Band: The Residents
How discovered: after hearing Primus cover one of their tunes on Miscellaneous Debris (the tune in question being "Hello Skinny"), i went out and bought one of their albums.
Sound like: uhhhh....kind of hard/impossible to describe. at first, i was actually frightened by the music. i figured if the music was powerful enough to elicit fear, then it deserved a little more checking out. i'm now a rabid fan of their work.
Song i defy you to LIKE: any.
Other comments: this avante-garde band has been around for 30 years now, and to this day no one knows who the members are. they believe that individual recognition takes away from their collective art, and so have kept their identities a secret. on stage, they perform usually dressed in tuxedos with giant eyeballs for heads (complete with tophats), save for Mr. Skull, whose eyeball head was stolen while on tour years ago. he now wears, you guessed it, a black skull.
every album they've put out has been a concept album of some sort. for example, one of their most critically acclaimed albums, "Eskimo", is based entirely on actual eskimo ceremonies and legends (i forget the specific tribe).
then there's "The Commercial Album", in which the Residents figure that in the future, music is so watered down and the attention span of the general public so short that pop songs are reduced to minute-long commercial jingles. the album is comprised of forty of these jingles, representing thier own bizarre Top 40.
The Residents are also credited with being the pioneers of the music video, and have works in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art.
for more info, go here:
www.residents.com
to purchase Residents albums, go here:
www.ralphamerica.com
-doc.
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