The Residents @ Club Soda

Who are the Residents? Except for those close to band, no one really knows. To be honest, I’m not sure I ever want to find out.

Since 1969, the Residents have been performing their unique brand of avant-garde (a fancy term for weird-ass) music and visual art. All the while, the members of the band have been concealed by costumes and masks. The most famous of these costumes being giant eyeball heads, top hats and tuxedos.

Their music is odd. Dissonant, seemingly out of tune and unpredictable in that the next note in any song is not the note you would expect to hear.

I would not consider myself a hardcore fan of the Residents. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever sat and listened to an entire album in one sitting. What I love is the concept of a band that has managed to maintain their anonymity for over 40 years. Well... and the eyeball/skull imagery is pretty damn cool too.

My first exposure to the Residents was through the band Primus and their covers of “Sinister Exaggerator”, “Hello Skinny” and “Constantinople”, all from the Residents 1978 album Duck Stab/Buster & Glen. I have bought one album by the Residents; the 1997 career-spanning compilation Our Tires, Our Poor, Our Huddled Masses, somewhat of a greatest hits album.

All this to say that I’m what you would call a casual Residents fan.

I missed the Residents the last time they came to Montreal, at Le Spectrum (RIP) in 2001 for the Icky Flix tour where the Residents projected a recently-released DVD of the films they had created throughout their career and played the music live behind screens. I regretted not going to that show, so when I heard that they were coming back, I did not hesitate.

Then I read something on their site that got me worried; that this 'Talking Light' tour would “be an experiment in new directions deviating rom the more “band” productions”. What had I gotten myself into...

"What are ghosts?" ask The Residents - spirits of those no longer inhabiting the flesh, but unable to leave their lives behind? Or could ghosts be a manifestation of something even less tangible, like loneliness, unfulfilled desire or isolation? In a world where nearly everything has become defined and categorized, how do we fill our obvious, purely human need for the fuzzy , vague and supernatural - with TV commercials?

The ghost of a morbidly obese woman haunts her lesbian lover, filling the void of death with food commercials and Dr. Phil. A man becomes obsessed by the spirit of an executed serial killer who stuffed the mouths of his victims with Pudding Roll Ups, an extinct kid's food from the 1980s. A dead boa constrictor named Leonard (after Leonard Cohen, of course) plagues the mind of its former owner, currently consuming Oscar Meyer hot dogs by the dozen. These are just a few of the "ghost stories" told through the magic of The Residents' Talking Light.

After all, even in death, will you ever forget that COCA COLA ADDS LIFE?

The above description from the band’s site summarizes the show very nicely.

The stage was made up to look like a living room. There was couch, and a fireplace with a small TV displaying a constant static and a draw-string lamp on the mantel. The band arrived on stage to the tune of the Coke jingle “I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)” which then segued into a pastiche of what sounded like manic advertisements. There was “Randy” on vocals, a balding old man with bizarrely hairy ears, in his pajamas. Chuck (on keyboards) and Bob (on guitars) were dressed all in black, with what looked like dreadlocks sprouting from their heads, and wearing large dark goggles. As “Randy” explained during his banter after the first 2 songs, the Residents were a 4-piece, but Carlos retired and is back in Mexico taking care of his mother. They miss Carlos, but they didn’t miss his long drum solos.

That was the first of many genuinely, and surprisingly, funny bits from the show.

“Randy” then got to the heart of the show, the first of many ghost stories told/sung and interspersed by videos of the characters within the story. “Randy” used a small hand-held projector to move the video between the three circular screens setup on the stage. He also warned us that the stories may be a little “spoooooooooky” (add echo effect)

My favourite was the “Unseen Sister” featuring a warped video of women chain smoking recounting the story of how her mother tripped, fell into the stove, spilling a hot pot of christmas themed pasta on her head (in July). Later in the song, she explains how her mother then trips over the toaster and electrocutes herself. With a slight pause she then remembered the time when her goldfish died.

A recurring element of the show was “Randy” telling stories about the mirror people that would appear to him. This culminated to a manic moment late in the show where “Randy” showed us the mirror people in a small hand mirror that suddenly lit up with a jolt of music from the band. This was a very effective shock moment in the show.

The music was uniformly excellent, with some fine guitar by “Bob”, sometimes a lot heavier then I was expecting the music to be. The keyboards were appropriately atmospheric, and the vocals has some very interesting effects added for drama.

The only song I recognized during the show was “Semolina” (from Duck Stab/Buster & Glen). This is not my favourite song off of that album, but it was nicely updated with a jungle beat in the background.

The last song of the main set was a very intense and heavy song that could pass as industrial. A vertically rotating red spotlight lit up the room in a way that I wished I had been on some sort of hallucinogen. The band returned for a 2-song encore, and after about 2 hours, the show was done.

In the end, my original fears were unfounded as The Residents put on an amazing show. As any good concert should, I now have renewed appreciation for the band and will be revisiting their prolific catalog in the near future.

By the way, at some point later in the show, “Randy” introduced the band again and with a slight pause, added: “Fuck Carlos”.

As a sidenote, the Residents are recording each of the shows and making them available for sale on their site. The Montreal shows is available here and is well worth picking up.