The Residents’ Mind-Bending Music/Dance Package

The willfully weird Residents have long delighted in deconstructing pop music myths. “Cube-E: The History of American Music in 3 E-Z Pieces,” presented three times over the weekend at the Japan America Theatre, takes that one step beyond, tackling the classic Western saga, black gospel/blues, and the ultimate mating of the two, Elvis Presley, in a mind-bending modern music and dance package.

The first segment, “Buckaroo Blues,” a meditation on violent death on the lone prairie, may be the most evocative thing the Residents have ever done--sort of Aaron Copland via Mummenschanz. “Black Barry,” is the group at its most demonstrative: nightmarish cotton-pickers/holy-rollers serving “Shortnin’ Bread” from Hell. As revisionist history, “The King and Eye” segment sets its own standards. Elvis is portrayed as “the king of need” as the songs emphasize obsession and compulsion, with a grotesque Elvis caricature alternately flushed with power and imploded from emptiness.