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This article is about the live tour. You may be looking for the 1983 live album, 1984 video, or 2009 DVD bag set of the same name. |
The Mole Show (often stylized Mole Show or sometimes Moleshow) was the first tour by The Residents, officially debuting in October 1982 and continuing until July 1983, across America and Europe.
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[]
Background[]
The Residents, 1982
After a decade of making music together under the name The Residents and only performing live on one occasion in 1976, the group decided to undertake their first tour as a means of dealing with a number of tensions and conflicts that had arisen between the group's members.
The Residents had previously avoided 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. Their previous live performances in 1971 and 1976 only seemed to reinforce this notion.
In 1981, the EM-U Emulator was released. The first widely-adopted sampler, the Emulator was a big step forward in electronic music, allowing musicians to reproduce virtually any sound with great precision and control. The Residents 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.
Conception[]
The Residents wanted to tour, but they knew that they didn't want to do a standard "rock band" concert. They wanted to produce something more theatrical, and considered producing an opera, a concept which they had been toying with since the development of Not Available in 1974. They also briefly considered revisiting their earlier attempt to perform the Eskimo album in a series of live performances.
In 1982, The Residents briefly developed and rehearsed a retrospective "10th Anniversary Show", which was later abandoned (although live studio rehearsals of songs intended for the set list of this unproduced show can be heard on Assorted Secrets and select pREServed releases). Phillip Perkins, who played on those sessions, stated that he thought their attempts to recreate the songs live lacked the sophistication of the originals.[1]
Ultimately, The Residents decided to develop a show based on their then-current major project, The Mole Trilogy, which at that time comprised their two most recently released albums, Mark of the Mole and The Tunes of Two Cities. These two albums became the basis for the new show: Mark of the Mole gave the show its storyline, and selections from The Tunes of Two Cities offered additional linking music between "scenes".
The Residents also composed and recorded new music for the show, to be included as thematically relevant pre-recorded music to be played during the pre-show, intermission, and after-show; these pieces of music were released on the Intermission EP in 1982. Although the group had not started recording the (never completed) Part Three of The Mole Trilogy when The Mole Show was in development, Homer Flynn stated that The Residents had considered incorporating elements from it into the show's finale.
Design[]
The Residents in The Mole Show
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.[2]
With the capital from the company and the expectation that the tour would pay for itself, The Residents went all out with the production of the show. The band attempted to hire Graeme Whifler, who had worked with them on their abandoned feature film Vileness Fats and a number of their music videos, to direct the show. Whifler, who had never directed a live performance, declined the offer.
The set consisted of huge 21' x 18' backdrops flanking a burlap scrim, behind which The Residents played. The Residents hired Kathleen French to do the choreography and Philip Perkins to design the lighting. The characters (the Moles and Chubs) were represented by cut-out figures which were manipulated by stage hands in modified Groucho Marx glasses (with the nostrils removed from the nose, and the moustaches attached to the tip of the nose to allow the wearers to breathe while also preserving their anonymity).[3]
These modified Groucho glasses were also worn by The Residents for much of the performance; the members of the group signed around 75 of the glasses, originally intending to remove them at the end of the performance and throw them into the audience. In the end only one member of the group threw a single pair of the glasses into the audience, and the remaining signed glasses were later sold to fans through mail order by Ralph.[3]
The group hired Penn Jillette, their friend and collaborator on the recent Ralph Records 10th Anniversary Radio Special!, 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[]
The first performance of The Mole Show 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 of the show - no dancers, narrator, or sets - to make sure that the Emulators were up to the task. One known attendee of this show was Matt Groening, later known as the creator of the animated sitcom The Simpsons.[4]
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 generally well received, though the audiences didn't always know what to make of them. Towards the end of the show the emcee Penn Jillette, having taken pot-shots at the primitive effects and strange story throughout the show, would (apparently) lose his temper, yelling at the performers and storming offstage. After a brief pause, Jillette was then brought back onto the stage gagged, tied to a wheelchair, and wearing Groucho glasses.
In spite of the seemingly confusing narrative, The Mole Show was initially a success for The Residents. 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[]
Penn Jillette gagged in a wheelchair, 1982
In July 1982, 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 the strongly anti-smoking, anti-alcohol and anti-drugs Penn Jillette. 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); 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"[]
The Residents at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., October 7th 1983
All in all, The Mole Show 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 they were rescued at the last minute only by an invitation to perform one final Mole Show performance, as the headline act of the opening night of the New Music America Festival in Washington D.C. on October 7th 1983. 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 has ultimately been considered one of the best performances of the entire tour. The recording of this show was belatedly released in 2019, as the fourth disc of the pREServed Mole Box CD box set.
Legacy[]
The Residents with Penn Jillette, 1983
The Mole Trilogy project was initially intended in part to help deal with frustrations The Residents were experiencing, but ended up being far more frustrating than the original problems had been. The tour had been a 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 Residents (as well as Ralph Records and The Cryptic Corporation) were nearly ruined.
Following the Uncle Sam Mole Show, The Residents sold one of their Emulators cheaply to Philip Perkins[5] and ceased work on The Mole Trilogy temporarily. They eventually returned to the project in 1985 with the fourth instalment (of a planned six albums), The Big Bubble, but The Mole Trilogy was to be left permanently incomplete, with no further albums following this release.
