WHATEVER HAPPENED TO VILENESS FATS?
Album
| Whatever Happened
to Vileness Fats? |
 |
The Residents' first project, even before Santa Dog, was a full-length feature film called Vileness Fats. Set in a town of one-armed midgets, Vileness Fats was to be a musical comedy centered around a dual personality, his mother, some Atomic Shopping Carts, an Indian princess, and siamese twin wrestlers named Arf and Omega. From 1972 to 1976, the Residents directed fourteen hours of videotape, constituting half the working script (which was itself unfinished), and at that point their videotape technology became obsolete. Frustrated creatively, and with no end in sight, the Residents abandoned the project: their first failure.
In 1984, video technology now allowed them to transfer and remaster their old footage. The Residents did so, and edited the footage to 30 minutes to release it under the title taken from the question they were often asked. They also recorded a brand new score for the film; that is this album.
RATING: 7
Vileness Fats? is the real proof that the Residents' instrumental music was just as interesting as the conceptual and lyrical. It's no less goofy, however, and that takes more getting used to than goofy lyrics.
Once you get past the ribald weirdness on the outside, you're treated to music of both charming humor ("The Importance of Evergreen") and dark drama ("The Knife Fight"). You're also treated to "Eloise," a song that predates even Vileness Fats in Residents lore. It is oddly coarse and hypnotic, and the album may be worth getting just to have it.
I recently heard a story on NPR about synthesizers: they were talking about how, in the early 70s, synths were used to create sounds that nothing else sounded like, but by the mid-80s artists were using them mostly to imitate acoustic instruments. Well, the Residents seem to have resisting that later trend with all their might; they're using plenty of synths, but (except a good bit of organ sounds) using them to get sounds that no other instrument ever even thought about making. At their best, they create a handful of these sounds and layer them on top of each other, like they do in the title track and "Adventures of a Troubled Heart." It makes damned impressive electronic music.
Some of it does have lyrics, like the poem of "Eloise" and the rhyming male-female dialogue at the end of "The Knife Fight." (Favorite couplet—M: "Is the chalice set upon the table for the pride of prima donnas?" F: "Or can indeed the world be freed by finger-poppin' mamas?") It's the music that matters, though, which means you may want to purchase it near the end of your acquisitions. You should definitely purchase it, though, because it's quite great. It sounds weird and silly at first—and it is—but dig into it and you'll find some incredibly imaginative electronic compositions that you'll grow into.
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