Stalking Ralph

Stalking Ralph

The Post Bros are hired to unmask and kill The Residents in this epic graphic novel by HOWARTH and STATHIS

See Also

The Comix of Two Cities

Savage Henry

Bunny Boy

With The Bunny Boy, The Residents have created another off beat pop gem. A sonic roller coaster in the style of Duck Stab, The Commercial Album and Demons Dance Alone, the album features 19 fast paced songs. Obsession, insanity and the coming Apocalypse have never sounded better.The Bunny Boy’s release was accompanied by a world tour and a narrative internet series.




The Bunny Boy(2008)

•Boxes Of Armageddon
•Rabbit Habit
•I'm Not Crazy
•Pictures From A Little Girl
•What If It's True?
•Fever Dreams
•Butcher Shop
•I Like Black
•Secret Room
•My Nigerian Friend
•It Was Me
•Golden Guy
•The Bunny Boy
•Blood On The Bunny
•I Killed Him
•The Dark Man
•Secret Message
•Patmos
•The Black Behind

The disc is made to look as though it is on a record label called Santa Dog Records which is shown in a logo on the rear sleeve.




Postcards From Patmos (2008)




1 The Winged Serpent Repents To The Father (7:10)
2 Soulless Flies Visit The Graves Of Ancestors (5:09)
3 Cold Metal Strikes A Soldier´s Bible (3:00)
4 Stained Hands Pass The Silverware (4:44)
5 I Wish The Remote Could Control Me (4:23)
6 Fabrics Drape The Unseen God (5:41)
7 There Is Power In The Chord (3:20)
8 Silk From Spiders (6:49)
9 Green Feathers And The Blood Of Circumcision (4:59)
10 Knees Bent, Toes Painted Orange (11:13)

Limited to 2000 copies to be sold on The Bunny Boy tour: 1000 for the US tour, 1000 for the European tour.

The CD is a companion piece to The Bunny Boy album and comes in a gatefold double-CD digipack, except contains only one CD. The empty space for a CD is intended for the Bunny Boy disc. There is also a pocket for a CD booklet. This is intended for the Bunny Boy booklet.

The music is primarily instrumental, recorded on analogue equipment, and is what can be heard accompanying the Bunny Boy video series.
In typically mis-informative Residents style, the CD appears to be released on a label called 'Santa Dog Records' with no mention anywhere on the release of Ralph America.
Similarly, the catalogue number RA 28 does not appear anywhere on the release. However, sources say this is actually a typo rather than deliberate mis-information.


Arkansas (2009)


1. Nobody is Listening
This piece was not included on the album, but it opened the touring show, The Bunny Boy.

2. The Bunny Boy
An alternative arrangement of the song from the album, The Bunny Boy.

3. Sad Saint John
Written for The Bunny Boy album, but eliminated from the final album.

4. The Butcher Shop
An alternative arrangement of the song from the album, The Bunny Boy.

5. Memories for Sale
Written for The Bunny Boy album, but eliminated from the final album.

6. Two Clown Paintings
Written for The Bunny Boy album, but eliminated from the final album.

7. The Black Behind
An alternative arrangement of the song from the album, The Bunny Boy.

8. My Brother's Skin
Written for The Bunny Boy album, but eliminated from the final album.

9. Save the World
An instrumental version of a song that was performed live on the European leg of The Bunny Boy tour.

10. Circe
Written for The Bunny Boy album, but eliminated from the final album.


Bunny Boy - Dogtags A Tribute To Past Tours(2008)


Note: This download-only release was sold on the Bunny Boy US tour as a code and password on the back of a Residents dog tag. The single downloadable track contains excerpts of RMX versions of songs that were from projects associated with tours (though most of these songs were never played on tours): Secret Seed, Blue Tongues (Blue Rosebuds), Burning Love, I Hate Heaven, Vileness Fats, Make Me Moo, Secret Room.
Sold on The Bunny Boy Tour


Alternative Bunny Boy Instrumentals.

