For the last couple of years, I have slowly – that is to say, quite quickly, become addicted to attending car boot fairs. Luckily, the small Cambridgeshire village I live in is equidistant to two fairs – one on Saturday, the other the day after. I don’t think I’ve ever come away with nothing, though […]
va – Motor City is Burning A Michigan Anthology 1965-1972 If Motown’s brilliant PR is to be believed, Michigan’s contribution to music starts and ends with Detroit soul. Actually, that’s unfair. You’d get a token gesture of MC5 or maybe even The Stooges thrown in as well. Sorted. Except that Michigan was bristling with music […]
Split into three acts, the latest new material from The Residents draws heavily upon two significantly troubling events of the late 20th Century – the trial by puppets of Judas Priest as they defended themselves against accusations of hiding subliminal messages within their songs which could drive the vulnerable to attempt suicide, and Jack Kevorkian, […]
When a magician breathes no more, there are no sliding doors nor sleeves big enough to rustle up an escape route. That’s all, folks. But that cannot be the last word in the wizard fraternity – a sorcerer’s corpse worth its salt must undergo the broken wand ceremony. The notion of a magician’s demise or […]
A two-in-one review of releases from The Residents that have made the journey from fan myth to bedraggled bootleg to majestic restoration. ‘A Nickle if Your Dick’s This Big’ – a coming together of the fabled ‘Warner Bros Album’ (or, as it’s still referred to on the sleeve, ‘The W***** B*** Album’) and ‘B.S.’ (‘Baby […]
If you only buy one seven-disc live dissection of 20th Century popular music by an avant-everything collective, make it this one. Already tremendously unwieldy and self-regarding in its original incarnation, the reissue of The Residents’ attempt to disseminate American popular music is now bigger in every way, an effort which only suits one possible person – […]
The Cryptic Corporation’s tireless piecing together of studio crumbs shows no sign of slacking. ‘God in Three Persons’ represents a milestone for The Residents, a period when they were forced to adapt to outside forces impacting both the way they worked and how they were experienced by their audiences. We’re in 1988 and the CD has […]
There are acts out there who do go that extra mile in delivering what their fanbase really wants. Frank Zappa’s ‘beat the boots’ initiative, whereby he commercially released better versions of his material already being bootlegged; Neil Young’s continuing trawl through his archive of live and unreleased tracks; Jimmy Page’s hands-on restoration of Led Zeppelin’s […]
One of the great mysteries of modern-day music for me is the inexplicable rise of the EP. I just don’t get it. Singles, yes – a bite-size nugget that leaves you wanting more, either a snapshot in time or a teaser of what’s to come. Albums, obviously, I understand those, a collection of tracks which […]
At six discs and over three hours of ‘new’ material, there is no doubting that The Residents’ reissue programme’s latest instalment is an abject lesson in how to both treat your audience and your catalogue with reverence. Now literally more than a trilogy and nearer a saga, the project was a result of both ambition […]
