The In Between Dreams show I went to was just over 2 months ago and I still haven't written anything about it. I should probably change that.
I went to the show at the Urban Lounge in Salt Lake City. I was staying with my friend who was also going to the concert, despite not being a Residents fan herself (although being close to me means she was familiar with some of their works and I did give her daily "study material" leading up to the concert :P). She lived close enough to the venue that we could walk there easily, although she wasn't happy about the fact that I insisted we get there like 2 hours before the show even started.
Note: Thisfriendis now my romantic partner. :)
Well, we did get there pretty early... in fact we were the first ones in line as we stood outside the venue. I stared at the big purple tour bus parked not too far away. Eventually after standing there for quite a while, other people started to line up. I decided it'd be a good idea to put on a little nametag I made for myself that said "HELLO! I am mewee/meisekimiu". Said nametag actually was just from a joke in chat I made about wearing a nametag, but I decided to go through with it in case anyone from chat or the forum was present. I started chatting it up with this guy behind me in line about how great The Rz were, as well as other artists like Captain Beefheart and Snakefinger and such. In the middle of the conversation I had to stop talking as I noticed the H.F. walk by and enter the venue. It was so surreal to see him with my own eyes. Yes that's right, I saw Hein Fokker! ;) also i saw captain doc as well
Anyway, we were finally let into the venue and I showed my fancy "I'm actually old enough to see one of these shows this time" ID to prove that I can consume the devil's liquor. I was first in the venue and I made a beeline for the merch stand. I bought the tour shirt and the venue poster! I was eyeing that MTR vinyl but I decided to skip it since I wanted things that were easier to take home. My friend bought a copy of Duck Stab pREServed since that was the only album she recognized. I remember the guy behind me in line bought a copy of Ghost of Hope. Afterwards I gave him my Real Name, which was a rather strange experience. He seemed a bit confused when I gave him my name so I gave it to him again and he seemed to accept it.
After I got a drink at the bar, I immediately went off to claim a spot up front, right in front of where Tyrone was supposed to be singing. After I talked to some other Rz fans who were reminiscing on the days of fan clubs and mail ordering things, the show finally began to start.
Flashback to around the same time of the year in 2014. I just got the Wonder of Weird CD, the first "new" Residents product I got my hands on. I had watched someone's upload of the Loser=Weed/Picnic in the Jungle performance from the Phoenix WoW show several times by this point, and I was so excited to finally hear clean audio of the whole show. When I hear that beautiful version of Jelly Jack my heart sinks a little bit. I wish I could have been at one of these shows. To listen to, to experience this live. Since then I've been to a few WoW shows in my dreams but I never thought I would hear any of these songs while in between those dreams.
My first thoughts were: "What is this song that they're playing? It sounds so familiar, but, there's no way that they'd..." Then the guitarist plays that same guitar riff that made me committed to seeing The Residents perform live four years prior. An evil cow man walked on stage and everything started to feel like a dream. I cannot believe I got to actually experience a version of the WoW version of Jelly Jack live (so this was a real residents cover of the world's greatest residents cover band's cover?). In fact, this version was even better than the WoW version!
I guess I should just talk about the setlist in general now. Everything was AMAZING. I can see how some might be disappointed with it, since many of the songs were just enhanced covers of the covers done during the WoW shows. But for me, a person who never even got to experience the WoW shows live but love those covers to death anyway, it really was a dream come true. I'll talk more about the similarity to the WoW shows a bit later though. All the new versions of songs were just incredible though. I'd say that one of the highlights of the show to me was It's a Man's World... I'm not sure how to explain it but that one in particular was just very powerful to me. All the actually new songs were great too! And Africa Tree was just... :o Tourniquet of Roses was definitely the best way to end any Rz concert ever (pre-encore, anyway). Seriously I just had a crazy goofy smile on my face once I realized what was going on at the end. I will never forget the image of Tyrone alone on stage, just standing away from the mic, staring at us all as "THERE IS NO MORE TO SAY NO" kept echoing on.
The actual sound of the band this time was... just unreal. I had this idea in my head that the "Randy, Chuck, and Bob" incarnation of The Residents was sort of the pinnacle of their live sound. It sounded so great but this show just blew that out of the water. I did not know The Residents could get any better, but I guess most fans who have seen them evolve throughout the years are used to that by now. The almost organ-like sounds from those big keyboards were AMAZING. And the drums and everything else Cha-Cha was doing...! I used to joke about "liking the Residents before the drummer left" from Randyland but like... oh my god having an actual drum/etc guy is so great. I also liked his backup vocals and how he sometimes played melodic sections with his digital drum kit thing. I uh... stared at Cha-Cha a lot throughout the show. Anyway, one more thing about the sound of the show is that I'm glad the harmonica returned! That was such a cool part of Talking Light and it's so strange that it never returned at any of the other RCB shows (but I guess life in reverse yadda yadda).
The dream segments were very cool, but well, Residents concerts being Residents concerts, I couldn't hear them very well. I have no idea what the cowboy dream was about, although everyone was better behaved during the other segments. I loved the Nixon one. The keyboard guy dancing around to Nixon's blues was a really nice touch. It reminds me of how Randy reacted to the stories in Talking Light and Shadowland. It makes it seem like this isn't some prerecorded thing that The Residents have heard countless times by now but instead just some weird interruption to the show that we're all experiencing together for the first time. I dig it.
So, I guess I should put my more "analytical" thoughts on the show? In Japanese interviews they said something like The Residents were plague doctors trying to make the world continue dreaming despite a plague looming over us all, with said plague presumably being Donald Trump. Now, I didn't really get that from the show at all, although I can say that this show did make me very happy and I barely thought about Donald Trump during the show at all, so... I guess their goal was successful. I don't really know. I mainly just want to talk about this show from a more meta perspective.
I think that this show was what WoW was supposed to be but they changed it due to the 40th Anniversary, RCB Trilogy Concept, and Randy's own blog stories taking over WoW. I mean, I don't have proof, but if there was an alternate universe where this show was the 2013 tour, it would have fit in between Talking Light and Shadowland perfectly. And hey, one could interpret the strange stories of death from both Talking Light and Shadowland as "dreams" and BOOM, In Between Dreams is literally in between dreams.
That's all just theory, of course. My other theory is that they decided to play songs from WoW for the Japanese audience since they probably never got to experience those songs live before, and then decided to keep a lot of the "enhanced covers" from WoW. Sound and setlist wise, I really think that In Between Dreams is sort of the "definitive" version of WoW, even though both shows have different concepts and only one of the show has hilarious Randy stories. Whatever the story behind this show was, I'd like to think that The Residents really had creative motivation to make these definitive versions of the songs from WoW instead of just being lazy.
After the show ended my friend and I walked back to her apartment. I was gushing about all the cool things we saw and heard the whole time. The Wonder of Weird lost its place as my favorite Rz live show that night. All that's left is something else and there really is no more to say.