Historical

Related Pages
Black Barry Buckaroo Blues The King & Eye Kettles of Fish on the Outskirts of Town The King & Eye RMX
CUBE-E(1989)
OverviewDatespREServed edition


Cube-E was not originally planned as a touring show. It grew out of various performance pieces which The Residents had been working on as early as 1987. The first part, Buckaroo Blues, was inspired by a collection of cowboy songs dating from between 1850 and 1950. The Residents had a commission from Tele 5, the German TV station, to create a piece for their Off Beat Night program, so the band decided to write their own versions of these songs and put them together into one long performance piece. The work was premiered at the 20th Anniversary Party for Boudisque (aka Torso, which was The Residents European record label at the time) in Amsterdam on November 26th, 1988. After the premier, the band took the show to Germany for the TV appearance. The half-hour show also included performances of The Residents' covers of Hank Williams's Jambalaya and Elvis's Burning Love.

After the Tele 5 broadcast, The Residents were invited to perform at Lincoln Center for the Serious Fun Festival. They started thinking about the possibility of a tour featuring music about American music and, to this end, they added a second song cycle called Black Barry to the show in order to fill it out to a full hour. Barry was a series of Residential versions of black music (gospel songs, blues, and jazz) just as Buckaroo Blues was covers of cowboy music. The two were premiered together at Alice Tully Hall on July 21st, 1989.

By this time The Residents were pretty sure that they wanted to take this new music on the road. They needed a third section and, after much debate, settled on covering Elvis. "The King" would represent Rock 'n' Roll, the synthesis of white cowboy music and the black gospel, blues, and jazz. This was similar to the way The Big Bubble featured music which was a synthesis of the music from the Mole and Chub cultures from The Tunes of Two Cities.

The Residents also chose Elvis because they feel that he represents the end of American popular music. Ever since the British Invasion occurred in 1963, most American music has been US bands imitating British bands, who themselves were imitating earlier American bands -- or, at least, so The Residents saw it.

Cube-E: The History of American Music in 3 E-Z Pieces On January 14th, towards the end of the run, the band appeared on David Sanborn's Night Music, where they performed Teddy Bear and From the Plains to Mexico. They finished the show by dancing the twist with Conway Twitty.

The show was such a success that it went on the road a second time in 1990. Unfortunately, this time around it did not do as well and problems started plaguing the performances. In Cleveland, they had to cancel when a promoter declared bankruptcy, and a speaker cabinet fell into the audience during the last show in New York City, starting a small fire. No-one was hurt but The Residents started to worry about a return of the Mole Show's curse and swore never to tour again.





Black Barry(1989)
Overview


Black Barry followed the singer as he portrayed Barry, performing traditional black songs in a series of numbers which "suggests that black America sold its music to win acceptance", as Ian Shirley put it in his book Meet the Residents.

The section ended with a mysterious cube-headed giant rising out of the floor to a powerful anthem, representing the "rising up of black Americans from slavery". Most of Black Barry was sequenced as well, but there was more live performance of the instruments.





Buckaroo Blues(1989)
OverviewTracks


Buckaroo Blues started out as a series of tracks laid down after the band discovered a collection of cowboy poems and songs. They eventually collected them together and performed them at the Boudisque Anniversary Bash in Amsterdam on November 26, 1988. Over the next year the project became the first act of Cube-E.

The UWEB release of Buckaroo Blues includes as bonus tracks two works from the God in 3 Persons project: Land of 1000 Dances / Double Shot (from the single of the same name) and God in 3 Person's Over. This last was to be the overture to the God in 3 Persons touring show. When the show was cancelled the band announced that God in 3 Persons was definitely over and the piece was shelved. Eventually The Residents took it out again and reworked it into the form it appears here.






The King & Eye(1989)
OverviewTracks


The King & Eye is a studio version of the third part of the Cube-E show, featuring the music of Elvis Presley. The album, like the live performance, involves a aging Elvis impersonator telling the story of "The Baby King" to his two grandchildren, Shorty & Shirley (on the album, the two children are played by Jana Flynn and Simon Timony).

The Residents used an unusual (for them) approach when recording this album: they rented studio space at Different Fur Studios in San Francisco for a day, rather than use their own facilities, to see how such an environment would affect their work. The album's packaging was also handled differently: while Pore Know Graphics, the band's own in-house design group, did the actual cover art, the group hired Rex Ray, who was doing all of the UWEB artwork at the time, to do the packaging.





The King & Eye RMX(2004)
OverviewTracks


In 1989 The Residents recorded an album of Elvis hits called The King & Eye. Anyone knowing The Residents work would not be surprised that there was no attempt at recreating the original arrangements. In fact a great deal of work went into rethinking the music and digging into the Freudian aspects of the lyrics. The group wished to return the pain to the material which swirls around ideas of lost love and obsession. The album was tied together with a children's story about a baby who wanted to be king because he felt such deep emptiness.

The Residents saw Elvis's life as a cautionary tale. A story of lost innocence, misplaced while searching for night time shadows. Even more amazing to The Residents, in death, Elvis became the ultimate Americana icon.

In 2003, The Residents asked German remix whiz, Paralyzer, to listen to the original 24 track master and see what he would do to modernize their album to make it more relevant to life in the 21st century. Paralyzer accepted the challenge but asked that the group give him free rein to interpret the pieces. They excitedly agreed.

The Residents only heard the result when Paralyzer finally presented his vision of Elvis to them, The King & Eye: RMX.