The Mole Show (tour)

The Mole Show was the first tour by The Residents, officially debuting in October 1982 and continuing until July 1983.

The Mole Show was designed to showcase the plot of the first two albums of The Mole Trilogy, but was ultimately a financial disaster for the group and resulted in the partial splintering of The Cryptic Corporation and the premature (and to date permanent) abandonment of the Mole Trilogy in 1985.

History

Conception

After a decade of making music together under the name The Residents and only performing on one occasion in 1976, the group decided to undertake a tour as a means of dealing with a number of tensions and conflicts that had arisen within the band. Between the sudden rejection of The Commercial Album by the once-friendly New Wave music press and internal problems in the group, they felt that they needed a new project.

The Residents had previously avoided the idea of touring or undertaking any serious live performances because their music depended largely on the studio, and the group feared that it would not translate well to stage. The previous live performances they had done in 1971 (prior to the official formation of the group as The Residents) and in 1976 only seemed to reinforce this notion. However, the release of the first sampler, the EM-U Emulator in 1981, was a big step forward in electronic music, allowing musicians to reproduce virtually any sound and play it back with great precision and control. The group began using the Emulator on their 1982 album The Tunes of Two Cities (the second release in their ongoing Mole Trilogy), and realized that the increased freedom the instrument allowed them would remedy a number of the issues they had previously faced in performing live.

Residentstoothpicks — The Residents, 1983

The Residents wanted to tour, but they knew that they didn't want to do a standard rock concert. They wanted something more theatrical, and considered reviving the opera idea which they had been playing with since Not Available in 1974. The group considered revisiting their abandoned attempt to perform the Eskimo album in a series of live performances.

The group ultimately decided to tour in support of their current project The Mole Trilogy, composed at that time of 1981's Mark of the Mole, and The Tunes of Two Cities. These two albums were to become the material for the new show: Mark of the Mole gave the show a plot, and The Tunes of Two Cities provided linking music between scenes. Additional music was composed to feature as thematically relevant pre-show, intermission, and after-show music, which was compiled in 1983 on the group's EP Intermission.

Construction

With a second Emulator and help from EM-U, The Residents began putting together The Mole Show. The successes they had been having with sales meant that The Cryptic Corporation and Ralph Records had grossed about half a million dollars in their eight-year history.

With the capital from the company and the expectation that the tour would pay for itself, The Residents went all out with the production. The band attempted to hire Graeme Whifler, who had worked with them on Vileness Fats and most of their music videos, to direct the performances. Whifler, who had never directed a live show, declined the offer.

The set consisted of huge 21' x 18' backdrops flanking a burlap scrim, behind which the band played. The Residents hired Kathleen French to do the choreography and Phil Perkins to design the lighting. The characters from the Mole Trilogy (the Moles and the Chubs) were represented by cut-outs which were manipulated by stage hands in Groucho Marx glasses.

The band hired their friend and collaborator on the Ralph Records 10th Anniversary Special, Penn Jillette, to appear onstage as narrator, providing linking segments to help convey the storyline of the performance. Perkins illuminated the stage from below and behind and used only one spotlight, trained on Jillette, who would come on between numbers to explain what was happening to the audience, usually in an intentionally patronizing and insulting manner.

Early performances

Residentspenn — The Residents with Penn Jillette, 1983

The first performance was a warm-up at The House in Santa Monica on April 10th, 1982, in front of an audience of sixty people. This was a music-only performance -- no dancers, narrator, or sets -- to make sure that the Emulators were up to the task.

The official opening of the tour was on October 26th at the Kabuki Theatre in San Francisco. The Residents had two sold-out shows there, then moved on for four shows in Los Angeles and one in Pasadena.

The shows were well received, though the audiences didn't always know what to make of them. Everyone onstage wore Groucho Marx glasses, except the show's emcee Penn Jillette, who would take pot-shots at the show during his narration, poking fun at the primitive special effects and the strange story. Towards the end of the show he would (apparently) lose his temper, yelling at the performers and storming off stage. After a brief pause, Jillette would be brought back on stage gagged, tied to a wheelchair, and wearing Groucho glasses.

