Enter the name for this tabbed section: THE GINGERBREAD MAN CDROM
First Release
CDR - 1995 - Ion - 40068 - US
Enter the name for this tabbed section: Notes
This CD-ROM is available in formats for Windows and Macintosh. It is also available in a Japanese and a European multilingual version for Macintosh only.
THE GINGERBREAD MAN
The Gingerbread Man is the band's first exploration of a new kind of album -- what they call an "expanded album". It combines the normal CD format with an interactive CD-ROM track and can be either played on a standard CD-player or played with on a computer.
The album explores the personalities of nine characters and their "rather strange outlooks on life". Each character, according to The Residents, has the Gingerbread Man in them somewhere, represented in the music by the Gingerbread Man theme:
Run, run, as fast as you can You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man...
Each of the songs have the same general format: a 30-second introduction (which usually features the Gingerbread Man theme) followed by a verse sung by the character, and then a mix of comments and thoughts by the character over music which expands on the themes in the verse, given the listener glimpses into the person's thoughts. The interactive CD-ROM program also uses the same format, letting the user play his or her keyboard like a visual instrument by triggering various images, sounds, texts, and effects through the keyboard and mouse. The album is a series of audio portraits done in a unifying style (much as the busts created for the album are all very similar in style but different in details) rather than as a collection of distinct songs.
The Residents brought a number of people together to help on this album. Ty Roberts (who had produced Ty's Freak Show) was producer on this project through his new CD-ROM company, ION. Voices for the characters were provided by not only The Residents, but also Laurie Amat (The Weaver), Diana Alden (The Confused Transsexual), Molly Harvey (The Old Woman), Isabelle Barbier, and Todd Rundgren (The Sold Out Artist, The Ascentic, and The Aging Musician). EuroRalph also released a soundtrack version of the album which doesn't have the interactive CD-ROM track.
THE GINGERBREAD MAN is the story or, maybe more accurately, one of the many journeys of an entity that visits the minds of human beings, and spies upon their thoughts. In the center of these personalities, the Gingerbread Man finds each person’s individual “brain song,” an infectious piece of pop music that floats around in their mind. The Gingerbread Man recognizes this “brain song” as a human’s unconscious attempt at creating order in the quagmire of chaos constantly confusing its mental condition. Because of his ultimately detached position, The Gingerbread Man has no real emotional stake in the lives of these people, but they do represent an ongoing sense of amusement for him. In the end he sums up his feelings toward humanity with a brief song of his own.
The musical treatment of THE GINGERBREAD MAN is a continuous piece approximately 36 minutes long. This piece is actually a series of musical fragments united by two themes announcing the arrival and departure of the Gingerbread Man as he visits each personality. Within this structure several different characters or personalities will be created:
• A BUTCHER, who has returned from a near death experience, is preoccupied with thoughts of revenge towards someone he refers to as “buddy.”
• An ASCETIC or seeker of truth constantly strives to find out what is at the “top of the mountain” but also hears a voice that tells him to “beware of what he wants, because it might want him more.”
• A LONELY OLD WOMAN obsesses on the fact that her children never write or call and asks an angel if anyone would even notice if she murdered herself.
• An ARTIST sees himself as having sold out, but justifies his position because he had to “feed the fat boy,” a demon that everyone must eventually serve in order to become successful.
• An OLD SOLDIER fondly remembers an affair with a younger woman as he stands at attention in the hot summer sun; he wishes they could just dance together one more time.
• A CONFUSED TRANSSEXUAL has unfortunately discovered that a sex change operation was not a miracle cure for all his/her problems; he/she identifies with crows and how some people see the call of a crow as a cry, while others see the cry of a crow as a lie.
• A WEAVER who believes that something better is always just beyond her reach, but is also terrified that she won’t recognize her big opportunity when it finally arrives; meanwhile she plays the lottery and looks down on the man who is completely devoted to her.
• An AGING MUSCIAN fantasizes how might he might be remembered on MTV if he committed suicide; he mentally constructs his suicide note which reads: “If you like to pretend that you’ll never get old, you got what it takes to rock n’roll.”
