Cube-E: The history of American Music in 3 e-z pieces (1989-90)
Cube-E grew out of various performance pieces which The Residents had been working on as early as 1987. The first part, Buckaroo Blues, was inspired by a collection of cowboy songs dating from between 1850 and 1950. The Residents had a commission from Tele 5, the German TV station, to create a piece for their Off Beat Night program, so the band decided to write their own versions of these songs and put them together into one long performance piece. The work was premiered at the 20th Anniversary Party for Boudisque (aka Torso, which was The Residents European record label at the time) in Amsterdam on November 18th, 1987. After the premier, the band took the show to Germany for the TV appearance. The half-hour show also included performances of The Residents' covers of Hank Williams's Jambalaya and Elvis's Burning Love.
After the Tele 5 broadcast, The Residents were invited to perform at Lincoln Center for the Serious Fun Festival. They started thinking about the possibility of a tour featuring music about American music and, to this end, they added a second song cycle called Black Barry to the show in order to fill it out to a full hour. Barry was a series of Residential versions of black music (gospel songs, blues, and jazz) just as Buckaroo Blues was covers of cowboy music. The two were premiered together at Alice Tully Hall on July 21st, 1989. This was joined with the Residents most recent release, The King & Eye to complete the show.
Elvis would represent Rock 'n' Roll, the synthesis of white cowboy music and the black gospel, blues, and jazz. This was similar to the way The Big Bubble featured music which was a synthesis of the music from the Mole and Chub cultures from The Tunes of Two Cities.
The Residents also chose Elvis because they feel that he represents the end of American popular music. Ever since the British Invasion occured in 1963, most American music has been US bands imitating British bands, who themselves were imitating earlier American bands.
The new show was written as a performance piece and was to be perform in theatres only -- no clubs. The band hired choreographers Sarah McLennan (who went on to run Ralph America for The Residents) and Carol LeMaitre (who had been part of the Mole Show cast). The show was more elaborate than the economical 13th Anniversary Show had been, but The Residents hadn't forgotten the lessons from The Mole Show and kept the size of the tour under control. Since the 13th Anniversary tour had been such a success they re-hired Rich Shupe, who had arranged the USA leg of that previous tour. Lighting director Chris McGregor developed the unusual look of the show -- the entire performance was done under black light with fluorescent strips of material fastened to the costumes and props. Only those strips would be visible, glowing brightly while everything else would be flat black silhouettes against the background. The musicians were also on stage, wearing black jumpsuit with penlight eyes.
The show premiered at the Cowell Theatre in San Francisco on September 21st, 1989, and received a standing ovation. The next six shows were sold out completely. From there the show left for Europe where it continued to be very successful. In Berlin the band received a standing ovation which lasted 30 minutes -- the group had broken down the stage and were out back relaxing in the theatre bar before the applause stopped.
The performance opened with black-light cowboys in 100-gallon hats and penlight eyes sitting around a glow-in-the-dark fire. The musicians accompanied the singer on synthesizer, sequencer, drums, toy saxophone, and the occasional coyote howl.
Black Barry followed the singer as he portrayed Barry, performing traditional black songs in a series of numbers. The section ended with a mysterious cube-headed giant rising out of the floor to a powerful giant.
The last part was The Baby King. It started with a recording of a Residential rendition of Also Spracht Zarathustra (which Elvis would have played before he took the stage at his Las Vegas shows). A spotlight focused on an old man telling his grandkids (two puppets called Shorty & Shirley) a story about the Baby King:
Once, there was a baby. And he wanted to be King, because Kings are good, and Kings are strong, and Kings are the best of everything.
The grandfather used to be "a part of this" as an Elvis impersonator, so he showed the kids what it was all about by singing Elvis songs between installments of the story. He was assisted throughout by two dancers who would change costume for each song. As the show progressed, stage hands added an inflatable belly and other day-glo attributes of the aging Elvis to the singer. The grandfather's story ended when his rendition Love Me Tender was interrupted by the sounds of the British Invasion, which beats the Baby King down with the Beatles singing Blue Suede Shoes. The old man concluded with an account of the Baby King's death ("He got a little old, and he got a little fat, and, well, he died...") followed by a rowsing rendition of Hound Dog.
At the end of the show the grandfather (and his grandkid puppets) were joined a new incarnation of the Eyeballs-and-Skull costumes, the Cubo-Residents, for the curtain calls. The new outfits were designed by Ron Davis, who had also built the Shorty and Shirley puppets, to give the group a new look. Davis has worked with the band again since then, contributing to the Freak Show and Bad Day on the Midway CD-ROMs.
After the first European tour the band returned to San Francisco and the Cowell Theatre where they did another series of shows, ending with Cube NYE on New Year's Eve, 1989. Each member of the audience was given a goody-bag which included the For Elsie CD and, at midnight, the band performed the only encores on the tour: Mr. Skull's version of Auld Lang Syne and the first ever live performance of Santa Dog.
On January 14th, during the New York run, the band appeared on David Sanborn's Night Music, where they performed Teddy Bear and From the Plains to Mexico. They finished the show by dancing the twist with Conway Twitty.
The show was such a success that it went on the road a second time in 1990. Unfortunately, this time around it did not do as well and problems started plaguing the performances. In Cleveland, they had to cancel when a promoter declared bankruptcy, and a speaker cabinet fell into the audience during the last show in New York City, No one was hurt but The Residents started to worry about a return of the Mole Show's curse.
in spite of being performed over eighty times, no complete video of the Cube-E show was ever compiled. Other than the early Tele 5 tapes and the Night Music performance, none of the shows were ever filmed to The Residents' satisfaction.
The Cube-E tour produced two commercial recordings: Cube-E: Live in Holland, a recording of the show, and The King & Eye , a studio album (the basis for The Baby King.) Ralph Records also released a limited-release tape of the early Buckaroo Blues / Black Barry version of the show from the Cowell theater.
The Cube-E: Live in Holland recording was made during the opening and closing performances of the second European tour. The first takes place at the Amsterdam Opera House in Holland and the second was in Valencia, Spain. Most of the recording is from Spain -- all except for the tail end -- but the band wanted to subtitle the album Live in Holland, as they had with their other two live tour albums(Mole Show and 13th Anniversary Show), so they included Ober from the first show.