The Residents at The Trocadero

I’ve loyally followed the aural antics of these anonymous misfits since the 1980’s, and have remained continuously impressed by their unwavering insistence on embodying the definition of incomparable. With a quirky sense of style, epitomized by identity-concealing eyeball outfits, to truly unclassifiable songs, The Residents are at once interesting, frustrating, satisfying, annoying, moving, comical and surprising. They can take a song like James Brown’s “This is a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” (which Rolling Stone tagged “chauvinistic”) and turn it into an eerie, cosmic meditation on the profound truth that this world, “wouldn’t be nothing without a woman or a girl.” Often their music can be at odds with their vocalist – whom I believe to be their spokesman – Homer Flynn. Sometimes the instrumentation is so compelling that his southern-fried warble can be downright intrusive and detract from the experience. More than once I’ve wished for instrumental only versions of their records, and over the years they have indeed expanded their palette with continuously improving production values. Now, to contradict myself, I must admit a certain fondness for the old-school records like “Duck Stab” – which are basically eardrum assaults by an out-of-tune piano. Then, as now, when I am in the mood for Homer, I find he really does add another dimension to their records. It’s a twisted, yet reassuring quality he brings, akin to an inmate at the asylum whose experience has instilled in him a well-earned, albeit it self-assigned, moniker of cuckoo house tour guide.

It’s a twisted, yet reassuring quality the vocal Resident brings; akin to an inmate at the asylum who thinks himself the facility’s tour guide.

And because I’ve always thought of The Residents as existing in some alternate plane of reality, I was struck at how the current concept, ‘The Bunny Boy’ is so obviously influenced by the world we live in, the world of “Fear, Terror, Panic and Doom”. These residents, to my mind, were, until now, from somewhere else – a strange alternate dimension known as OUT THERE. Their records were a place to visit, not somewhere you could actually live, but the paranoia of a post-911 world has put us off-kilter, which is the very place the Residents reside. Like Q sending Picard into humanity’s nightmarish Borg-assimilated future, The Residents were -all along – showing us where we were heading. The 24/7 news cycle, its insistence on flinging information at us with rapidity and bursts of intense vapidity, creates an ongoing struggle to absorb it. That’s the subtext of ‘The Bunny Boy’. The Internet isolates each individual into their own portal, objectifying humanity thereby increasing the distance between “us and them”. This is represented here by our narrator attempting to find his missing brother, who we suspect, is really a persona he’s forgotten he tried distancing from himself. The Bunny Boy is, as best I understood, about life in our fear-induced, Shock Doctrined United States. Focusing on one individual, a man becomes dis-united from his own reality.

…one individual represents our shock-doctrined United States, as he becomes dis-united from his own reality…

As represented by our “singing Resident” (for those in the know, he referred to the four musicians completely obscured in black outfits as “the Residents” as separate from himself), Homer looked like a homeless wretch with long gnarly hair, an unkempt white beard, bottle-thick glasses and a passionate conviction to find his missing brother, “Harvey”. Our narrator shared homemade videos (which he’s been uploading to youtube) in an effort to gather help in uncovering clues as to his brother’s whereabouts. After intermission Homer re-appeared, decked out in a bunny outfit and calling to mind the Jimmy Stewart imaginary rabbit movie, ‘Harvey’. He shared some items belonging to Harvey, and related to us, in a hushed confidence, that he’d been plagued with fratricidal nightmares. Using video and pod-like backdrops, the Residents took all their weirdness, and placed it within a serious context creating a sublime (yes, it really was) experience. The climax was downright surreal: As the dissonant swell of music faded out, Homer’s silhouette was cast against a backdrop of flames that appeared to thoroughly engulf him. Amazing. Years ago, a friend returned from a weekend in Baltimore Harbor with Aquarium video footage in tow. I edited it into a mini-movie scored to the Residents album, “Heaven”. I was stunned at how perfectly the music fit, realizing that there was some primal quality in their music that coincided with the footage of odd, ancient-looking creatures like Stingrays, Moray Eels and Barracuda. The unique synthesizer sounds of the Residents cut uncannily well to shots of these bizarre creatures and felt like a natural, shared space where the unusual is the norm.

…a natural, shared space where the unusual is the norm…

The world is in such a state now that The Residents, who have always been the craftsmen of otherworldliness, seem less like strange auters (Auters of The Strange?) and more like social commentators; the world itself is in the asylum and Homer Flynn is our guide.