The Residents, the anonymous avant-garde group known for performing behind eyeball masks and tuxedos, are bringing their landmark 1979 album Eskimo to the stage for the first time in the band's more than five-decade history, with two Honolulu performances this week at Blue Note Hawaii. The shows mark a milestone moment for a group that combines experimental sounds, visual art, filmmaking and theatrical performance into a body of work few acts have matched for sheer strangeness or staying power.
According to KHON2, the Eskimo Live! performances take place Tuesday, September 1 and Wednesday, September 2 at the Waikiki venue, with doors opening at 5 p.m. and the show beginning at 7 p.m. The Honolulu dates revisit the Eskimo album through what the station describes as a newly imagined live experience, giving fans a rare chance to see material that has existed only as a studio recording for nearly half a century. Tickets range from $45 for bar-area seating up to $65 for premium seating, with loge seats priced at $50, and are available through Blue Note Hawaii's website, per the station's report.
An Album That Almost Toured Nearly 50 Years Ago
Eskimo was released on September 26, 1979, on Ralph Records, constructed as a pseudo-ethnographic soundscape that simulated Arctic environments using synthesizer wind noise, manipulated tapes, and chants blending gibberish with commercial slogans, according to Louder Than War. Despite suggestions that the record captured genuine field recordings from the Arctic, it was actually recorded entirely in a California studio, the outlet notes. An initial attempt to tour the concept around the time of its release was abandoned due to financial and staging complexities, meaning the current run represents the first time the band has performed the album on a full live tour.
The Residents tested material for the Eskimo Live! staging during a brief performance at the San Francisco Public Library's Night of Ideas event in 2024, ahead of committing to a full international tour, according to a Facebook video from the Oriental Theater. Positive reception at that library appearance and at an art event in Paris reportedly encouraged the group to adapt the decades-old record for a four-piece live band. The group later spun off the same source material into 1980's Diskomo, an EP that reimagined Eskimo's primitive Arctic chants and soundscapes as electronic disco dance tracks, according to White Fungus, which notes the release became a cult favorite among fans and expanded the album's conceptual legacy.
Inside the Venue Hosting the Honolulu Shows
Blue Note Hawaii, the Waikiki venue hosting the performances, is an intimate 326-seat music club located inside the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort that opened in January 2016 following a $3.5 million renovation, according to Blue Note Hawaii. The space previously served as the showroom for Hawaii's Society of Seven. It is part of an international network of Blue Note jazz venues originally founded by Danny Bensusan in New York City in 1981, with sister locations operating in Tokyo, Milan, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro, per HAWAIʻI Magazine, and the Waikiki club regularly hosts genres beyond jazz, including rock, comedy and experimental acts.
Five Decades of Anonymity and Genre-Hopping
The Residents are described by KHON2 as an avant-garde music group with a legacy spanning more than five decades, having explored trance, world fusion, electronica, punk, industrial and lounge music over that span. The group keeps the identities of its members mysterious, a deliberate anonymity that has become as central to its identity as the music itself. Before settling in San Mateo in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970s and eventually founding Ralph Records, the group's core members originated from Shreveport, Louisiana, according to Red Bull Music Academy Daily.
That anonymity is maintained by The Cryptic Corporation, the company that has managed the band's business operations and public relations since 1976, originally formed by Homer Flynn, Hardy Fox, Jay Clem and John Kennedy, according to Wikipedia. While band members perform in eyeball masks and tuxedos, Flynn serves as the group's official public spokesperson, handling meet-and-greets and interviews the anonymous performers themselves cannot give. Tour VIP packages for Eskimo Live! offer fans a meet-and-greet with Flynn along with exclusive merchandise including a beanie and shirt, according to a Facebook post from The Residents.
The group's reach extends well beyond music. The Residents are recognized as pioneers in performance art and music video, and their visual work is included in the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art, per KHON2. That recognition traces back to early experiments with 16mm film and black-and-white videotape as far back as 1972 on the uncompleted film Vileness Fats, according to Tedium, which notes MoMA regards the short films as foundational contributions to performance art and visual music, predating the rise of MTV by nearly a decade.