total time: 31:40

(2:17) Residents - Track 01 - Patmos (I) (A80)
(1:38) Residents - Track 02 - The Dark Man (I) (A64)
(1:08) Residents - Track 03 - The Bunny Boy (I) (A64)
(2:28) Residents - Track 04 - Pictures From A Little Girl (I) (B64)
(2:35) Residents - Track 05 - Secret Message (I) (W64)
(2:01) Residents - Track 07 - It Was Me (I) (W64)
(2:44) Residents - Track 08 - I'm Not Crazy (I) (A64)
(2:07) Residents - Track 09 - Boxes Of Armageddon (I) (A64)
(2:20) Residents - Track 10 - I Like Black (Alternate) (W80)
(2:25) Residents - Track 10 - The Black Behind (I) (A80)
(2:02) Residents - Track 17 - I Killed Him (I) (W80)
(2:37) Residents - Track 17 - Secret Room (I) (A80)
(2:23) Residents - Track 18 - Golden Guy (I) (A80)
(2:49) Residents - Track 18 - Save The World (I) (W64)

THIS collection is a batch of tracks from the time of "The Bunny Boy".
All appear to be early or alternate instrumental versions to those officially released.




Bunny Boy Internet Series
Episodes 1 - 66 (MP4)

Is Anybody Out There?

Is Anybody Out There? (MP4)

The sweet sad saga of the Bunny Boy

1. I Have Got A Story To Tell
2. Postcards From Patmos
3. The Dark Man
4. More Entertainment Value
5. The Golden Guy
6. It All Begins To Come Back
7. Starting To Get Weird
8. It Must Be True
9. Going To Arkansas

What it is: “The Bunny Boy” originally was an internet series that ran from September 2008-April 2009. This DVD collects, edits, and organizes the series into a kind of unique movie experience.

Why it is: The internet series was designed to be watched over time, three a week. This time element is no longer a part of the experience so the story needed to be streamlined and archived in full widescreen glory so people who missed the series could appreciate the plight of poor Roger and the search for his missing brother.

Why you should care: If you followed the series you will enjoy having this DVD in your collection. If you missed it then you MUST have it in your collection. The series is edited and streamlined so it is not exactly the same as the internet version.


Bunny Boy Comic



A long time in the making, here is the next (final?) chapter in the Bunny Boy story! Illustrated by Adam Weller, with a script by The Residents (Bunny appears to have been involved, somehow...) This is a full color cover (standard comic book size) with high quality b/w printing/paper on the inside. 150 DPI.




Bootlegs:
Live in Chicago 2008-10-17

Act One

Act Two


Live in Frankfurt 2008-12-04

Act One

Act Two

Live The Hague, Netherlands 2008-11-23

Live In New York 2008-10-10

Savage Henry

Perhaps best known as the writer/artist of the "Those Annoying Post Bros." comic book series, Matt Howarth has many outlets for his twisted creativity. And all of them are notoriously "strange".

From 1987 to 1994, Matt did a comic book series called "Savage Henry" (about the wacky adventures of a guitarist from an alternate reality). Most issues of this series featured authorized guest appearances by real musicians; among them: the Residents, Hawkwind, Moby, Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, Nash the Slash, Foetus, Yello, Wire, Steve Roach, Richard Pinhas, Ron Geesin, David Borden, and more. Conrad Schnitzler (an original member of Tangerine Dream and Kluster) was a regular guest in this series and several graphic novels.


http://www.matthowarth.com/

The Residents guest star in these issues:

Issue 2

http://rapidshare.com/files/249402406/Savage_Henry_2.rar


Issue 5

http://rapidshare.com/files/249410451/Savage_Henry_5.rar


Issue 6

http://rapidshare.com/files/249417239/Savage_Henry_6.rar


Issue 18

http://rapidshare.com/files/249422697/Savage_Henry_18.rar


Issue 19

http://rapidshare.com/files/249431226/Savage_Henry_19.rar


Issue 20

http://rapidshare.com/files/249439641/Savage_Henry_20.rar




More to come....

MOLE SHOWS

UNCLE WILLIE'S HIGHLY OPINIONATED GUIDE TO THE RESIDENTS


The Residents, intent on not merely continuing to create a series of obscure musical albums, decided to undertake projects of greater scale and magnitude. The first such venture was The Mole Trilogy. This was designed to be a collection of six albums, three of the story and three of music. The story line followed two cultures through their ideological clash. The music albums were to document the two cultures’ music and then illustrate how it changed through the conflict of the two cultures together. Perhaps this was a bit ambitious. As of the publishing of this book, only parts 1, 2, and 4 have appeared. There has also been one spin-off album and a world tour based on this premise.

