For the last twenty years, some of the most exquisitely twisted music heard on this planet has been made by a California-based group called The Residents. They’ve produced a series of landmark recordings for an ever-widening audience, most notably their phantasmagoric debut, Meet The Residents (1973); a crazed dissection of sixties pop, The Third Reich ‘N Roll (1976); an almost wordless reinvention of arctic life, Eskimo (1980); portraits of two imaginary societies, done through alternating examples of their music, The Tunes of Two Cities (1982); and a saga of conjoined-twin faith healers who seduce their business manager, God in Three Persons (1988). The Residents have also made plenty of highly original and innovative video, and most of their best work is now available on a single cassette, The Eyes Scream. Among its gems are the stunning “Hello Skinny” (1980), a blend of film and still photography which is as creepy as it is funny; “Don’t Be Cruel” (1990), with swirling, animated Elvis icons; a super-colorized, three-minute distillation of the fifties sci-fi classic Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers (1986); and a healthy chunk of Vileness Fats, The Residents’ black-and-white video project from the seventies, which they finally cut together and released in 1984 as Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats? It has some of their weirdest, most forward-looking stuff, from dazzling stop-motion footage to live-action sequences set in a Caligari-like world populated chiefly by one-armed dwarves.
The Eyes Scream is also a brief history of The Residents and features some rare media clips in which the group generates as much confusion in Japan as in San Francisco, their hometown. (Especially funny is some 1982 footage in which The Residents are seen before the start of a European tour, lounging in a pub and playing snooker with eyeball balls.) Also shown is their already-legendary 1990 appearance on NBC’s short-lived series Night Music, where they performed bizarro excerpts from their live show, Cube-E: the old cowboy song “From the Plains to Mexico” and Elvis’ “Teddy Bear.”
Disgusted by the hype and manipulation of the American music scene, The Residents refuse interviews and have never revealed their names or faces. Instead, they prefer to employ a variety of disguises, of which the most familiar is their appearance in top hat and tails with their heads hidden inside huge eyeball masks. The Residents also prefer to employ Homer Flynn and Hardy Fox, officials of the group’s Cryptic Corporation, as their business managers and official liaisons with reality (“more babysitters than anything else,” Flynn insists), and the pair provide some behind-the-scenes insights into the band’s attempts at “creating their own reality.” The rest of The Residents’ history is sketched in by Penn Jillette and his silent partner Teller through a very funny skewering of this and the documentary genre in general. Two marvelous running gags find Penn having to put up with an unpredictable teleprompter and Teller’s widely swiveling chalkboard. By the film’s conclusion, Penn breaks and is unable to deliver the worshipful closing remarks prepared for him. As he and Teller leave, The Residents are seen as having been behind the camera all along. Once alone, they start removing their masks, just as the tape freezes and the credits begin to roll.
The Eyes Scream is one of those rare anthologies that will satisfy demanding devotees as well as newcomers who want to know what all the shouting’s about. It’s also an essential document of one of the few plums still to be found in today’s musical pie. Ignore it at your own peril.
(This review first appeared in Brutarian No. 6, 1992.)
Link to:
Film: Reviews: Contents
For more on The Residents, see:
Film Review: Triple Trouble
Music Book: Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music, Second Edition
Music Book: Sonic Transports: New Frontiers in Our Music
Music Lecture: My Experiences of Surrealism in 20th-Century American Music
Music: Radio Show #7, Postmodernism, part 4: Three Contemporary Masters
Music: Radio Show #26, Surrealism in 20th-Century American Music
Music: Radio Show #27, 20th-Century Music on the March
NICOLE V. GAGNÉ 