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The Residents' Talking Light Tour
Topic Started: Feb 9 2010, 06:22 PM (239 Views)
Conducting Sexual Congress
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Fuck the poeleece!
Chances are if you live in the US, Canada or Europe, the Residents are going to be in town! And if not, well, they're releasing a professional recording of every show on their website, so you have no excuse!

Why should you care? Because I went, and it was the single greatest concert experience I've ever experienced. Here's a (bad) review:

The entire show was absolutely jaw-dropping. I sat directly in front of the soundboard in the back row of the theater, but trust me, with a show this dynamic, that didn't matter. The sound itself was fantastic; so much bass that it you could feel it vibrating in your throat, crystal clear vocals for the singing Resident, all that technical garbage.

The entire show is really hard to explain. It's sort of half concert and half telling stories, sort of as you would around a campfire. The band consists of two musicians ("Chuck" on synths and "Bob" on guitar, drummer "Carlos" is retired), and the singer for the Residents, Randy (who plays a mean harmonica during several songs). The set was a living room with a fireplace and a chair for Randy to sit on, a table and 3 large screens in the back, where floating heads would talk. Typically, the band would perform 2-3 songs, then follow it with a story set to music, where Randy would sing a couple of bars of a repeated lyric, then move over to his chair and grab a light he would flash on one of the three screens, where a disembodied head would share macabre stories of madness, murder and loss.

Aaron probably knows as he saw the Bunny Boy, but you can't imagine the stage presence and energy Homer Flynn has, especially for a man of his age. Even on the 70s' songs (Fantastic re-workings of "Semolina" and "Death in Barstow"), his voice was dynamic and expressive, and his stage antics were highly entertaining. The lighting in the show was completely out of this world; during the climax of "Lillie" (From Freak Show, fer Christ's sake! Freak Show!) the entire theater was flashing black and white, with all sorts of psychedelic patterns of different colors covering the deranged, howling Randy, topped off with a great solo from Bob.

The setlist was extremely diverse; it probably won't please fans who only dabble in their most recent and their oldest works: While there's definitely some of both (the show opens with a fantastic rendition of "Demons Dance Alone", and towards the middle of the show there's an amazing, beat-driven take on my personal favorite Residents song, "My Window" from Animal Lover. I also mentioned the Duck Stab and Fingerprince songs earlier, great stuff), but most of the songs were either story driven; more in the vein of something you'd hear from God in Three Persons or Tweedles, or songs from the mid-80s' and 90s'. These featured great interplay between the synths and guitar, and the stories themselves were fantastic; engaging and super creepy! This show is really geared more towards the Residents obsessive; if you're familiar with Cube-E, the American Composers series or any of their CD-ROM projects, you'll be in for a treat (the highlight of the show for me was the unbelievable closer of "Die-Stay-Go", from The Big Bubble! Nobody but me even likes that album, let alone that song!).

As some of you know, the show changes every night, but boy did Atlanta get the best change: For the first time on the tour, Molly Harvey (the female vocalist from projects like The Gingerbread Man, Wormwood and Demons Dance Alone) made her first appearance with the Residents since the Icky Flix tour! She reprised her role of the Old Woman from the Gingerbread Man, and it completely blew my mind. I was not expecting that at all, and this is likely her only appearance on the entire tour!

As most of you know, I'm sort of pathetically obsessed with this band, so I came with high expectations, and they were completely blown away. I drove a total of 10 hours to make this show, and it was absolutely worth it. If they're playing near you, don't even think twice. Go see it. Hell, even if you have to travel, go see it. I can't really recommend what I saw enough. This may have been the greatest performance I've ever seen.

If you don't know the Residents, well, you need to be banned.
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Dystopia
Dear Boy
Is it the kind of show you can see if you don't know the band's whole catalog?

(ETA: not that it really matters for me, since their CA shows are done)
Edited by Dystopia, Feb 9 2010, 07:12 PM.
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Conducting Sexual Congress
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Fuck the poeleece!
You could walk into the show with no knowledge of them at all and enjoy it. It definitely helps if you have a history of the Residents and some knowledge of their discography, though.

But don't let their huge discography scare you away; if you get the chance to see them DEFINITELY take it!

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Conducting Sexual Congress
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Fuck the poeleece!
PSS if anyone here is unfamiliar with the Residents that really needs to change. They're one of the most intriguing and mysterious bands in the history of modern art and they've been innovating in the fields of music, film and CD-ROM software since the 1960s'.
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Radio Slayer
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Wired and Tired
Than Shame on me, I've never listened to them. Where do you recommend I start?
"What are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question and that's this: Which is the most universal human characteristic: fear, or laziness?"
-Louis Mackey
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Dean Lewis Swift
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Rise Up With Fists!!
MEET THE RESIDENTS AND THE COMMERCIAL ALBUM FUCK YEAH

THIS BAND RULES FUCK YEAH
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Frontier Psychiatrist
Admiral Halsey
I've only ever heard The Third Reich & Roll.

)':
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Conducting Sexual Congress
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Fuck the poeleece!
As a starting point, well, you could go with Dean's suggestion and be pretty well off, but see, I'm an obsessive, so I would say to go by era.

I would say the absolute BEST introduction would be the Our Tired, Our Poor, Our Huddled Masses compilation. It's a 4 disc set that includes 10 minute concentrates of every album the Residents released up 'till about '98. so, you get 10 songs from the Commercial Album, 10 minute concentrates of Eskimo, Meet the Residents, Not Available, Third Reich n' Roll, Fingerprince, Freak Show, 4 Duck Stab and Our Finest Flowers songs, and concentrates of all the soundtracks, live tours and such. I realize that is a bit much, but it's a great way to get a feel for everything they've done up until the 2000s'.

If you wanna go for individual albums, go for Duck Stab/Buster and Glen, The Commercial Album and Demons Dance Alone.
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Woof Oink Baaa
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Now 100% more avant-garde than Ivan!
shit fucking sucked. bunny boy tour was 100000000000x better.

andrew, go fellate yrself, cum in yr mouth, choke on yr load, and fucking die.

you're a fucking loser fanboy twat.
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Conducting Sexual Congress
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Fuck the poeleece!
u crzy
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Woof Oink Baaa
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Now 100% more avant-garde than Ivan!
nah sckd i wlkd out aftr thy btchrd my wndw:7(
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Conducting Sexual Congress
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Fuck the poeleece!
The bass on My Window was crazy!
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Woof Oink Baaa
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Now 100% more avant-garde than Ivan!
if you have dick loaded in yr ear, i guess.
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