The Coming of the Crow
"The Coming of the Crow" is the thirty-ninth track from The Residents' Commercial Album, released on October 1980 by Ralph Records. It is an instrumental jam, and like all other songs on the album, is exactly one minute long. It features Fred Frith and Chris Cutler of Henry Cow as contributors, and would later be a climactic point of the 13th Anniversary Show with Snakefinger.
Brian Eno — who at the time was working with David Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts — is rumored to have contributed keyboards to this song.[1]
History
The title of this song shares a connection with the Snakefinger/Residents song "Eva's Warning", whose lyrics are also connected to the Mark of the Mole project; see the track "Now It is Too Late" on Mole Box.
Indeed, "Coming of the Crow" was later performed on the 13th Anniversary Show (1985–1987) as an introduction and outro to "Eva's Warning". This was repeated on the Way We Were mini-tour of Australia in 2005, which revisited a few numbers from the 13th Anniversary Show (the last time The Residents had been to Australia before then).
Music videos
A video for the song was created by The Residents for the Commercial DVD in 2004, before they decided to make it a collaborative project. A second video was then made by filmmaker Jean-Michel Roux, using footage from his 2002 film Enquête sur le monde invisible, which featured licensed Residents music in its soundtrack.
List of releases
- Commercial Album (1980) [Version 1]
- The Eyeball Show (Live in Japan) (1985) [Version 2]
- Hell! (1986) [Version 1]
- Live in the USA! 13th Anniversary Tour (1986) [Version 3]
- Commercial DVD (2004) [Version 4] [Version 5]
- The Way We Were (2005) [Version 6]
- 13th Anniversary Show - Ritz NY - Jan 16, 1986 (2010) [Version 7]
- 13th Anniversary Show - Cleveland (2014) [Version 8]
- Loss of the Lizard Lady (2018) [Version 6]
- Commercial Album pREServed (2019) [Version 1] [Version 3] [Version 9] (2023 LP only)
- Commercial Book bonus disc (2024) [Version 10]
List of versions
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Commercial Album studio version, recorded late 1979 (1:00)
- ↑ 13th Anniversary Show version; Live in Tokyo, October 1985 (1:48)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 13th Anniversary Show version; Live in Minneapolis, February 1986 (1:41)
- ↑ New video by The Residents, 2004
- ↑ Short video by Jean-Michel Roux, 2004
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 The Way We Were version; Live in Australia, March 2005 (1:24)
- ↑ 13th Anniversary Show version; Live in NYC, January 1986 (0:56)
- ↑ 13th Anniversary Show version; Live in Cleveland, OH, January 1986 (1:08)
- ↑ 2021 RDX mix ("COMS 1-3 suite")
- ↑ Radio ad (1:00)
See also
Listen online
External links and references
- ↑ Commercial Album pREServed liner notes
