Just a very short note here. I came across this article in the Journal of Film and Video, the publication of the University Film and Video Association. It does exactly what the title says: it situates the weird avant-garde multi-media-platform group the Residents in specific historical/media contexts. The link takes you to the ProjectMUSE web page containing citation information and a small sample from the article. If you have an account, or if you have access to databases like it and JSTOR and others through an academic institution, you can get the pdf for free.
One of the things I'd forgotten about the group was that their amazing videos were played on MTV. They were among the videos played that very first day of MTV's existence in August 1981. Everyone of course knows the first video played was Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star," but these weirdos from who-knows-where got quite a lot of airplay in those early times.
Go to youtube; you can subscribe to their own channel, or just search "The Residents," and just imagine being fourteen and watching this on MTV. Men at Work it ain't. It does go to show you that in those first few months, no one was quite sure what MTV would become, so they tried lots of different things. Soon enough, pretty boys and hair bands and sophomoric humor became the norm, and then eventually, videos were replaced with reality tv shows. But for a short while, crazy shit like the Residents offered a glimpse of What Might Have Been.
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