THE WAY WE WERE
Australia 2005
TOUR DATES:
MARCH 4 2005 - MELBOURNE
MARCH 5 2005 - MELBOURNE
MARCH 8 2005 - SYDNEY
MARCH 10 2005 - SYDNEY
MARCH 12 2005 - BRISBANE
Tour Manager: R. Long Sound: K. Ink The Residents
with guests: N. Cook, C. Fabrizio, R. Serber, M. Harvey
"Memories, like the corners of my mind... " as Barbara Streisand sung so sweetly, back in 1973.
While Barbara's memories were rummaging around the fallow corners of her mind in the early ‘70’s, The Residents had their own business to take care of. After their first release, Santa Dog, was set adrift late in 1972, the group anxiously awaited the vast acclaim certain to shower down upon the brilliant creators of that double set of 45 RPM records. Patiently, they sat by the phone ...and waited ...and waited ...and waited some more. Not only did the phone not ring, but several of the Santa Dog records were actually returned unopened, including one personally addressed to their favorite politician, then president Richard Nixon. Disappointed, but not discouraged, the group immediately launched into another recording project, one destined to become their first album, Meet The Residents.
Recording music quickly became an addiction, and for a while, every year produced another title. But, after ten years of life in the studio, The Residents began to feel the need of a new challenge, a new mode of creativity to explore. So, not unlike flies unconsciously drawn to the odor of fresh feces, the group soon found itself sucked into the world of live performance.
A few years later, during their second tour, in the thirteenth year of their career, the group was unexpectedly invited to Australia and New Zealand for a month of shows stretching from Perth to Christchurch. This 13th Anniversary Show was a sensation and eventually charmed the entire world with its curiously odd mixture of performance art and music. Performing mostly in the dark, and accompanied by a herd of inflatable white giraffes, what was there not to love?
But, despite glowing reviews and sold out shows, The Residents were never invited back to Australia. They were, of course, asked to play other exotic places from Russia to Portugal, from Oslo to Tel Aviv ...but they were never invited back to Australia. Not for 20 years. A lot can happen in twenty years. Children become adults, records turn into MP3s, and Osama Bin Laden becomes the New Improved Hitler.
Finally, late in 2004, when The Residents were asked to perform in Australia again, they said “no.” By this time they no longer relished a reprise Down Under. It was too far away and they had other things to do; creating a performance for a single festival taking place in three cities was too much work for too little reward. But one of the things that had happened during that 20 year gap was that The Residents had unexpectedly become the godfathers of the Avant Garde rock world, and the performers for this Aussie festival, an event devoted to new and unusual music, were musicians who had grown up listening to The Residents ...children who had become adults.
With this in mind, The Residents began to feel they had an obligation to go back to Australia, this time touting their 33rd Anniversary while swearing that they would certainly return again ...for their 53rd Anniversary Show. So the group decided it would be the most fun to play some of the same material they had played in Australia 20 years earlier, as well as newer material, some of which was ...well, maybe only 19 years old. But, joking aside, The Residents did agree to go to Australia and perform, as much for the other performers as for the audience.
Only five performances were scheduled. For normal tours, it takes at least five shows just to work out the bugs, so The Residents accepted the offer knowing that this tour would be buggy as a swamp in the summer ...and it was. And even though it was taken from an audience mix, they somehow managed to get the performance recorded ...and somehow managed to get those recordings assembled into a full length CD of the show. You can absolutely rest assured that the CD contains every song that was played, with edits occurring only when the performance was purely visual. It’s true, we swear.
To compensate for the lack of visual information available for these performances - which were definitely more "happenings" than concerts - a bonus DVD is included to give you, the listener and viewer, a small taste of The Way We Were, The Residents 33rd Anniversary Show. And, as an even more special bonus feature, a 14 minute video is included showing some of the computer graphic "knots" that The Residents designed as stage projections. The soundtrack for this projection video is taken from the pre-show music that The Residents prepared for the Demons Dance Alone tour.
Finally, many people have asked if The 33rd Anniversary Show in Australia was a warmup for another world tour, like The 13th Anniversary Show. When this question was put to The Residents, they paused, looked at each other knowingly, and walked away. One of them seemed to be singing something that sounded a little like "Memories, like the crud in my duck blind" ...but I could be mistaken.
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