Despite their vow never to tour again, The Residents eventually followed The Mole Show with a second international live tour, The 13th Anniversary Show, in 1985. This tour was a far more successful operation, eventually leading the group to continue touring and performing live sporadically for the rest of their career.
Set list[]
Act One (25 minutes)[]
- Voices of the Air
- The Secret Seed
- The Ultimate Disaster
- God of Darkness
- Migration
Act Two (39 minutes)[]
- Smack Your Lips (Clap Your Teeth)
- Another Land
- The New Machine
- Song of the Wild
- Final Confrontation
- Satisfaction
- Happy Home
Encore[]
- Smack Your Lips (Clap Your Teeth) (Reprise)
Dates[]
Preview[]
- April 10th 1982 - The House, Santa Monica, California (music-only performance)
A map of the group's stops on the first leg of the tour
First leg (US)[]
- October 26th 1982 - Kabuki, San Francisco, California
- October 27th 1982 - Kabuki, San Francisco, California
- October 29th 1982 - The Roxy, Los Angeles, California (two shows)
- October 30th 1982 - The Roxy, Los Angeles, California (two shows)
- October 31st 1982 - Perkins Palace, Pasadena, California
Second leg (Europe)[]
- May 23rd 1983 - Rotation, Hanover, Germany
- May 25th 1983 - Succession, Vienna, Austria
- May 26th 1983 - Succession, Vienna, Austria
- May 27th 1983 - Alabamahalle, Munich, Germany
- May 28th 1983 - Volksbildungsheim, Frankfurt, Germany
- May 29th 1983 - Schumannsaal, Dusseldorf, Germany
- May 30th 1983 - Metropol, Berlin, Germany
- June 1st 1983 - Falkoner Theatre, Copenhagen, Denmark
- June 2nd 1983 - Markthalle, Hamburg, Germany
- June 3rd 1983 - Zeche, Bochum, Germany
- June 4th 1983 - Muziekcentrum, Utrecht, Netherlands
- June 5th 1983 - Plan K, Brussels, Belgium
- June 6th 1983 - Muziekcentrum, Utrecht, Netherlands
- June 7th 1983 - L'Olympia, Paris, France
- June 8th 1983 - Palais D'Hiver, Lyon, France
- June 9th 1983 - Volkhaus, Zurich, Switzerland
- June 12th 1983 - Teatro Tenda, Bologna, Italy
- June 13th 1983 - The Rolling Stone, Milan, Italy
- June 14th 1983 - Teatro Apollo, Firenze, Italy
- June 17th 1983 - Salon Cibeles, Barcelona, Spain
- June 18th 1983 - Sala Extases, Valencia, Spain
- June 19th 1983 - Rock Ola, Madrid, Spain
- June 20th 1983 - Rock Ola, Madrid, Spain
- June 21st 1983 - La Edad De Oro, Madrid, Spain
- June 23rd 1983 - Cinéma Le Fémina, Bordeaux, France
- June 24th 1983 - Théâtre Municipal, Poitiers, France
- June 27th 1983 - Town Hall, Birmingham, England
- June 28th 1983 - Hammersmith Odeon, London, England
- June 29th 1983 - Royal Court, Liverpool, England
- June 30th 1983 - Queens Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland
- July 1st 1983 - Leicester Polytechnic, Leicestershire, England
The "Uncle Sam Mole Show"[]
- October 7th 1983 - New Music Festival, Washington, D.C.
Credits[]
Taken from the Mole Show LP inner sleeve.
- 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 CD+DVD "bag set" (2009)
- Mole Box pREServed six disc set (2019)
- Mole Dance 82 (2021)
See also[]
External links and references[]
- The Mole Show on The Residents Historical
- The Mole Show on RZWeb
- The Mole Show Live in Madrid, June 21st 1983on YouTube (complete performance)
- ↑ "Frankly, what happened is that this group of people [who was or was not a “Resident” at any given moment back then was a highly fluid concept] tried to recreate their records, and in my opinion failed miserably, and then around the time that we realized — or I realized, anyway — that we weren’t doing a very good job on this music, and that their fans were not going to like this, because it didn’t have any of the sophistication of the album versions, then they decided that they wanted to tour The Mole Show instead. Which was even harder. But, exactly at the right moment, those first digital audio samplers came along, and suddenly sounds that they had made in the studio could be taken on the road. This was pre-MIDI, so we had the usual stack of keyboards. You had to play everything live. But with the sampler, Hardy was able to figure out how to do a lot of the things that he had done on the albums. That was the only time I ever saw them excited about a piece of equipment." Philip Perkins, "On Location: Philip Perkins in Conversation with Phillip Greenlief", Open Space at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, September 20th 2021
- ↑ The Mole Show on RZWeb
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Post by Kim Andrews, The Residents unofficial Facebook group, December 31st 2021
- ↑ Matt Groening, "The Residents Bring The House Down", Reader, April 16th 1982
- ↑ "I had [an Emulator One] cheap from The Residents after the end of the Mole tour. They sold one of the two they had bought for that show. They had the third and fourth ones that were never sold." Philip Perkins, "On Location: Philip Perkins in Conversation with Phillip Greenlief", Open Space at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, September 20th 2021
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The Mole Show (1982-1983) Set list |
