"

Anxiety said:

I could get with something like that. I've been eyeing them when I'm in the avant garde section picking up my Can remasters.

GangstaFam said:

you can't go wrong with anything they recorded in the '70s or early '80s. "duckstab", "meet the residents", "fingerprince", "the commercial album", "not available", "eskimo" - all tops in my book.

Anxiety said:

Cool. I'ma have to check it out.