The Cryptic Corporation is The Residents’ management company, formed in the bands’ early days to oversee and manage their endeavors. And then there’s The Cryptic Corporation. There are the bands and musicians, including Primus, Devo, Ween and countless on-the-fringe groups, explaining how and why The Residents came to be so influential to them. There are the former collaborators (musicians and artists), most famously including Penn Jilette, sharing their personal experiences with The Residents. The film pulls this off because director Don Hardy managed to get tons of folks to talk, a testament to The Residents’ lasting influence. ![]() In honoring the band and trying to present an appreciation for their sense of humor and the seriousness of their art, Theory of Obscurity succeeds. As Groening put it, we see the duality of their art, both entertaining and subversive, and see how they are “taking elements of pop culture and mutating them and doing something completely different.” The documentary tells us this through the various talking heads, and shows us this through their music, film snippets, and tour performance excerpts. We see them fail, we see them succeed, we see them influence. We follow their formation as an avant-garde punk band in the early 70’s of Northern California and watch them become recording artists and filmmakers, pioneering music videos and winding up in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV. The documentary is actually a fairly by-the-numbers doc about a band’s formation and journey, with the obvious distinction of maybe-possibly not having the band actually participating in the filmmaking process (more on that in a beat). While we may not really know who the fuck The Residents are, Theory of Obscurity does about as good a job as possible of digging into the meat of this riddle. Anything is possible.”įor all we know, like the Dread Pirate Roberts, the makeup of The Residents is ever-changing. The secrets of The Residents will never be revealed by anyone but The Residents themselves, and so far they aren’t saying much…. Which is why, in writing “The True Story of The Residents” in 1979, The Simpsons creator Matt Groening said this: There is no true story of The Residents. We’re not talking Daft Punk anonymous, where you can find their names and faces if you really want. They’re cutting edge and seemingly ageless. But it’s tricky, because who the fuck are The Residents? They’re a band. ![]() “Who the fuck are The Residents?” Asked by one of the documentary’s talking heads, this is the question that Theory of Obscurity tries to answer. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |