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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.
CJLO News February 22nd 2010
Read and Produced by Gareth Sloan.
Stories written by Chris Hanna, Jose Espinoza and Emily Brass.
CJLO News February 19th 2010
Read by Erica Fisher.
Produced by Drew Pascoe.
Stories written by Alina Gotcherian, Jose Espinoza and Jonathan Moore.
CJLO News February 17th 2010
Read by Yael Ossowski.
Produced by Justin Trubiano.
Stories written by David Adelman, Matthew Phelps, Sophia Loffreda and Gareth Sloan.
CJLO News February 15th 2010
Read and Produced by Gareth Sloan.
Stories written by Chris Hanna, Sarah Deshaies, Jose Espinoza and Emily Brass.
Misstress Barbara Warmly Received By MTL Crowd
On a cold February night where Montreal found warmth in the Habs’ come-from-behind win over the Boston Bruins, Misstress Barbara took to the stage of Club Soda and delivered a stellar performance following local act Winter Gloves. Hailing from similar backgrounds, Misstress Barbara and Winter Gloves both originated as individual projects using minimal equipment; now both have joined the often unfulfilling ranks of live bands. Mind you, Sicilian-born Misstress Barbara or Barbara Bonfiglio’s 15 years experience as an international club DJ hasn’t hampered the development of her new project, ‘Girls on a Ducati’ from reaching new levels.
Having been to Misstress Barbara’s show back in April where she opened the much smaller venue Zoobizarre for local underground high-fliers Akido, I was very curious to see if all the radio coverage she has received had taken her new image to that next level. Constantly revisited and over-exposed songs such as ‘I’m Running’ (featuring Sam Roberts) and the Bjorkesqe “J’etais une Fleur’ have brought the Sicilian huge crowds and success.
The high-energy trio Winter Gloves warmed the audience up with their mustaches, mod looks and neo-Radiohead meets-the-Postal Service sound. Hunched over his keyboard, , assisted by gimmicks such as the use of his feet instead of his hands to mash the keys lead signer Charles F brought the Club Soda crowd to a dancing frenzy. They did what any good opening act should do, got in, dazzled, and got out before the unruly crowd starts losing their patience for the headliner.
Misstress Barbara had no problem following their act; she even started without her back up Girls on a Ducati who are actually two guys on instruments. She started it all off with an incredible performance of I’m No Human, the title track off her newly released debut that she extended for a couple minutes in order to flaunt her Djing abilities. Her echo effects, distortion and other forms of vocal-manipulation held the crowd in awe for most of the night. She played the majority of her new album, much of which features guest artists who obviously can’t always attend her shows. This has left her making excuses for Sam Roberts’ constant absence: “last time he was hit by a train, the fist time he broke his leg and this time… Sam’s been kidnapped this time” she mused. The fans were upset to lose Sam but appreciated her sense of humor.
Covers, Covers, Covers…
Her latest album includes a cover of Leonard Cohen’s famed tune ‘Dance Me To The End Of Love’ which has been brilliantly re-worked and is pretty unrecognizable from the original. In addition to this cove,r she spiced up her set with some other surprising covers: a fun and faster version of Come Together by the Beatles, a chant-along version of Tears for Fears’ shout shout let it all out, and, most surprising of all, the Talkshow Host, Radioheads’ hit from the modern Romeo and Juliet Soundtrack (think Claire Danes and Di Caprio). This last cover was played in the encores along with some non-album Misstress Barbara tracks, tracks from her DJ days for the real fans that had stayed until the end.
Expect More Misstress Barbara in the days to come.
Point/Counterpoint: Black Sabbath
Manley and Hastie go at it hard about a subject that keeps them up at night: Is Black Sabbath awesome, or merely pansies? The question is posed.
Point: Alexander Manley
I got into a bunch of hot water with Hastie a week or so ago. He was extolling the virtues of Black Sabbath (much as he extolled the virtues of DMX yesterday) and I was having none of it. He was all "Sabbath bla bla bla" and "Ozzy bla bla bla" and I was like "Nuh-uhh."
