ROADWORMS
Album
| Un-American
Band |
 |
The Residents had pretty drastically rearranged the songs from Wormwood to play live. By the time the Wormwood tour was winding down, they were anxious to hear how the new arrangements sounded without the obvious handicaps of a concert recording.
Thus while the Residents were playing Berlin, they stopped into a recording studio and made the tape in one day (July 7, 1999), usually in one take so that they could document the songs as live arrangements. The Residents were joined by Molly Harvey (vocals) and a male singer credited with the "Mr. Skull" moniker, both of whom were part of the stage show.
This studio set included roughly half of the live set, including one piece ("Un-American Band") that was not part of the Wormwood album.
The Residents did post-production work on the Berlin tapes in early 2000 and released them as Roadworms that summer.
RATING: 6
I put Roadworms on, not expecting much, and my jaw dropped. My God, what might have been!
The most magnificent transformation is "Burn Baby Burn," both versions of which have this verse: "I'm ready to die, but it seems very odd/That bleeding is better than breathing to God." On Wormwood it's delivered with such "Nyaah-nyaah" nastiness that you don't care if she dies. On Roadworms, Molly Harvey sings the song as her own funeral dirge. What a difference! Suddenly you think, "What an interesting point! Let's discuss that!"
The other reinterpretations aren't that drastic, though some are close (and nearly as good: "How to Get a Head," the story of Salome and John the Baptist, is here done as the swirling aftermath, that reeling "Oh-Lord-what-have-I-done" effect). "God's Magic Finger" and "Fire Fall" are better versions because they're raw and plaintive—you know, like the singers actually feel the emotions they're singing. Ditto for "Hanging by his Hair," which one-ups itself by including beautiful, snakelike Indian violins. And then, of course, there's "Un-American Band," which isn't on Wormwood but represents everything good about Roadworms: it's minimal, raw, visceral, intense, and funny ("We're coming to your town, we're gonna worship it down...we're un-American band!").
That's six songs out of eleven. The other five don't make the cut. The lo-fi production makes them a LITTLE better in some cases ("Tent Peg in the Temple" comes to mind), but the songs themselves are as mediocre as ever. With one exception: "Dinah and the Unclean Skin," a strong candidate for Worst Residents Song, might be even worse on Roadworms than Wormwood. I'll just leave it at that.
The bottom line is that Roadworms proves that some songs really are better than Wormwood would have you believe; others are every bit as bad as Wormwood would have you believe. For the Berlin sessions, the Residents were wise enough to stack the deck with more good than bad. That's enough to make Roadworms worth your while. My while, anyway.
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