• A DYING OILMAN
In the interactive version of THE GINGERBREAD MAN, the music will be nearly identical to the audio-only version, but this sound track will be supplemented by multimedia visual and audio material. At times these visuals will be synchronized to the music, while at other times the pictures will be controlled or “played” by the user. This material will be primarily composed of two different types of visual elements: the actual characters, who will be represented by disembodied floating heads spinning in front of psychedelic backgrounds, and the objects or possessions that reflect the characters’ personalities. Within this context the user will be able to not only create the sea of swirling visual and text elements in which each character’s head swims, but will also be able to effect these visual elements in regard to their colors, paths, degrees of distortion, etc. The result will be a unique long form music video in which the user has a certain involvement, and also one that will never look the same way twice.
- The Cryptic Corporation
THE GINGERBREAD MAN Liner Notes
About The Residents
The Residents are an anonymous group of artists based in San Francisco who are primarily known for the creation of experimental music, performance, and video. In slightly more than two decades, they have released over 20 albums of recorded music, toured the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan with three different performance pieces, and have been credited with the invention of a new art form, the music video. The creative output of the group has steadfastly defied categorization, but has always been marked by a consistent vision that is at once both mysterious and disturbing.
Exploring The Residents' Gingerbread Man Welcome to a mind-bending study of nine characters created by the legendary Residents and innovative ION.
About the Disc
The Residents' Gingerbread Man is a unique hybrid Compact Disc that actually combines two types of digital data on the same disc. One set of data exists on track 1 of the CD and is specifically meant to be used with a properly configured computer and CD-ROM drive. This is referred to as The Expanded Album (TM) version of the disc. The other set of data utilizes tracks 2 - 11 and provides approximately 37 minutes of standard Redbook Audio that can be played on any CD-Audio player. This is the complete Gingerbread Man album and is referred to as the audio only version of the disc.
A Cryptic Perspective
The one thing that appears certain is that The Residents' Gingerbread Man is, at its core, simply the latest Residents album. It just so happens that the album is a CD, but that's fine, because The Residents were making albums long before there were CDs. Pushing and tugging at the edge of technology is always the case with The Residents, so it seems fitting that not only is this an album that's a CD, but it's a CD that's both a CD-Audio and a CD-ROM on the same disc. In either format you are provided access to the lives of 9 distinctively different characters who seemingly have little in common. Little in common, that is, except for the presence of the Gingerbread Man in each of them. It's been suggested that if you listen carefully, you can pick out the haunting theme of The Residents' Gingerbread Man that pervasively weaves through each character's song.
THE GINGERBREAD MAN
The Gingerbread Man is the band's first exploration of a new kind of album -- what they call an "expanded album". It combines the normal CD format with an interactive CD-ROM track and can be either played on a standard CD-player or played with on a computer.
The album explores the personalities of nine characters and their "rather strange outlooks on life". Each character, according to The Residents, has the Gingerbread Man in them somewhere, represented in the music by the Gingerbread Man theme:
Run, run, as fast as you can You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man...
Each of the songs have the same general format: a 30-second introduction (which usually features the Gingerbread Man theme) followed by a verse sung by the character, and then a mix of comments and thoughts by the character over music which expands on the themes in the verse, given the listener glimpses into the person's thoughts. The interactive CD-ROM program also uses the same format, letting the user play his or her keyboard like a visual instrument by triggering various images, sounds, texts, and effects through the keyboard and mouse. The album is a series of audio portraits done in a unifying style (much as the busts created for the album are all very similar in style but different in details) rather than as a collection of distinct songs.
The Residents brought a number of people together to help on this album. Ty Roberts (who had produced Ty's Freak Show) was producer on this project through his new CD-ROM company, ION. Voices for the characters were provided by not only The Residents, but also Laurie Amat (The Weaver), Diana Alden (The Confused Transsexual), Molly Harvey (The Old Woman), Isabelle Barbier, and Todd Rundgren (The Sold Out Artist, The Ascentic, and The Aging Musician). EuroRalph also released a soundtrack version of the album which doesn't have the interactive CD-ROM track.
THE GINGERBREAD MAN is the story or, maybe more accurately, one of the many journeys of an entity that visits the minds of human beings, and spies upon their thoughts. In the center of these personalities, the Gingerbread Man finds each person’s individual “brain song,” an infectious piece of pop music that floats around in their mind. The Gingerbread Man recognizes this “brain song” as a human’s unconscious attempt at creating order in the quagmire of chaos constantly confusing its mental condition. Because of his ultimately detached position, The Gingerbread Man has no real emotional stake in the lives of these people, but they do represent an ongoing sense of amusement for him. In the end he sums up his feelings toward humanity with a brief song of his own.