The Story So Far: The Mohelmot people live underground in the desert in gigantic ant-like colonies. They are primitive and superstitious. Music has a ritualistic purpose that supports their love of darkness and their belief in work. A quirky storm causes water to fill their holes and forces them to cross the desert to seek another land. On the coast they meet the jolly Chubs who seem eager to welcome the exotic “Moles.” Soon it is apparent that the welcome has more to do with cheap labor than true acceptance. The Chub culture as reflected through their music is superficial and pleasure oriented. Tension eventually mounts and a form of war breaks out between the two groups. As usual, war solves nothing. Time passes. The Mohelmot are forbidden to use their language due to deeply paranoid Chub fears. Racial intermarriage has created a new lifeform referred to as a “Cross.” A pop group of Cross youth named “The Big Bubble” creates a sensation by singing in the forbidden Mohelmot tongue. The singer is jailed and begins to see himself as the new Messiah of traditional “Zinkenites.” The Zinkenite wished to form a new Mohelmot nation. Truth be known, the singer is merely a naïve puppet of an aggressive Cross named Kula Bocca. In fact, Bocca arranged the arrest just to stir up trouble. The story abruptly ends, but there is plenty of basis for a dynamic conclusion, if The Residents ever get around to it.


Mark Of The Mole (RSD)
The Residents’ final work of their synthesizer era is Mark of the Mole, a terrifying electronic epic of a unique culture, the Mohelmot, who have been driven from their underground home by a massive storm. The unpublished novelization of Mark of the Mole by T.D. Wade brings much of the story into clear vision. In this extraction, Dydres, a young priestess of the Mohelmot race, tells the story of the Disposer and feels the first water drops of the impending disaster.

"Their way to the Melanatory took them near the idol of Disposer, tall and two-horned. The creature had somehow blundered into Havehome not long after Innisfree’s death. It was blind, probably ill, and panicked. For two or three nights it prowled the walkway and the tunnels, and whenever it smelled or heard a person, it would charge. Thirteen Mohelmot died on its terrible horns.
Eventually it worked its way to the floor of Echodrome. Many falls had left it bellowing with pain and rage. It was weak, but still dangerous. Dydres, although only a young woman, was then the highest acolyte, and had the confidence of the Melanatrix, Xecca. Though Darkness was silent to Xecca, he told Dydres that Disposer’s eyes, useless to it in the dark, were unsettling its mind. The Melanatrix asked for two volunteers with sharpened sticks to put out those eyes. One of them died, but so did Disposer, with crossed sticks hanging from its eyeholes like the protruberant meln-organs of Darkness himself. Alfray had suggested the sticks, though Dydres told the Melanatrix that Darkness had ordered their use.
Now Disposer’s bones were interred in its statue, which functioned to appease its soul. The statue also served to warn away the young or incautious from entering the Funeral Tunnel, a natural cavern whose treacherous paths lead to the Doomhole, a bottomless burial pit.
Before Dydres and Allasu reached the walls of the Melanatory, lightning had struck three more times. None of the flashes were any brighter than daylight Urxkanat, but the thunderclaps rung the mountain like a bell. People were retreating into their tunnels, as if they had lost all thought of work. The daily regimen was never interrupted except for the yearly Gathering to chant the Litanies.
Most of the twenty-seven acolytes were brave enough to come to the Melanatory. Within, it was quiet and dark. Dydres gathered them in a circle beneath the image of Darkness. They prayed with bare knees to rock, waiting for the words of Darkness to fill their empty minds. After a time the god told Dydres that the people were overly troubled by this test of faith. They should have a Gathering, right away, with chanting and with music.
Dydres raised her face to shen the image of Darkness. A drop of water suddenly hit her senozel, and she gave a cry, for she was as surprised as if lighting had struck her instead. The Melanatory was roofed, so Urxkanat could not intrude on the god or his worship. Furthermore, all the water in Havehome came, ultimately, from Kebol, a river running beneath the floor of Echodrome.
She gave quiet orders to the nearest acolyte, who was spattered by the next drop. The boy ran out the door and soon was back in.
“Melanatrix, water falls from above and runs down the outside of our temple!”
For a moment Dydres wished she had somehow told her people about thunderstorms and rain."
-T.D.Wade


