HAVE A BAD DAY
Album
| Bad Day on the
Midway |
 |
The 1990s found the Residents experimenting with digital multimedia technology, especially CD-ROM. Their first two such projects, Freak Show and Gingerbread Man, had been extremely innovative and enthusiastically received; so, in 1995, they took the next logical step and created a CD-ROM game. Bad Day on the Midway was another wild critical and commercial success, the first CD-ROM ever to win more than one of Macromedia's People's Choice Awards.
Bad Day on the Midway featured one new song, "Lottie the Human Log." The Residents were set to release this song on a standard CD, but decided that instead of releasing a "soundtrack," they would create an all new studio album INSPIRED by Bad Day on the Midway.
Ultimately "Lottie" did become part of the Have A Bad Day CD, but most of the remainder of the album was original music. Have A Bad Day was stil heavily promoted as the game's soundtrack, however, being a largely instrumental album with titular references to the game's characters and situations.
RATING: 8
"Surprising" is my buzzword for Have A Bad Day. Surprising! because of all the stylistic change-ups. Surprising! because it uses instruments and sounds that you'd never expect to hear on a Residents album. Surprising! because it's so rare that a minor work (and a sub-project of a CD-ROM is pretty much minor by definition) has the kind of beginning-to-end depth and richness that this one does.
As instrumental music goes, this is the best the Residents have to offer. Possibly because they rip off the best elements of all their previous instrumental projects, from The Tunes of Two Cities straight through to Hunters, mix in a few new tricks for good measure, and pull it all into one solid album.
But still a surprising one! Have A Bad Day is peppered with moments that should be completely out of place, but make perfect sense anyway. For example, the melodic "I Ain't Seen No Rats" opens with this flutelike cascade that I've never heard from the Residents (or anyone else for that matter). "The Seven Tattoos" has seven distinct sections within three minutes, but they still seem to fit together beautifully.
That's all chopped liver next to "Lottie." There is a warm gauze of atmosphere for fifteen seconds; then it erupts into a medicine-show verse led by a harmonica (that's right—a Residents harmonica track!) and sung by Lottie (i.e., Molly Harvey). Lottie should have her picture in the dictionary under "irrepressible," and really would have been a smash on Freak Show. (A perfectly happy freak show attraction? Such possibilities!) It's a marvelously oddball segment, indeed.
These tracks, and every one of the others, are a true feast for the ears, smothered in thick layers of melody and texture. Choice selections include the impossibly catchy "God's Teardrops;" the complex and utterly engrossing "Ugly Liberation;" and the beautiful, sickly fascinating "Daddy's Poems." I can't speak to the quality of the CD-ROM, but the non-soundtrack is certainly something special!