My thinking was, Black Sabbath is a band built around a concept. That concept is that they are evil. It's pretty basic. Their name is Black Sabbath, and literally everything they do is draped and shrouded in gloom, murk, doom, and terror. It's the essential conceit of metal music. Just like rap: we are harder than you. Now just as rap has its Will Smiths, metal has its Mike Pattons as well. But the majority of metal bands are hell-bent for leather on seeming tough and evil and mysterious. It's why they use Latin words as song titles, it's why Scandinavia has produced so many seminal metal bands, and so on. In many cases, the posturing works.
Why does it work? Because the music backs it up by actually sounding evil. This is where my problem with Sabbath comes in: they don't. They don't fucking sound evil. They don't sound scary. I remember watching a video of Ozzy doing an acoustic cover of the Beatles' "In My Life" a few years ago and there was nothing incongruous about it. For one, Ozzy doesn't have a particularly intimidating voice. For two, he doesn't really push it to its limits. He doesn't scream, he doesn't growl. He sings. He practically fucking croons. And for three, the music he sings over is... blues-based rock. It's not very heavy, it's not very fast. It doesn't sound like it's going to tear the shit out of your house. It... it's just not powerful-sounding.
Now, the main thing to keep in mind here is that it's not Sabbath's fault. They are old as hell. When they were getting started, there were no pre-existing metal bands for them to evolve from. They represent a logical step in the progression of music from black American blues to white British rock and so on through the NWOBHM and then to the present. Without them, none of the heavy music I respect—Cancer Bats, Protest the Hero, Propagandhi, Genghis Tron, HORSE the Band, etc.—would probably ever have come to be. But when it comes to that short path between my ears and my brain, they leave me dissatisfied. I like Chuck Berry and I like the Rolling Stones. Sabbath? Not so much. They're a heavier, gloomier version of the Beatles parading around like they're the most evil and Satanic thing on the planet. Please.
So. I will stick to listening to Trap Them—who sound like the sort of horrific, shit-tearing-up music that I mentally associate with Sabbath's posturing—and Hastie can have his old-school metal.
Coming Later: Part 2: Why this doesn't apply to The Clash, but does apply to the Sex Pistols.
Counterpoint: R. Brian Hastie
Being a life-long fan of most of Sabbath's catalogue (yes little Billy, Hastie even likes late '80s Sabbath), I feel the need to clear up some points Manley may have not thought of while composing his last entry.
Firstly, check out the title track of their self-titled debut. Sabbath guitarist-cum-god Tony Iommi makes effective use of the Devil's Third. Also known as the diabolus in musica, the thing just reeks of scary. The three notes employed by Iommi handily do the trick over a drawn-out, nightmarish backbeat. The story the Ozzman telleth is one of seeing a spirit (possibly even Satan!) that actually happened to bassist Geezer Butler before Sabbath's formation. Close your eyes and listen to the 6-minute opus and then then wonder if there's a sense of danger in there. I do belive there is.
No one at this time was making music that was inherently evil at the time. Their peers, like Pentagram, didn't start up until 4 or 5 years after Sabbath's apparition. Sabbath was, as Manley noted, singular and so didn't have a preset path to follow. Some of their riffs were based around blues-rock, sure, but Iommi also recognized the need to amp it up and so in a live setting he plays loud as fuck (employing multiple Laney stacks) and tunes down to C. He played beyond those blues riffs and created his own brand of riffing that incites instant recognition. How's that for powerful-sounding?
Secondly, Electric Funeral. The song itself, a testament to apocalyptic war, is aided by another nasty riff and Ozzy's lower register. Shit just sounds EVIL (even live). Ozzy's "crooning" works effectively here once more.
Watching Ozzy cover 'In My Life' isn't considering the fact that he makes/made up one-fourth of the members of Sabbath. One latter-day piece of work by one member of the band doesn't necessarily taint the whole band, I feel. Also, Tony Iommi's Iommi album features a host of screamers and screechers on there anyways.
