10.29.04 (MusicPortal.com) Mute Recordings has released Experimental Rock veterans THE RESIDENTS' 25th Anniversary Special Edition of "The Commercial Album," along with a 25th Anniversary Special Edition DVD. Since, in 1980, the nature of the band's music prohibited access to Pop radio, THE RESIDENTS originally envisioned "The Commercial Album" as a reinvention of the Top Forty format. With this concept, the group attempted to revolutionize the way popular music was heard. The contents of the new DVD include four short films THE RESIDENTS created back in 1980 based on songs from "The Commercial Album." Long considered as "ground breaking" music videos, these films are now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The DVD's other contents both compliment and complete that project with an amazing collection of 56 one-minute films based on the original 40 "Commercial Album" songs. In order to produce this large number of films, in addition to themselves, THE RESIDENTS have assembled an outstanding group of 42 visual artists from around the world. Working in various forms ranging from animation, live action, and puppetry to drawing, photography and sculpture, the disc is a virtual film festival in miniature. THE RESIDENTS now enter their fourth decade as faceless "anti-stars," existing in the dim outskirts of mainstream awareness. During that entire time, they've consciously kept their origins and personal lives shrouded in mystery.

10.18.04 (AP) Singer MARC ALMOND, whose band SOFT CELL scored a massive international hit in the early 1980s with their version of the song 'Tainted Love,' has been hospitalized after suffering severe head injuries in a road crash, police said. Almond, 47, was riding as a passenger on a motorcycle when it collided with a car in central London on Sunday afternoon, a spokesman for the City Of London Police said. He was thrown from the bike and suffered severe head injuries, the spokesman said, adding that his condition remained critical Monday morning. It was unclear if he had been wearing a helmet. The singer was in stable condition at the Royal London Hospital in the east of the capital, the hospital's governing body said in a statement Monday. The motorcycle's driver, who hasn't been identified, was also seriously injured, police said. SOFT CELL earned a No. 1 hit in Britain along with major U.S. airplay in 1981 with 'Tainted Love,' their electronic synthesizer-laden cover of a classic Gloria Jones soul song. Almond and fellow SOFT CELL band member David Ball broke up the duo in 1984, after which Almond began a successful solo career. MARC ALMOND scored another major hit with a cover of singer/songwriter Gene Pitney's 'Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart' in 1989, which he sang with Pitney.
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