I AM A RESIDENT!(2018)OverviewTracksLiner NotesThe Players
In late 2017, The Residents announced a new project that would allow their fans to participate on a level they never could before. There had been a few previous "audience participation" projects in the past - most notably for The River of Crime and The Bunny Boy. But the former asked for videos at a time before everybody carried a high definition camera in their pocket, and the latter was more of a question and answer format, not really conducive to the public's creativity.
But the time had now come. Beyond just cameras, many people had fully functional recording studios in phones. This was the moment in history where the public was most similar to The Residents - there was a relatively new technology in front of them, and maybe they didn't quite know how to use it, but the allure of creation could not be stopped.
The initial idea was simple enough: ask fans to record their own versions of Residents songs, and the best would be included on a compilation. To be perfectly honest, The Residents didn't expect the incredible result. They thought there would be a clear group of 20 or so songs that would be deemed good enough, and certainly no more than 50 total submissions. Boy were they way off, and never so happy to be so wrong.
With nearly 200 submissions, The Residents changed gears, and what was originally going to be a quick compilation of crowd-sourced material became a new creative project unto itself. The group went into the studio with the recordings, and came out with an entirely different beast.
The I AM A RESIDENT! suite was pressed to CD and sent to those who had pre-ordered via the group's PledgeMusic campaign. The public CD release is two discs, with the second disc being a selection of the original covers. Additionally, the vinyl version is composed of yet another selection of original covers.
CD Version:
- Intro
- Lingering Illusions
- Hanging By His Habit
- Freaky Wake
- Hello Duck Stab
- Commercial Bells Toll
- Outro
- Kick A Picnic
- Smelly Tongues
- Moisture
- Picnic Boy
- Boo Who?
- Hanging By His Hair
- Hanging By His Hair
- Loss: The Weatherman
- Death In Barstow
- Six Things To A Red Bicycle
- Hard And Tenderly
- Forty Four
- Rest Aria
- Constantinople
- Picnic Boy
- Boo Who?
- Would We Be Alive?
- Margaret Freeman
- Floyd
- Tribal Teddy
- Burn My Bones
- Hello Skinny
- Smelly Tongues
- Hanging By His Hair
- The Aging Musician
Vinyl Version:
- Smelly Tongues
- Here Come the Bums
- Tragic Bells
- The Weatherman
- Hello Skinny
- Mahogany Wood
- Boy In Love
- Boo Hoo?
- On The Way to Oklahoma
- Blue Rosebuds
- Theme For An American TV Show
- Death in Barstow
- When We Were Young
- We Are The Residents Theme
The year was 2013. The Residents were sitting in a bar in Athens discussing their recently completed and massively successful Wonder of Weird tour when somebody said, "Hey! You know this Christmas in July stuff was cool, but now we need to do something different... completely different." The response was immediate... heads nodding in approval and voices raised in a unified "YEAH!" But just as quickly, the inevitable question arose - "Well... we've done albums about Eskimos and Moles, one about a sexual predator, another about Siamese twin faith healers and an album about the fascism of rock 'n' roll... what's left?"
Puzzled, the group grew quiet. But slowly, over the next few weeks, an idea appeared, emerging like an iceberg floating free from the fog. The Residents see ideas as living organisms - sometimes they're butterflies, flitting in and out of one's consciousness only to disappear again, often in days if not hours. Other times ideas are monsters, tenacious beasts that won't let go. And sometimes, every now and then, like a grizzly bear giving birth to Godzilla, an idea spawns a brand new concept, something nobody ever thought about before... and this was one of those times.
In this case, the original idea - The Grizzly Bear - was opening up the concept of The Residents to their fans, inviting them to submit their own versions of the group's original songs. The best of these fan interpretations would then become an album called I AM A RESIDENT! And that was okay - simple and straightforward. Expecting thirty or forty submissions - certainly no more than fifty - the band sat back and waited for the songs to roll in. And they did... thirty... forty... a hundred... a hundred and fifty!!! UNTIL... the final count reached one hundred and ninety-seven, all AMAZING alternate takes on The Residents' forty-five year musical history. The band was blown away. The number and quality of the fan submissions was so high, the group's initial idea - The Grizzly Bear - suddenly seemed inadequate. Concerned they were not doing justice to this incredible body of work, the group pondered... and ruminated... and... BINGO! Godzilla was born!
What if, The Residents thought, we used this material as the basis for a completely new concept. Just as the world of 1960s garage band rock 'n' roll became fodder for The Third Reich 'n' Roll, what if the I AM A RESIDENT! submissions became the basis for a new kind of album? Inspired, feverish activity ensued as the group began looping, editing, overdubbing, and rearranging these crowd sourced versions of their own songs. Slowly, as layer piled on top of layer on top of layer, something new emerged, and here it is, waiting to be heard by all.
In the end, if there's anything to be learned from a project like this, the ultimate lesson can only be that WE ARE ALL RESIDENTS! - God's junk mail struggling to escape the recycling bin and break out into the light. If we've had any success empowering and enabling your inner Resident, IAAR! has been a gloriously satisfying project. Many thanks for your care, concern, and creativity.
Long live THE RESIDENTS!
-- The Cryptic Corporation
Emerald Suspension
Tom-Erik Løe
AUOH
Sebb Sollenhag
Zindel
Buck Tardley
Al Kamykowski
Ray LeBray
Mikey Hemphill
MOLI
Lucas Marti
The Zverstvo
Chesty Vulva
Laser Pig
Avionic
Nicholas Panagakos
Sleeping Man
This Is Past (George Zafiriadis)
Mr. Mute
Mieze Residents
Wolfboy
Enemy From Space
Late Frequencies
Cezary Ostrowski
WAK IV
Philip Stranger
Utrom
Daniel Riggins
Moony Moony
Danny Spiteri
Jason Hallyburton
(the) baby born massacre
Krafty Cheese
Germaine Scalp
L'Orchestre Inharmonique de Nice
Charles Klee
Cemantic Blockage
Spoon Blind Williams
Malcolm Tent
Smallbridge
The Meet Café
Gaw Nihc
Deaf Panda
Yvan & Lendl
Ranchstyle Chickenpants
GK Machine
Twisted Richie
Imitando al ojo
Neponim Eye
Rita
El Douche (And His SIster)
Yankee Doodle Randy
Still Life
Noise Bleed
Des Clous
Palo Alto
Ben Folkwein
SANTA
Freek Kinkelaar
Isaac P. Anderson
Ovalematic
Ham Face
Agrimorfee
Pupaum
HalfCutLemon
Darkly
Allen P. Williams
Arthur Soyer
The Knod
shidt!
Frenesi Gates
Hardin Keane
Leo Nightingale
Phil Roden
Folkloration
Christian Panetta
Mystery Ted
Donald Shrimp
Brett's Milk
Misterie Box
Skating Dicks
Wizards of Boat
Lambamannen
Johan Devorak
NifNar
Yuna Yune
Snakes of Christian
Chance
Amöbel Audio
Permanent Summer
OK Glass
Substance W
X&X
Loopii
Itch Princess
The Black Lodgers
ARK
Jake Gonnella
Wormcrack
Henry Karrot
Ingmar Svenson
OBAA
slotorque
Jeremy Maloney
moldie13
Cake Boy And The Caker Street Boys
Mr. Sterile
Ben Gibeson
Josh Brown
Dr. Fritz Rotwang
B & El
Cult With No Name
Skull In The Crow's Eye
Aaron Dylan Kearns
The 180 Gs
Andor
Fan Guilt
Tantamount Plus
The New Born Years