In spite of its seemingly confusing narrative, The Mole Show was initially a success for the group. The only technical problem at first up was overheating in the Emulator disc drives due to the eighty-five disc changes necessary in the show, but this was minor in comparison to the trouble they previously experienced trying to emulate their studio sound during previous attempts at live performance. Confident after the successful shows in California and reassured by their new business manager Bill Gerber (who had worked with Devo), The Residents were set to take the show to Europe.

Disasters

In July, Jay Clem (the business manager and co-founder of The Cryptic Corporation) left the company. He was apparently dissatisfied with the independent music business and went on to establish his own management company. Then, after the Kabuki Theatre shows, the president of The Cryptic Corporation, John Kennedy, announced that he, too, was leaving. He grown tired of pumping money into the group, and the expense of staging The Mole Show was the last straw. To make things worse, he took The Residents' Grove Street studio with him. The entire production ground to a halt, and it was only with the help of friends and family that the tour could continue.

However, another problem came up when the band were preparing to take the show to Europe. The sets were so huge that only a 747 jet could carry them across the Atlantic, causing the struggling group a huge expense. Then, with about twenty people to lodge and feed as they traveled, costs started climbing (they even reduced the number of dancers from four to three to try to cut costs). In order to raise funds ahead of time, the band had sold the merchandising rights for $10,000. At their shows, the merchandise sold well, making far more money than The Residents ever got out of the tour. This decision cut deeply into the tour's ability to pay for itself.

The performances themselves went very well, becoming a critical success and selling out all over Europe. However, the English road crew the band had hired didn't like having to wear the Groucho glasses, and they didn't get along at all with Jillette, who is very strongly anti-smoking, anti-drink, and anti-drugs. In the end, the group had to segregate the buses, with the roadies in the "Party Bus" and Jillette in the "Library Bus".

There were also the usual accidents and thefts one suffers when touring, but the band hadn't allowed for these, and had no leeway in their plans to cope with them. Other problems included Jillette being hospitalised just before a show in Spain with some sort of stomach problem (the group had to get their stage manager to cover the narration for that performance) and, on another occasion, Jillette was attacked on stage by an irate member of the audience while he was tied to the wheelchair.

The Uncle Sam Mole Show

All in all, the Mole Show tour was a nightmare for The Residents. After the last show at Leicester Polytechnic on July 1st 1983, the group vowed never to tour again. They had lost so much money that Ralph Records was in danger of going under, and the group was rescued at the last minute only by an invitation to perform one final Mole Show performance as the opening show of the November New Music America Festival in Washington D.C. At first they refused, but ultimately couldn't afford to pass up the money offered.

Unfortunately, the nightmare wasn't over yet. Their tour manager had failed to pay the English shipping agent, who was holding all of their sets and instruments in England until they could pay $16,000 for their return. The group convinced the shipping agent to take $10,000 up front and the balance after the festival, but even when they paid that cash to the shipping agent, he kept holding out for the balance without sending the gear.

The Residents ended up arriving in Washington without anything, and had to rebuild all of the backdrops and sets from scratch. They hired dancers from a local ballet school, begged an Emulator from EM-U, and had to convince their manager to do the narration because Penn Jillette couldn't make it - all in the last two weeks before the show. They rehearsed at the local YMCA and the dress rehearsal went so badly that they couldn't complete it. Finally, to add insult to injury, the missing equipment showed up from England just hours before showtime, after Gerber had threatened the shipper.

In spite of every indication that it would be as big a disaster as the tour had been, the "Uncle Sam Mole Show" performance was possibly the best performance of the entire tour. The long-unreleased recording of this show features as the fourth disc of the 2019 pREServed six disc collection Mole Box.

End of The Mole Trilogy

After the Uncle Sam Mole Show performance, The Residents left the Mole Trilogy behind temporarily. The project was initially intended in part to help deal with frustrations the group were experiencing, but ended up being far more frustrating than the original problems had been. The whole project had been an amazing critical success - the costumes and sets became part of the permanent collection at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art after the tour - but financially the group were nearly ruined.