Tunes Of Two Cities(RSD)
is essentially a prequel to Mark of the Mole. It consists of a dozen cuts: cultural samples, six from the Moles and six from the Chubs. The Residents alternate the pieces, cinematically intercutting the societies to pin down their characters and aspirations. And they do their work with an originality, a painstaking sense of detail, and an emotional wallop which makes Tunes, for me, their finest album.
The Mole cuts on Tunes are comparable to Eskimo, in that The Residents are again inventing the ritual music of a “primitive” society. Mole music embodies all the Residents’ reverence for tribal cultures, and to keep the soul from being eclipsed by the hardware, they use voices on all the Mole cuts. The voices are wordless and highly stylized. Sometimes the weirdness is melodic, but more often it is timbral: “Maze of Jigsaws” has a howling, animalistic chorus, and a low, rippling solo voice; at the end, that voice returns in a distant, ghostly reinvention that’s genuinely chilling.
Not surprisingly, Chub music is every bit a apocalyptic as Mole music. Chub music is pop, but by intercutting the two idioms, The Residents describe a commonality beyond musical structures. Mole music and Chub music are about the same thing, they serve the same purpose: the ritual exorcism of suffering. Almost all of the Chub cuts are covers of Big Band standards. So just as Mole music is an outgrowth of Eskimo, Chub music harkens back to The Third Reich ‘N’ Roll: Again, The Residents are trying to discern what’s hateful, dangerous, and fascistic in pop culture; what values it betrays about ourselves. But if Reich ‘N’ Roll seemed self-consciously methodical and pyrotechnic, Chub music has an almost documentary coherence, a found-object integrity, because of its detail and relative uniformity.
Tunes is quintessential Residents, opening new mine shafts into their humor, experimentation, allusiveness, elusiveness.... yet it’s also without a doubt their most accessible work. The expressive freedom of Mark of the Mole takes a quantum leap with Tunes, where the music wordlessly articulates the convictions that generated it. Role-playing and pyrotechnics, ordinarily The Residents’ defenses against emotion, here serve to realize emotion, and this music can speak to people as no other work of theirs has.
Tunes reminds me of Citizen Kane: an original, technically sophisticated achievement that’s more than accessible - it’s downright entertaining. No easy trick, for both works are obsessed with wealth, privilege, and power; nostalgia and loss; decadence and dissolution. And as long as I’ve gone this far, I’ll confess that I find them comparable in quality; Tunes is one of the triumphs of American Music, regardless of genre or era.
- Cole Gagne


Intermission(RSD)



The Big Bubble(RSD)
The most controversial band in Chubville has got to be The Big Bubble. But The Big Bubble has also proven to be a bit controversial right here on the planet Earth, even with Residents fans.
The package alone is worth discussing. It is the most conceptual cover The Residents have ever produced. The idea of having a “record jacket cover” on one’s record jacket cover is certainly unique. The Residents have done just that and taken it further by not only having the cover of The Big Bubble’s cover on their cover but also having The Big Bubble album back on their album back, The Big Bubble gatefold in their gatefold, and even The Big Bubble record label on their record label. The Residents even hired models to be on the cover of The Big Bubble album (which is therefore on The Residents cover by default).
The Residents have always been strange but this album is strange in a totally new way. It adopts the typically pop musical stance—guitars, keyboards, drums, and vocal—but twists the music into off-key anthems sung in a garbled non-language (though they call it Mohelmot). Assuming that one knows the story line behind the album (check “The Story So Far” elsewhere in the book) I guess it makes sense to record an album like this. However, it does seem that we should look at the album on its own basis—that is, to ignore any story.
One of the obvious first impressions is that the music is very nearly recorded live. Sure there may be overdubs and stuff, but the timing is so relentlessly unpredictable that it is certainly following the lead of the singer. My first impression was that it is not particularly memorable in its music; what stands out is the general force of maintaining such a dedicated emotional stance for the whole album. There is no doubt that they believe in what they are doing.
But it does grow on you, and pieces like “Cry for the Fire” and “Kula Bocca Says So” are as fine as anything they have written. The album carries such an emotional weight that it is difficult to analyze. It certainly makes one feel uncomfortable. Cole Gagne in his book, Sonic Transports, says, “The stuff you’re told to think of as unintelligible, amateurish, or even imbecilic can contain some profound surprises—but you have to stop living on borrowed ideas, and actually listen, if you’re ever going to spot them. And The Big Bubble contains some of the most amazing nuggets of beauty and humor and intelligence and feeling in the Residents’ music.”
But perhaps The Residents say it best.

