Customer Reviews

13th Anniversary Live in Tokyo

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 1985 the Residents, suffering from losses from the Mole Show, the loss of Ralph Records as a viable alternative record company, and needing a new lease on life,were talked into a Japan tour by Bomba records. Happily, they accepted the challange.

The resulting album from that tour is an improvement over the flat sounding "Mole Show" recordings that have come from that earlier act. The music rises and fades, and sounds like they are actually playing instruments rather than suffering the flat synthetic sound of the Mole Show.

By far the highlight to this recording is the guitar workings of Snakefinger, a man who was probably one of the most underated and overlooked guitarists of his era. His range of musical abilities, ranged from folk to advant garde, with blues and jazz in the middle show his considerable talent, and the world is a poorer place without him. Of course, we hear the rock and advante garde ranges in this recording, and it is recommended that you seek out and find out more about this lost talent.

This is a recoring of a "greatest hits tour" rather than of the concept tours of the Mole Show or E Cubed. However, in the sense of musical talent shown and pure entertainment for the audience, this recording is a success.

Happily the show ends with "Cry for Fire" with Snakefinger blistering his way throught the acme of a guitar solo that ends this song, and this album. Inexplicably (was it purposely done in the show?) the guitar solo fades out, the audience can be heard applauding, and the show ends.

Recommended for fans, and for the open minded uninitiated.

this is a great live album. i think the residents did an absolutely fabulous job recreating and reinterpreting these songs for a live setting. the residents had always considered themselves a studio band and had released about 10 albums and numerous singles (not to mention filmed half of a movie that was never released) before they did their first tour (for the mole show). that tour almost destroyed them financially and morally, and they vowed never to tour again. a couple of years later, through the combined efforts of a couple different maniacal fans, the residents were made an offer they couldn't refuse, and so they set out on the road again for this tour.

this tour, they kept the scale simple to avoid the disasters they had with the ambitious mole show, and instead of embracing one over-arching concept piece, they presented a selection of tunes from their (at that point) 13 year career. the arrangements on this album are minimal and sparse, but they do a good job of translating the essentially untranslatable nature of the residents' studio work. snakefinger's guitar playing is excellent as well. the selection embraces almost every major album, and throws in a few oddities as well.

i think this could be a good introduction to the work of the residents. you get a broad selection of the material from their first 13 years, the playing is flawless, and the sound is excellent. no, don't expect the songs to sound like their studio albums, but that doesn't mean they're worse, simply different. the songs here are equally amazing in their own right.

i also don't know what the previous reviewer was talking about when he said the audience was inaudible, as you can definately hear them applauding at the end of sections and also singing along on some of the more popular tracks (particularly at the end of "Walter Westinghouse"). perhaps (unlike many rock audiences today) the audience was merely respectfully silent during the performance of the music. i know i would stand silently in rapt attention if i ever had the opportunity to witness such magnificent music.

As a matter of fact this WAS my first Residents album. I am now an owner of most of the Residents' music. The music in this show is dark, haunting, manical (Smelly Tongues), aggressive, and absolutely satisfying. Its long enough to hold hour of listenig value, but all of the "retranslations" are different from one another. Listen to this at 3 AM, in a dark room, with sterio headphones. I did when I first got it. The climax of the show might give you a migraine.

Thanks to technology, this performance can be heard with the audience. Previous releases of the show included the "empty house" affect.

As with most live albums, this is a collection of songs already released on other albums, but performed live. The engineer admirably eliminated any and all hints that there was a live audience at all (so it sounds like they are performing to an empty house), but this album suffers from the bane of all live albums: the songs simply work better in their studio recorded form. Don't start with this one if you are new to the Residents. It's not a bad album, really, it's just that every one of these songs is better in their original form.

After the Mole Show debacle, The Residents (temporarily) changed for the worse. The Big Bubble (their worst recording of all time) and the 13th Anniversary Tour were the results of the "band" regrouping. Anyone familiar enough with The Residents phases and sounds can easily figure that a number of the original foursome flew the coop after the Mole Show. The lone survivor took it one the road. Flat, bland, and one dimensional, this recording shows the remaining Resident (now known as Mr. Skull) trying to regroup. Fortunately, with the discovery of new sounds, styles, MIDI, and the like, the "group" got it back together. But "The 13th Anniversary Show" demonstrates that art indeed imitates life. As in the early Residents tune "The Sandman", here our front man is "All Alone, Has No Hone To Edge His Knify Bone."

This is one of my favorite albums by the Residents, ESD breaks up the tracks by song, rathar than how they are performed, which is by suite. for instance, The Ship's 'A' Goin' Down, The New Machine, and Torniquet of Roses all go into each other. The audience doesn't clap after each song, but they do after each suite. All the songs here are great, especially the version of "Walter Westinghouse" Some others you might dig: "Picnic in The Jungle," "Monkey & Bunny," and the suite of Commercial Album songs.

This is a live album although with The Residents, one cannot tell! Between-song banter there's aplenty, but audience reaction is not obvious. Standout tracks include the magnificent Jailhouse Rock and the quirky This Is A Man's World with its cartoon character voices. I wonder what James Brown thinks of it? Their quasi-orchestral arrangements are much n evidence, along with those strangled synth sounds. Things get really strange on tracks like Coming Of The Crow and Cry For The Fire, while elsewhere there are some jazzy edges. The Residents made some of the weirdest music ever but the problem is, sometimes it all sounds the same. I wouldn't recommend his album to those who want to discover this band's distinctive sonic experiments. Rather get an album that contains tracks like the studio version of Semolina, Blue Rosebuds and The Spot (with Snakefinger).