The
Residents do not seem capable of actually putting out a compilation.
Nibbles which is not
Icky Flix seemed like a compilation. It had
You YesYesYes and
Santa Dog and a green cover and it only cost £3.50 which was worth it for
Skratz,
Good Lovin' and
The Electrocutioner. Green on the Front and Red on the Back. It is probably the only
Residents compilation that sounds like someone simply thrown together. As the sleeve notes say,
"so non concept that nobody bothered to tell the Residents. It seems like the early experience of having compilations thrown together by
Branson rankled deep.
So, when it comes to
Icky Flix there is a sense that the
Residents have a warehouse full of tapes - or some strange kind of digital equivalent. At night, when nobody is about, people like
Roger and
Timmy wander about seeking out music to listen to. Which is want seems to happen with
Songs for Swinging Larvae - the entire
Renaldo and the Loaf original is sieved through a cheesecloth and placed into soaker squirt guns. Which is a euphemism for "real musical instruments". Thereupon
Timmy sings along to the newly mutated music.
Which is what
Icky Flix achieves most effectively: mutation. Like some kind of strange high school water pistol shooting tragedy, Unlike the horrors of real life High School Shootings - such as recalled by the
Boomtown Rats in
I Don't Like Monday's, the
Tommy water pistol version has much more joy in it. Which is what characterises all of the pieces of
Icky Flix I have heard.
And the truth is I have only
heard the
Icky Flix pieces. For several years I had, because of the peripatetic nature of my days, no access to a DVD player. The two pieces that stand out, for me, are
Songs For Swinging Larvae and
Vileness Fats. Mostly because the versions seem to sit well with the
Molly Harvey vocals and the cheesecloth of real musical instruments technique. Unlike
Our Finest Flowers the construction of
Icky Flix is about film soundtracks not art music.
Songs For Swinging Larvae had a curious place in video history. The
Graeme Whiffler video narrated the story of a child abduction and was, thus, apparently excluded from television broadcast. Which is a nugget of information that I only really became aware of quite recently.
When I first heard
Songs For Swinging Larvae it was in a Road called Alverstone. Which was named after The 1st Viscount Alverstone (1842 - 1915). The good Viscount was involved in the Litigation against Charles Stewart Parnell (Irish: Cathal Stiúbhard Parnell; 1846 - 1891) the Fenian and all round Republican. My landlord, being a Persian traveller from the recently created Iranian Republic - and not of theocratic bent - managed to dig up the blasphemous
Lord's Prayer created by students at Cambridge University...
Our Lord,
Who art at Wilberforce,
Alverstone be thy name,
Thy swaps will come,
Thy grass reps will be done,
On earth as they are in Chariots,
Give us this day our daily banter,
And forgive us for our pennying,
As we forgive those who penny against us,
And lead us all into Cindies,
But deliver us from Gardies,
For thine is the club, the tie and the track,
For ever and ever,
Amen.
My Landlord believed this held the same relationship to the High Anglican Church as
Renaldo and the Loaf and
The Residents bore to mainstream Western music. My Landlord's Sister - who was very much a supporter of the Revolution - explained bar and cabaret music was one of the most popular forms of music while my Landlord - very much unhappy with the Revolution - preferred classical Persian and Iranian Music. In the evening, they agreed, was the time for music and conversation.
So it was that, one evening, I was sitting in a kitchen - up the road from
Penny Lane, - possibly named after James Penny (d 1799), a wealthy 18
th century slave ship owner and strong opponent of abolitionism - discussing
Renaldo And The LoafIf the Weather is sultry, and there appears the least Perspiration upon their Skins, when they come upon Deck, there are Two Men attending with Cloths to rub them perfectly dry, and another to give them a little Cordial...
They are then supplied with Pipes and Tobacco....
They are amused with Instruments of Music peculiar to their own country...
and when tired of Music and Dancing, they then go to Games of Chance
Unlike
James Penny the discussion was not centred on justifying anything but on the experimental nature of
Renaldo And The Loaf and how
all the Iranian Musician had either stopped creating or gone to Los Angeles. It was a repeated conversation about with how culture would die because politics would
take control and ossify culture if possible. How the songs in Iran were all about the achievements of the
Republican Guard and none about waking up and having a walk in the cool hours. Which led to the denunciation of
Nibbles because it was merely a
warehouse and not a carefully curated collection. Which was why
Songs For Swinging Larvae was infinitely preferable.
Bizzarely, despite their differences both Zorha and Reza - Landlord and Sister - agreed that
Nibbles was an outrage and merely a
warehouse. Despite which, when she returned to Iran Zorha took a tape of
Nibbles with her. Reza chose to stay in the UK. So far as I know, Zorha lived a happy life in her home. Reza spent the remainder of his life teaching around the UK after converting to Christianity - as this was the religion of the United Kingdom. Their grandparents were Zoroastrian and so, according to Reza, practicing the religion of the Country you are in is perfectly acceptable.
Which is why
Vileness Fats and
Songs For Swinging Larvae stand out for me on
Icky Flix. Not because they are the greatest works in history but because they both strike me as going beyond the practice of
compilation and warehousing music and help to keep music as a living, breathing entity. The strange vault of music that
Timmy races through picking and sampling from here and there. Keeping music alive rather than preserved.
Which is what
Icky Flix seems to be: keeping music alive. The reimagined
Songs For Swinging Larvae is as far from
Penny Lane as
James Penny is - in the same way that the
Lords Prayer of the High Anglican Church is distant from the Alverston Club's version. Yet, both Anglican and Averstone were, and are, the Ruling Class. They keep their culture alive with blasphemies that would have lesser mortals deemed venal. The vault of
Timmy and
Roger and
Arf and
Omega and even
Lonesome Jack seems to let anybody who can enter recreate everything with a kind of licence. As if the weather were sultry. The vault of the
Cryptic Corporation is not a reliable repository in the way that the
compilers of
Nibbles would want to ossify and pickle music.
Which is why I sometimes listen to
Icky Flix online without ever really wishing to purchase it. To be honest, my curiousity has never really been piqued enough.
Icky Flix is merely a station in a journey. An imaginary station.