New Musick III
The Residents, Beyond the Valley of A Day In The Life
To the Residents, nothing is sacred, least of all themselves. Whether you logve/ hate the Residents, whether you’ve heard of them, don’t care, matters not at all.
They produce occasional albums – four to date – and singles, refuse to do very much publicly. In fact, bar two performances, they’ve done nothing in public at all.
More interview fun: “Perhaps you can explain another story then, Mr. Clem, that the Residents simply hate and abhor the Beatles. What can you say about that?
“Sid, that’s absolutely false; the Residents do not hate the Beatles. They simply have expressed an attitude which indicates boredom with the present day rock’n'roll culture…”
From The Residents Special. This segues into their new single, 500 copies released on Ralph Records. Beyond the Valley of A Day In The Life, which answers the musical question: what happens after the slamming coffin-chord at the end of A Day In The Life, and Sgt Pepper…
A terrifyingly dehumanised / eerie / hallucinatory collage of Beatles songs / speak tape-spliced at random… rearranged to confuse perception. Snatches appear: “Please everybody / if we haven’t done / what we could have done / we’ve tried…” – repeated on an endless roll… other familiar elements wrenched out of context: “Don’t believe in Beatles”… the other side, the Residents play Flying: monkish choral sequences segue into a brief V-2 Schneider / Moss Garden-style interlude quickly smashed by the grossest, most mocking voice possible reiterating, “Please everybody…!”
The Residents play the music of chance. It is possible, as above, to pick out elements – the rearrangements in such a radically different manner defies description. Mess around with quasi-Muzak remoteness and textures… snatches of speech occur, mocking media / rock’n'roll / KITSCH / themselves…
“Merry Christmas, Mom. Merry Christmas, Pop. Merry Christmas, Sis. I love you…” So sincere, so alien. Montage music – juxtaposition / rearrangement to disturb, annoy, confound, amuse. Or just to be.
Meet The Residents, from which the above extract, perhaps the most accessible. More muzak textures / Poppy Nogood sax – elements rearranged at random. More aliens in our midst: the ultimate rock’n'roll renegades to the extent that it matters not at all whether they’re heard. That they are there is enough.
Mixture surprisingly attractive. Afterwards, most rock’n'roll ridiculously 1-D, 2-D, straightforward. Vague air of undefinable menace, deeper subversion…
No commercial potential. No “cult”. To be that bad, you have to work at it. They are not New Musick. They are anti-music. Rock destroys itself?
They are there if you want them…