The Residents eventually returned to The Mole Trilogy in 1985 with the fourth part of the series, The Big Bubble, but the trilogy was to be left incomplete with no further albums following this release.

Despite their vow never to tour again, the group would end up following The Mole Show in 1985 with The 13th Anniversary Show, a far more successful operation which led the group to continue touring regularly for the course of their career.

Performances

First Leg

10th April 1982 - The House, Santa Monica (music-only performance)
26th October 1982 - Kabuki, San Francisco
27th October 1982 - Kabuki, San Francisco
29th October 1982 - The Roxy, Los Angeles (two shows)
30th October 1982 - The Roxy, Los Angeles (two shows)
31st October 1982 - Perkins Palace, Pasadena

Second Leg

23rd May 1983 - Rotation, Hannover
25th May 1983 - Succession, Vienna
26th May 1983 - Succession, Vienna
27th May 1983 - Alabamahalle, Munich
28th May 1983 - Volksbildungsheim, Frankfurt
29th May 1983 - Schumannsaal, Dusseldorf
30th May 1983 - Metropol, Berlin
1st June 1983 - Falkoner Theatre, Copenhagen
2nd June 1983 - Markthalle, Hamburg
3rd June 1983 - Zeche, Bochum
5th June 1983 - Plan K, Brussels
6th June 1983 - Muziekcentrum, Utrecht
7th June 1983 - L'Olympia, Paris
8th June 1983 - Palais D'Hiver, Lyon
9th June 1983 - Volkhaus, Zurich
12th June 1983 - TeatroTenda, Bologna
13th June 1983 - The Rolling Stone, Milan
14th June 1983 - Teatro Apollo, Firenze
17th June 1983 - Salon Cibeles, Barcelona
18th June 1983 - Sala Extases, Valencia
19th June 1983 - Rock Ola, Madrid
20th June 1983 - Rock Ola, Madrid
21st June 1983 - Le Edad De Oro, Madrid
23rd June 1983 - Cinéma Le Fémina, Bordeaux
24th June 1983 - Théâtre Municipal, Poitiers
27th June 1983 - Town Hall, Birmingham
28th June 1983 - Hammersmith Odeon, London
29th June 1983 - Royal Court, Liverpool
30th June 1983 - Queens Hall, Edinburgh
1st July 1983 - Leicester Polytechnic, Leicestershire
7th October 1983 - New Music Festival ("Uncle Sam Mole Show"), Washington

Set list

Credits

Written & Directed by: The Residents

Music Written & Played by: The Residents

Narrator: Penn Jillette

Dancers: Kathleen French, Carol Werner LeMaitre, Sarah McLennan Walker & Chris Van Ralte

Vocalist: Nessie Lessons

Sound: Scott Fraser

Lighting Designer: Philip Perkins

Lighting Director: Dan Gillham

Stage Manager: Laurence Campling

Backdrop Movers: Raoul N.D Seimbote & Eric Knorr

Artistic Direction: The Residents

Sets & Props: Laurence Campling, Leigh Barbier, Homer Flynn & Hardy Fox.

Costumes: Sheenah Timony

Tour Manager: Paul Young

Publicist: Mara Mikialian

Manager: Bill Gerber/Lookout Management

Legal Matters: Evan Medow

Business: Siegel & Feldstein

Security: Thomas Timony

Merchandising: Diane Flynn

Merchandising Asst. Ray Paulsen, Sally Lewis, Gary Mikialian, Nancy Baddock & Louise Koskella

Related releases

Mark of the Mole (1981)
The Tunes of Two Cities (1982)
Intermission: Extraneous Music From The Residents' Mole Show EP (1982)
Mole Show (Live At The Roxy) (1983)
Mole Show/Whatever Happened To Vileness Fats? VHS (1984)
Assorted Secrets (1984)
PAL TV LP (1985)
Mole Show: Live In Holland (1989)
Mole Show limited CD+DVD set (2009)
Mole Box pREServed six disc set (2019)

External links and references

The Mole Show on The Residents Historical
The Mole Show on RZWeb
The Mole Show Live in Madrid, June 21st 1983 on YouTube (complete performance)