UNCLE WILLIE'S HIGHLY OPINIONATED GUIDE TO THE RESIDENTS
At the tender age of 19, Rich Shupe convinced The Residents to tour the U.S.A. He even convinced them to let him be the tour manager for the tour. Here are some of his memories.
- Uncle Willie
As early as my first adult teeth came in, I began asking Ralph Records when The Residents would tour. Yeah, sure, there were eventually some Mole Show performances in California, but since I was just an East Coast punk kid, and since high school didn’t pay very well, I couldn’t really afford the round-trip airfare to see these exclusive shows.
And yeah, sure, after the California Mole Shows, the BlinklessOnes toured Europe, but not the U.S.! What the hell kind of patriotism is that? Too broke to see them in my own country, I certainly couldn’t produce the fiscal resources required to see them in a foreign land, far across the Atlantic. Who did they think they were, Michael Jackson?
Then, in 1983, finally The Residents were playing in my neck of the woods: headlining at the New Music America Festival in Washington, D.C. My chance, at last, to see them live! What an incredible event. With all of the Mole Show touring equipment in disputed lock up in a shipping warehouse, a cast of thousands put together the entire show from scratch in two weeks. Performed in a museum in our nation’s capitol, I went to The Uncle Sam Mole Show a boy and came away a man. Well, almost. It sure scared me a lot. Yeah, sure, I saw a once-in-a-lifetime experience but I still couldn’t share my enthusiasm with any of my friends across the country. To nine tenths of the country, the Residents remained as elusive as ever.
It wasn’t until three years later, in 1986, that it looked like our favorite foursome might finally tour the United States. You see their Japanese record label, WAVE, commissioned two weeks of performances across Japan, and the Rez Boyz were diligently working on putting together a performance. Now, I’ll admit that just about everywhere in the world is more open-minded culturally than the States, but this was the second foreign country to see these folks live! What about us?
I called the Cryptic Corporation and asked, “Look, if you’ve got a show you can put on a plane and take to Japan, why not put it on a bus and take it to us?”
“Well,” came the answer, “we’ve thought about it, but there doesn’t seem to be very much interest. Huey Lewis’ booking agency spoke to us, but it didn’t really go anywhere.”
Indeed. But how can there not be any interest? The Residents touring the U.S. for the first time in 13 years? I asked if I could look into it, and with a non-committal “see what you can do” I embraced the task with a youthful fervor. I soon found out that booking a domestic tour for a band that had never put in a personal appearance in Anytown, USA was at once the easiest and most difficult thing to do. On the one paw, virtually everyone took my call (except for that asshole in Boston) but on the other, no one believed me. “The Residents? Yeah, right. Any real estate for sale?” To put it succinctly, let’s just say that Ralph Records fielded a lot of check-up calls. But once things got going, and word got out that these shores would soon be canvased by You Know Who, all that remained was working out the kinks. Two weeks later, the Cryptic Corporation returned from Japan to find more shows scheduled than they could play in the allotted time and it was just a matter of picking and choosing the dates.
And so it was, in December-January of 1986, the 13th Anniversary Show played 24 shows in 18 cities. Needless to say, it met critical acclaim and sold out everywhere. Three musicians, two dancers, lights, sound, management, a couple of skeletons, a dozen or so giraffes, and other assorted people and props presented two hours of newly reworked material that spanned a baker’s dozen of years and as many releases.
What was it all about? Things I wouldn’t mind forgetting: the heinous theft of an eyeball at the Hollywood Palace; kneeling, cramped, on a Trenton stage holding a fan on an Emulator because the power in the venue was hot; playing a pool hall in Kansas; throwing a hippie stage-crasher back into the Ann Arbor audience; and the cold spaghetti and ketchup catering in Pittsburgh.
Things I could never forget: every standing ovation; ranking third in the NY club’s ticket sales behind Eric Clapton and Jerry Garcia; the Prince disco light show in Minneapolis; the six weeks of everlasting friendships formed; and the unforgettable guitar work, stage presence and personality of Snakefinger.
And even the things that made the trip a real rock and roll tour: outfitting the San Francisco cast with Alaskan parkas on our first Atlanta morning; the never ending look-alike hotels; the imaginative costume-wearing show-goers; the snow-locked Cleveland Flats; and the always-eventful press escapades.
You can never really capture an experience like this in so many words. Nothing short of a tour diary could ever tell the story, and even then you get only one viewpoint. After not playing live for so long, why did the Residents do this? Was it for the fans? Was it to exorcize personal demons? Was it to get back on the Mole Show horse? Was it for the money? Who cares. The most important thing is. . . they did it.
- Rich Shupe