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I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Halloween than by invoking the great spirits of the Top Hatted Eyeball-Headed Countenances themselves, the Residents. My life has never been the same since their “Intermission” EP walloped me upside the head and followed me home one day. The cover absolutely terrified me (the cleverly contrived headless old woman enveloped by that looming overstuffed chair, the screaming baby, the repeated rictus grins with their obscenely protruding nails) and the music fit it to a T —it was like fingernails raking repeatedly across a chalkboard.

I was hooked. Sometimes against my will, but let’s face it: the pull of the Residents is unmistakably strong. (MoMA must think so, too, as they just honored the Freakish Anomalies with a 30-year career video retrospective of their own. Pas mal, eh?)

The band was my gateway drug to musical oddity of all stripes. And they’re still going strong, 30+ years after their wayward inception in small-town Louisiana. (Shreveport? Slidell? The answers are shrouded in mystery —or is that swamp gas? Hard to say.) The band member’s secret identities have been carefully guarded since the beginning by mysterious management entity the Cryptic Corporation, and if rumors (or Matt Groening) are to be believed, their past ranks have included Frank Zappa and JD Salinger. (Oh, what the hell —let’s throw Pynchon in there for good measure.)

Hats off to you, O Residential Ones. Long may you reign.

PS: The trick-or-treaters didn’t seem to like Duck Stab too much. Lightweights. Maybe next year I’ll try blaring Diskomo instead.

PPS:
Your life is leaning downhill
Sloping off the outer edge.
Your undetermined oyster beds
Were found to be a hedge.
You cause the kids of Elmer Fudd
To fee the farmer whose
Cadaver’s filled with onion rings
And feet are filled with glue.

The Residents on Myspace | Official Site

GRAPHIC BY DANIEL SILK from MEDIUM CONDENSED [Howski Studios, 1985]

The Residents, “Death In Barstow” (from Fingerprince AKA Tourniquet of Roses, 1976)

Sofia Coppola’s new film Marie Antionette opens with Gang of Four’s spiky, anthemic “Natural’s Not In It” —talk about an audacious opening salvo. The song’s lyrics cut through the ridiculous, rococo overindulgence of the mise en scène, offering a tacit, taunting indictment of the titular Queen and indeed, of her entire court: “The problem of leisure/What to do for pleasure…” The lyrics —spit out in short, caustic bursts while Dunst’s child queen, playing dress-up for the camera, winks and lolls seductively— momentarily cast her in a critical light, underscoring her come-hither silliness and fatally unreflective self-indulgence with critical, wounding ripostes: “Your relations are all power/we all have good intentions/but with strings attached. “ By the time the song reaches its apex, denoted by the repeated refrain“dream of the perfect life,” I’m filled with hope that I’d been wrong about the film looking like the thinnest of tissue-thin fripperies. With Gang of Four deployed so cannily early on, I dearly hope that the rest of the film —and its playfully anachronistic soundtrack—will follow suit, deftly skewering the excess on display.

Alas, starry-eyed Coppola’s no Derek Jarman. Warning bells go off as soon as an early, moving scene of the young, unhappy child bride breaking down into fitful sobs is followed toot-sweet with a gaudy, cloying scene of court gluttony scored unironically with —you guessed it— Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy.” Good-bye, emotional involvement, hello music video!

Taken on its own merits (ie, as a lush, gorgeously art-directed music video) the film works surprisingly well. Ask for anything more than puddle-deep, however, and you soon realize that the film’s tone veers dangerously close to a mash-note from one idle-rich director to her peeps. (From Louis XVI to Louis Vuitton !) Although the endless scenes of gluttony and excess began to curdle for me well before the peasants stormed the Bastille, Coppola’s camera takes a fairly neutral view. Her authorial intent is as muted as Dunst’s curiously flat, California-drawled dialogue.

A disappointment, all things considered.

But what a soundtrack.

PS: I want the string version of “Hong Kong Garden” that’s featured in the movie! Anyone?

PPS: Throwing some non-soundtrack Adam and the Ants in there for good measure.

Buy the soundtrack. | David Allen [Gang of Four] | Gang of Four | Siouxsie & Budgie| Adam Ant.net |Neworderonline

Gang of Four “Natural’s Not In It”

Siouxsie & the Banshees “Hong Kong Garden”

Adam and the Ants,“Car Trouble (Parts 1 & 2)”

New Order, “Ceremony”

By all rights I should be posting a review of Sunday night’s wonderful Tara Jane O’Neil/ Lisa Germano show. But I’m not. The review is unfinished and I’m too freaking tired at the moment to polish it up. I should hang up a “Gone Fishin’” sign or something.

Instead, I’ll post the best song you’ve never heard, Ruth’s “Thriller.”

I need to write a real post about the incredible Ruth album in its entirety. But for now I’ll leave it a surprise and let you discover it for yourself.

I myself found it languishing in a corner of my former office, covered with a thick veneer of dust. I cleaned it off, popped it into iTunes, and became completely obsessed with it in less than the time it took to listen to this one song. (For the record, the rest of the album is just as good.)

Sadly, this is super out-of-print. Why, I have no idea. It can occasionally be found via GEMM or ebay. Muller is still writing under the name Ilitch and has a new album imminent. (It is as “Ilitch” that he shows up on the infamous Nurse with Wound List.)

Thierry Müller/Ilitch. New album “Lena’s Life and Other Stories” out shortly. | Ruth is featured on a new compilation of French synth pop called “BIPPP” [Born Bad Records France). You can store it right next to your copy of “So Young But So Cold”

PS: This WFMU compilation is almost too good to be true. So many points for Blurt, Furious Pig, Nancy Sesay & the Melodaires and of course the Flying Lizards. Happiness. Go download it!!

Ruth, “Thriller”