The Mole Show, Vienna, May 25th 1983
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On May 25th 1983, The Residents performed the second show of the European leg of their first tour, The Mole Show, at Succession in Vienna, Austria, the first of two shows at the venue over two nights.
This show was the group's second performance outside America, following a performance in Hannover, Germany two days prior. In his tour diary, a member of The Residents describes Vienna as "too beautiful a city for such a bad show".[1] It is one of a number of shows where emcee Penn Jillette speaks in Esperanto.
A truncated bootleg recording of this show was made available on vinyl LP in 1986 by bootleg label Smack!, titled Live in Vienna (May 83). In the same year, Smack! also released a 7" single featuring two excerpts from the show, which was also titled Live in Vienna. A longer bootleg featuring the complete show has also circulated among fans.
Set list
- Voices of the Air
- The Secret Seed
- The Ultimate Disaster
- God of Darkness
- Migration
- Smack Your Lips (Clap Your Teeth)
- Another Land
- The New Machine
- Song of the Wild
- Final Confrontation
- Satisfaction
- Happy Home
Bootleg recording
The May 25th 1983 performance of The Mole Show was recorded by an audience member; it was most notably bootlegged in 1986 by short-lived Residents bootlegger Smack! in the form of an LP and a 7" single.
The full recording of the show, one hour and sixteen minutes in length, had some limited circulation among fans over the years, later becoming more widely circulated online, particularly after it was shared to YouTube in April 2011 by fan MrWzzzW, titled The Mole Show Live in Vienna.
Track listing
- Voices of the Air
- The Secret Seed
- Penn Jillette: Introduction
- The Ultimate Disaster
- Penn Jillette: Narration 1
- God of Darkness
- Penn Jillette: Narration 2
- Migration
- Smack Your Lips (Clap Your Teeth)
- Penn Jillette: Narration 3
- Another Land
- Penn Jillette: Rant 1 ("I am necessary!")
- The New Machine
- Penn Jillette: Rant 2
- Song of the Wild
- Final Confrontation
- Penn Jillette: Rant 3
- Resident Speech
- Satisfaction
- Happy Home
Bootleg LP
A performance of The Mole Show in Vienna, Austria, said to have been recorded on May 25th 1983, was released by bootleg label Smack! in 1986, titled Live in Vienna (May 83).
The LP features a truncated version of the show, which concludes with "Call of the Wild". The most common version of this bootleg features black artwork printed on white card stock; a version with cover art printed on orange card stock is also known to have been released in limited numbers.
The bootleg LP has been shared among fans online since at least 2008, when it was released on the Bittorrent tracker Dimeadozen, in a version with added fades at the beginnings and ends of the album's sides, and one audio flaw removed by the uploader.
Track listing
Side A
- Voices of the Air
- The Secret Seed
- Narration 1
- Won't You Keep Us Working?
- First Warning
- Back To Normality?
- The Sky Falls!
- Narration 2
- God of Darkness
- Narration 3
- March To The Sea
- The Observer
Side B
- Hole-Workers' New Hymn (fades into intermission)
- Smack Your Lips (Clap Your Teeth)
- Rumors
- Narration 4
- Idea
- Construction
- Ugly Rumors
- Failure/Reconstruction
- Success
- Narration 5 / Riot in the Audience
- Song of the Wild
Bootleg single
Live in Vienna is a bootleg 7" single released by bootleg label Smack! in 1986. The single features two excerpts from The Residents' May 25th 1983 performance of The Mole Show in Vienna, Austria.
The bootleg is an extract from the Smack! Live in Vienna (May 83) bootleg LP, also released in 1986. The A-side features "Smack Your Lips (Clap Your Teeth)" played forward and backwards. The B-side is an excerpt from "Another Land".
On the label, Smack! imitates AIM Records, who released the Australian "This Is A Man's Man's Man's World" single in 1986. The single's cover art is also based on the cover art of that single (even featuring the AIM logo), but features an image from the photo session for The Residents' 1976 album The Third Reich 'n Roll, unrelated to the Mole Show tour which this single is excerpted from.
Despite being a bootleg, fourteen copies of the single were held in the archives of The Cryptic Corporation as of 2025, with one being sold through their official Faceless Forever merchandise website in that year.
Track listing
Side A
- Smack Your Lips (Clap Your Teeth) (1:40)
- Smack Your Lips (Clap Your Teeth) (reversed) (1:40)
Side B
- Another Land - Rumors (4:46)
See also
- The Mole Show (tour)
External links and references
- The Mole Show at The Residents Historical
- Live in Vienna (May 83) bootleg LP on Discogs
- Live in Vienna bootleg single on Discogs
