OUR FINEST FLOWERS
UNCLE WILLIE'S HIGHLY OPINIONATED GUIDE TO THE RESIDENTS
The Residents are proud. Proud of their twenty years of
creative thinking and working. The decade-long cycle that
they have always acknowledged has made its second turn and
the group has paused to recap the last 7,304 days with two
highly entertaining projects, Twenty Twisted Questions and
Our Finest Flowers.
Twenty Twisted Questions is a laser disc from that most
adventurous company, Voyager. The laser disc does a
remarkable job of translating The Resident's career into a
series of easily chewed tidbits. The years move so fast
that there is a constant temptation to press the pause
button just to spend more time digesting the image flow, a
concept that is made easy by the single-frame format of the
laser disc.
The first 30 minute side of the disc is the collection of
“music video” that has made The Residents the godfathers of
the medium. But it is the second side that really glows.
The first half features three new videos of The Residents
performing live. Live footage of the troupe is rare to
begin with, but the theatrics they have designed are
striking visual treats and this footage just leaves one
begging for more. The final half of side two spends about
20 seconds on each year, showing photographs of the band,
album covers (amusingly animated), and musical sound bites
from each year. Each 20 seconds is so obviously the tip of
a proverbial iceberg that the emotional impact is dazzling.
There is a wonderful bonus track at the end of the disc
that is just too cool.
Our Finest Flowers is the retrospective album. No, it is
not a “greatest hits” thing (thank god). Instead it is a
newly rethought excursion into the twisted and depraved
minds that spent twenty years creating a bunch of music—and
then, for some reason, decided to spend another few months
dissecting that very same music and gluing it together in
strange new ways. The uninitiated listener would think that
it is no more than a new album. But the fan will discover
an odd puzzle—and the more knowledgeable that fan is, the
deeper the Residential insight goes.
These really are new songs! It is though the group wanted
to say that song writing is just random shuffling after
all. What better way to comment on twenty years of song
writing than to prove it’s only Mr. Potato Head.
- Uncle Willie