The Residents
On Sunday night I got to shoot The Residents at The Forum in Kentish Town. This is what Wikipedia has to say about them:
“The Residents is an American avant-garde music and visual arts group who have created over sixty albums, created numerous musical short films, designed three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs, and undertaken seven major world tours. Throughout their career, spanning nearly four decades, they have successfully maintained complete anonymity.”
In order to maintain their anonymity, they always appear onstage in disguise, this time dressed as, quite frankly, evil looking rabbits. They were here presenting their new project, The Bunny Boy, a mixture of songs, spoken word, and short films. The frontman for the evening, The Bunny Boy himself, came out covered in a blanket, and stayed that way for the first half of the show. He’d occasionally throw open his blanket, giving us a look at his face, but then he’d quickly cover up again. Maybe he’s shy?
This was a pretty challenging gig to photograph, given that there wasn’t much front lighting, and that Bunny Boy was hiding in a blanket for the three songs that we got to shoot - there are only so many photos you can take of a performing blanket, but… it did make for some pretty interesting and quirky shots, and at least the backlight colours kept changing, so we got some nice silhouettes.
The gig was downstairs only on the night, so the balcony was closed off. For the second half, I asked the security guys if they’d let me go upstairs to grab a few shots, and whaddya know, they said Yes! So I managed to get some long shots of the stage set, and Bunny Boy’s change of costume.
Personally, the music wasn’t really my thing, but I do appreciate bands that try to do something different. I like strange and unusual, but this was a bit too way out there for me. Still, they’ve been going for nearly 40 years, and they’ve got a pretty loyal fanbase, so I guess my opinion is largely irrelevant.
Photos from the gig here:
Links:
Info about The Residents on Wikipedia
The Bunny Boy tour on The Residents official website
Buy Music by The Residents
Great pics Jamie!
Thanks, Paul!
Thanks for the great photoz! We weren’t allowed to take cameras to the show here in Santa Cruz. Glad you did.
Thanks Rhetro. I was shooting the show for a magazine, so you’ll be able to see pics and a review in the mag in January - dunno if it makes it all the way out to Santa Cruz, though…
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