The Residents - Commercial DVD

The Residents have been creating their unique style of art for over 30 years.  That’s not a typo– that’s a 3 followed by a 0.  Think about that for a minute.  Given our demographic, there’s a fairly good chance that they’ve been making music longer than you’ve been alive!  Over those years their popularity (and fortune) have varied greatly– ranging from a studied obscurity to a popularity bordering on the mainstream.

This DVD is a modern version of their 1980 Album “The Commercial Album”.  The music remains unchanged– a series of 56 one minute songs whose duration was meant to reflect the average length of a commercial from that period of time– but it has been supplemented by the visual work of more than 30 different artists who’ve used the original music as a backdrop for their own animations.  There’s a story behind this.  Back when the album was initially created, the Residents also created four music videos.  This was before MTV, but not by much, and the videos received a lot of airtime during MTV’s early days.  They must have– even I managed to see them– the one night that year I happened to be at a house with cable.  I saw them, but I didn’t know who they were yet.

You see… the Residents tend to be an acquired taste.  *Some* people take to them immediately.  They are either beguiled by the sense of something happening just beneath the surface, or compelled to explore more deeply that strange and unexpected sensation evoked by the music.  This is not commercial music, although it occasionally finds its inspiration in pop-culture.  This is… something else.  Although I can’t remember the year, I remember the moment– my first exposure to the group.  Ironically, the memory can’t be correct because there are too many contradictory details.  But none of that matters– causality and consistency is only occasionally necessary for art.

It was sometime back in the mid 80s.  I was going to high school in a small Alaskan town whose name wouldn’t mean anything to you.  A friend had lent me some battered tapes that he thought I might appreciate.  I can’t remember who the friend was.  I listened to one of the tapes while driving my Subaru hatchback along the gravel road that connected my home to the secondary strip of pavement that eventually connected with town.  The tape was “Duck Stab”– one of the Residents’ earlier pieces– “Duck Stab” was released in 1978 and preceded “The Commercial Album” both chronologically and stylistically.  I didn’t even know the name of the group– neither their name, nor the name of the album was on the tape.

I’d never heard anything like it.  It made me uneasy in unexpected ways– as if I’d turned my attention inward to a place I’d not known was there only to find something else already looking back at me.  Or like sucking air across an exposed nerve on a broken tooth… but without the pain.  It felt… it felt different.  I know this sounds hopelessly exaggerated, but it’s not.  There are moments of vulnerability in anybody’s life.  Instances when we experience something so directly and undeniably, that the feelings and sensations bypass reason and rationality.  It wasn’t necessarily pleasant, but it was profound.  This was when I met the Residents.

Now I’m older.  My defenses are in place and very little slips past them (malevolent or beneficial).  I’ve grown jaded and music no longer has the power to turn me inside out, but I still remember.  Still remember that dreadful moment when I first seriously reconsidered my definition of sanity.  And like any other sort of “first”, I still feel a shiver of recognition/recollection when similar music plays.  “The Commerical Album” bears more then passing similarity to “Duck Stab” (at least portions of it do).   That’s part of the problem.  My review can’t be unbiased.  Could you objectively (as if that word has any meaning here) critique the music that played the first time you romantically kissed another?  Luckily, upon deeper reflection, it doesn’t matter.  In fact, it’s part of what makes this review so interesting to write.  I own about eight CDs done by the Residents.  I’ve picked up a few peripheral works here and there and occasionally find passing references to the group in unexpected locations… but I hadn’t heard the “Commercial Album”.  This was my first chance to hear what came “next”, and it’s as much a review of myself as it is of the music.

This DVD is best taken as a whole.  The music and the animation co-exist, the reinterpretation of the past in more modern terms is just one more layer of meaning that needs to be considered.  My first response was guttural and only mildly positive as I thought the timing was too brisk, too many videos were too crude– too unpolished.  There’s some neat stuff in here, but also a few things that seem too contrived, and a few pieces that seemed almost sophomoric.    That was the unfamiliarity talking.  After the second time I’d watched through all the animations I was changing my mind.  This *should* be low-budget– some of the animations are the visual equivalent of lo-fi.  That’s a good thing.  I began to recognize a few visual homages.  I adapted to the timing… I began to get a better feel for what the artists were intending rather than what I was expecting.  What had initially seemed unpolished began to feel honest.  The recurring themes inspired by other Resident related productions began to seem more obvious, and indicative of conscious planning on the animator’s part.

By the third time through I was hooked.  I began to examine the videos more closely.  I almost compulsively freeze-framed scenes to read the messages that flashed by too quickly to be read.  I explored the disc in its entirety, playing with all the different features, figured out how to slip my way past the navigational difficulties encountered in the “maze”. (You’ll know what I mean if you get the DVD.) This too was part of the experience.

Now I’m pretty certain I’ve seen all the secret parts of the disc (was that Schrodinger’s cat, I wondered?). I’ve watched everything at least three times and… I’m pleased.  This is not the most easily accessible piece of art with which I’ve interacted, but it’s better as a result.  It takes some work… but I think it was worth it.  There are officially 56 videos on the DVD– that’s not quite true but we’ll leave it at that.  Four of them are the original videos from the 80s (the ones that showed up on MTV and ended up in the New York Museum of Modern Art).  Ten of them are new videos by the Residents and 41 are new videos done by various artists from around the world.  Some are funny, some are profound, some are disturbing, some moved me, some did not.  All in all it was worth it.

www.theresidents.co.uk