Similarly, I could argue that watching HORSE The Band cover the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles song lowers them down by sounding like a second-rate punk band throughout most of the song. They don't sound evil, they sound snotty and and whiny, like prepubescent teeangers extolling their love of cartoons, but that would be taking the entirety of their music out of context too.
Manley's problem is that he equates fast music with evil. All of the bands he listed as contemporaries love to play fast. Sabbath's idea of being a lumbering giant in the night, destroying the shit out of stuff with giant prodding footsteps is in stark contrast to Manley's quest for speed, and therefore evil. Staying at a certain BPM (usually under 100) automatically takes a band out of the running for "evil".
Manley's assertion that Sabbath are just "a heavier, gloomier version of the Beatles parading around like they're the most evil and Satanic thing on the planet" is plainly false. When's the last time the Beatles wrote a song about the perils of cocaine? Or about the horrors of the war in Vietnam? Or about hell? No other band dealt with these aspects head-on, preferring to drape their musings in heavy metaphors for fear of being labelled 'Satanic'. The Beatles were all about having a good time and keeping their songs at the 3 minute mark, something that the Sabs blatantly disregarded. The Beatles embraced radio play while Black Sabbath never went looking for it, preferring the tried-and-true live route as the big way to gaining more fans.
The differences listed above are integral to each band's make-up. The Beatles were a pop band because their songs were cheery and radio-friendly, their albums packaged in a message of peace and love. Black Sabbath were angry and confused, their songs overtly long and only finding a pseudo-home once FM radio came to prominence in the '70s and even then played sparingly. Pop music's main objective is to reach as many people as possible (hence the popular moniker). Sabbath understood that they were a niche, an acquired taste, a real alternative to the Led Zeppelins, Deep Purples and Yes' of the day. Zeppelin, who definitely copped a few (dozen) riffs from the blues-rock domain sang about love and hot summer days. Yes crafted intricate concept albums that emphasized the use of synthesizers and a distinctive sonic space. Deep Purple similarly looked towards synth use as a primary vehicle for their music, as well as the need to jam things out in a live setting, like their 'Stairway to Heaven' brethren. Sabbath stood in defiance, offering up songs in a live setting that had a little bit of tweaking but largely remained the same, offering up a selection of evil-sounding songs and a message of danger.
Sure, the occasional love song would slip into Sabbath's repertoire ('Sabbath Cadabra' comes to mind), but they were mostly a bunch of evil-sounding Negative Nancys. Sabbath understood their place in the world and continued onwards, undettered. I do believe they sound evil and threatening, and are far removed from the pop moniker Manley wishes to attach to them.
NOTE: I've decided to stick with the "classic" '70s line-up due to the fact that they managed to stay together for most of the decade and have a lasting legacy. Dio's involvement in Black Sabbath/Heaven and Hell was all start-stop-start-stop and the various incarnation of the band in the '80s and '90s make it hard to judge because of lack of consistency.
-You can find these two geniuses fighting it out on a weekly basis on Countdown to Armageddon, Thursdays from 4 to 6 p.m.
Beard Of The Week #1: Rick Rubin
Beard Of The Week is a column of life, music, people, and their beards. Each week Lachlan Fletcher of The Subplot and Unabridged will give you a great beard and shed some light on its significance, hopefully helping both the bearded and unbearded alike down the road to enlightenment.
Rick Rubin
CJLO and CKUT Present: The Room
Come be a part of the phenomenon that has already touched millions as CJLO (in assosication with CKUT) present a screening of The Room, the Tommy Wisseau classic. The movie shall be screened on February 27th at le Centre St. Ambroise (5080-A St. Ambroise), accessible via Lionel-Groulx, Vendome and St. Henri metros.
The event starts at 8 and tickets are 8 dollars and may be purchased at Cheap Thrills, L'Oblique, Sub-V, Atom Heart Records, Phonopolis and Diamond Books.
CJLO News February 12th 2010
Read and Produced by Drew Pascoe.
Stories written by Alina Gotcherian, Jose Espinoza, Jonathan Moore and Corentine Rivoire.
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