Music Arcades: The Residents: Kettles of Fish on the Outskirts of Town

I have a bitter feeling about this album. I bought it after seeing The Residents perform at the Royal Festival Hall in Spring 2003, on the Demons Dance Alone tour. I wasn't that impressed by the performance. But others in the audience seemed to like it, so I thought maybe the fault lay with me. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the fact that the loudest cheer of the evening was reserved for the moment when someone carried out one of the trademark Residents eyeballs on a cushion. Despite the aura of obscurity, mystery and the avant-garde that surrounds them, what they depend on is a Las-Vegas-style nostalgia for past glories. Perhaps the emperor had some smart togs once, but I don't think he's wearing anything now.

What really gets to me is that I parted with (gulp) £80 for this set of three CDs and a DVD, on the basis that it was a limited edition, not available in the shops. Why? Perhaps it was that I'd just got a DVD player and didn't have much to play on it. Anyway, I was tricked, as Amazon is now offering it for a little over £40. My consumer advice: it's worth no more than £15.

This is supposed to be a 30-year retrospective of The Residents' live performances, but the only sense of a coherent overview that it provides comes in the accompanying booklet. Each of the shows, we're told, revolved around a grand narrative concept, but the CDs only have excerpts so you can't grasp the full concept, and the bits that are comprehensible don't leave you wanting more. Oh, they love to pride themselves on the fact that they got into multimedia and CD-ROMs before anyone else (except possibly Peter Gabriel), but I saw the CD-ROM and the narrative and interactive elements were pretty hokey.

Bill Drummond wrote a good piece about trying to track down The Residents and visiting their address in San Francisco. He's so persuasive that you'd believe there really was something special about them. But my advice would be to enjoy Drummond's critical appreciation, without being taken in by it. Yes, sour grapes.