The musical treatment of THE GINGERBREAD MAN is a continuous piece approximately 36 minutes long. This piece is actually a series of musical fragments united by two themes announcing the arrival and departure of the Gingerbread Man as he visits each personality. Within this structure several different characters or personalities will be created:
• A BUTCHER, who has returned from a near death experience, is preoccupied with thoughts of revenge towards someone he refers to as “buddy.”
• An ASCETIC or seeker of truth constantly strives to find out what is at the “top of the mountain” but also hears a voice that tells him to “beware of what he wants, because it might want him more.”
• A LONELY OLD WOMAN obsesses on the fact that her children never write or call and asks an angel if anyone would even notice if she murdered herself.
• An ARTIST sees himself as having sold out, but justifies his position because he had to “feed the fat boy,” a demon that everyone must eventually serve in order to become successful.
• An OLD SOLDIER fondly remembers an affair with a younger woman as he stands at attention in the hot summer sun; he wishes they could just dance together one more time.
• A CONFUSED TRANSSEXUAL has unfortunately discovered that a sex change operation was not a miracle cure for all his/her problems; he/she identifies with crows and how some people see the call of a crow as a cry, while others see the cry of a crow as a lie.
• A WEAVER who believes that something better is always just beyond her reach, but is also terrified that she won’t recognize her big opportunity when it finally arrives; meanwhile she plays the lottery and looks down on the man who is completely devoted to her.
• An AGING MUSCIAN fantasizes how might he might be remembered on MTV if he committed suicide; he mentally constructs his suicide note which reads: “If you like to pretend that you’ll never get old, you got what it takes to rock n’roll.”
• A DYING OILMAN
In the interactive version of THE GINGERBREAD MAN, the music will be nearly identical to the audio-only version, but this sound track will be supplemented by multimedia visual and audio material. At times these visuals will be synchronized to the music, while at other times the pictures will be controlled or “played” by the user. This material will be primarily composed of two different types of visual elements: the actual characters, who will be represented by disembodied floating heads spinning in front of psychedelic backgrounds, and the objects or possessions that reflect the characters’ personalities. Within this context the user will be able to not only create the sea of swirling visual and text elements in which each character’s head swims, but will also be able to effect these visual elements in regard to their colors, paths, degrees of distortion, etc. The result will be a unique long form music video in which the user has a certain involvement, and also one that will never look the same way twice.
- The Cryptic Corporation
THE GINGERBREAD MAN Liner Notes
About The Residents
The Residents are an anonymous group of artists based in San Francisco who are primarily known for the creation of experimental music, performance, and video. In slightly more than two decades, they have released over 20 albums of recorded music, toured the United States, Europe, Australia, and Japan with three different performance pieces, and have been credited with the invention of a new art form, the music video. The creative output of the group has steadfastly defied categorization, but has always been marked by a consistent vision that is at once both mysterious and disturbing.
Exploring The Residents' Gingerbread Man Welcome to a mind-bending study of nine characters created by the legendary Residents and innovative ION.
About the Disc
The Residents' Gingerbread Man is a unique hybrid Compact Disc that actually combines two types of digital data on the same disc. One set of data exists on track 1 of the CD and is specifically meant to be used with a properly configured computer and CD-ROM drive. This is referred to as The Expanded Album (TM) version of the disc. The other set of data utilizes tracks 2 - 11 and provides approximately 37 minutes of standard Redbook Audio that can be played on any CD-Audio player. This is the complete Gingerbread Man album and is referred to as the audio only version of the disc.
A Cryptic Perspective
The one thing that appears certain is that The Residents' Gingerbread Man is, at its core, simply the latest Residents album. It just so happens that the album is a CD, but that's fine, because The Residents were making albums long before there were CDs. Pushing and tugging at the edge of technology is always the case with The Residents, so it seems fitting that not only is this an album that's a CD, but it's a CD that's both a CD-Audio and a CD-ROM on the same disc. In either format you are provided access to the lives of 9 distinctively different characters who seemingly have little in common. Little in common, that is, except for the presence of the Gingerbread Man in each of them. It's been suggested that if you listen carefully, you can pick out the haunting theme of The Residents' Gingerbread Man that pervasively weaves through each character's song.
Enter the name for this tabbed section: notes