“Sugar melts and goes away, Sugar melts and goes away, Sugar melts and goes away, but Vinegar lasts forever.”

- Uncle Willie



Out-Takes (Flac)

Concentrated

Big Bubble Vocal Improvisations



The Try Out:
The Mark of The Mole recorded live in Santa Monica, California April 10, 1982.
From Assorted Secrets cassette A-side only and later released on CD.(2000)
10-Apr-82 Santa Monica USA The House



Mole Show DVD Bag Set (2009)


Edition of 400 numbered copies.

Comes packaged inside a burlap bag, with a miniature shovel & twelve 5.5" x 8.5" postcards, with backdrop drawings from the Mole Show.

Cd was recorded on 10-30-82 at the JJJ 105.7 radio station in Sydney, Australia.

Dvd was recorded live at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco, California






Live at The Roxy(RSD)

This album is an "unofficial" condensation of two Mole Show concerts given by The Residents at the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles in October of 1983. The record has no label or catalog number - it was bootleged by an "inside source" at the shows, whose efforts were later discovered, but were not discouraged.
Ralph Records was later financially compensated, after discovering that the resulting album was being manufactured and sold.
The sound quality of the record is quite good, considering that the recording was made from a cassette tape of the two concerts. The front cover was taken from the European MOLE SHOW program; the back cover is a picture of a piece of the burlap screen which was used in all of the concerts.

COLLECTOR INFO:
1800 copies of THE LIVE MOLE SHOW were produced in total secrecy, and were sold by mail and through word of mouth. Later that year, Ralph Records came into possession of the master tapes, and manufactured the same recording as a picture disc, in a limited edition of 1500 copies.

(from the book "The Cryptic Guide To THE RESIDENTS", 1986)


The Mole Show VHS:



Just join again with HJ Split/Other:

Part 1
Part 2


Euro Moles:

25-May-83 Vienna Austria Secession(Flac)


Recorded live at the european part of The Mole Show in Vienna, Austria on March 25, 1983.This is complete concert not the crappy LP vinyl version.


Live In Vienna 7"

A1 The Residents - Smack Your Lips (Clap Your Teeth) 1:40
A2 TheResidents - Smack Your Lips (Clap Your Teeth) (backwards) 1:40
B1 The Residents & Penn Jillette - Another Land - Rumors 4:46

Live recording from March 25, 1983 in Vienna, Austria. Track A2 is track A1 played backwards.



28-May-83 Frankfurt Germany Volksbildungsheim (Flac)

29-May-83 Dusseldorf Germany Schumannsaal (Flac)

30-May-83 Berlin Germany Metropol (Flac)

2-Jun-83 Hamburg Germany Markthalle (Flac)






4-Jun-83 Utrecht Holland Muziekcentrum
This Mole Show was presented by The Music Center, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Recorded by NOS for VPRO Radio.

7-Jun-83 Paris France Olympia

9-Jun-83 Zurich Switzerland Volkhaus (Flac)

The Third Secret Of Fatima LP

13-Jun-83 Milan Italy The Rolling Stone (Flac)

17-Jun-83 Barcelona Spain Salon Cibeles (Flac)



21-Jun-83 Madrid Spain Le Edad de Oro
First Broadcast, 1984 - TVE2
Rebroadcast July 8, 2006 - TVE 50 Years
Proshot - 82 minutes
Complete program, not edited. No setlist, no cover.
Some parts of this program are in spanish, with people talking about The Residents.
La Edad de Oro was a legendary TV program on the 2nd channel of the spanish public TV dedicated to the new tendencies of music, art, etc... These programs are now in the Public Library of the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid (The same Museum of the Picasso´s Guernica masterpiece.)Thanx to kigonjiro over at Dimeadozen.org for the DVD Torrent.

Part1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Just join again with HJ Split/Other.

Snippets From KoFotOoT:
The Secret Seed &
The Observer

28-Jun-83 London England Hammersmith Odeon (Flac)

30-Jun-83 Edinburgh Scotland Queens Hall (Flac)





The Comix of Two Cities by Matt Howarth

In the early 1980s, Matt Howarth did a minicomic series entitled "The Comix of Two Cities", based on lifeforms created by the Residents in the band's "Mark of the Mole" trilogy of albums. In the late 1990s, these stories were reprinted as a comic book series.

Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
Issue 4
Issue 5
Issue 6



Mole Pix