Tour Merchandise update

TOUR MERCHANDISE UPDATE:

As many of you are aware, The Residents are soon embarking on The Bunny Boy Tour and your friendly Ralph representative will be on hand at all shows with lovely Residents items, for sale in the lobby (or in some cases, right there in the theater...NYC that's just weird). Anyhow, here's a list of what we will have (or plan to have, at least).

IN the USA: 3 different shirt designs, and one embroidered zip hoodie. We will have the Bunny Boy CD (MVD/SDR, the same one we sell online), Postcards from Patmos (instrumental music from The Bunny Boy internet series on 1 CD, packaged in a double digipak, with pocket, so you can house your BB cd and booklet all in this lovely package - not available in Santa Cruz as the covers won't be finished by then). A metal 'dog tag' with Residents art printed on one side, and a URL/download code for the intermission music that is played druing the shows. The Bunny Boy NOSE! Yes, you too can have a Bunny Boy plastic nose and whiskers for Halloween this year. The very same model worn in the internet series! There's talk of a mystery box...we'll see if it happens. Concept being that if we have time, we'll rummage thru the Ralph vaults, and create a small box of collectible stuff (a different one for each night of the US tour) that folks can browse thru to patch up their collection if they have any missing pieces, etc.

In Europe: 2 shirts and one embroidered zip hoodie. Mute's version of The Bunny Boy CD, Postcards from Patmos, the dog tag (see above), maybe the plastic nose (might be a difficult customs operation), and an embroidered skull cap. Possibly some other items, but nothing has been confirmed. No mystery boxes in europe though.

ABOUT POSTCARDS FROM PATMOS: Many of you are writing to see if you can get a copy online. The answer is MAYBE. PERHAPS. We are making 2000 copies, 1000 for sale on the US tour, and 1000 for sale in Europe. Whatever is leftover will be sold online. We anticipate that there will be some leftover. Considering that the US tour is much shorter and in smaller venues than europe, we think that there will be some left over.

Residents for Presidents, and MORE TOYS

Hey all -
new shirts in - Gary Panter's original RESIDENTS FOR PRESIDENTS design is available on a heather grey tee!

Also, we have got more of the Residents/Cerio designed toys back in stock, so stop by and git some whilst you can!!!

And, question of the day:

What is the most mysterious thing about the Bunny Boy videos so far?

[For those who don't know what I'm referring to, there is an internet event going on at residents.com, every M, W and Fri a new video is posted revealing the mysteries of The Bunny Boy.]

another stupefying video

you asked for it (at least one of you did) so here it is. I spent a lot of time on this, so please don't be critical. my fragile little ego can't take the abuse. your requested video of the bunny boy tee and wallet show!



oh, for those of you opposed to pink, please notice this is far more red than pink. you know who you are...

The Bunny Boy is hopping our way...

sorry for that. But yes, The Bunny Boy will shortly be on our doorstep (before Sept. 2). You can now preorder this at http://www.ralphamerica.com - as a disc by itself, or in a fabulous package deal that includes a new Bunny Boy shirt (with Santa Dog Records logo on the back, and this shirt design is only available in the deal) and a Bunny Boy wallet. Hey, we haven't made one of those before (before you email us, EuroRalph made those other wallets, not us.) BTW, some of you (i look in yer direction paulie) have expressed distaste for velcro wallets...this one is NOT velcro. Just wanted to make that clear.


And don't forget, there will be a fabulous internet video event associated with The Bunny Boy. Several (and I mean, SEVERAL) video episodes will begin on Sept. 1st that are all intertwined to the Bunny Boy release and mystery.

Anyhow, dig it all friends...a good time to be a Residents fan is now.

New Residents Figures

Well, check these out! New Residents 7" toy figures. They come in 4 different Skull flavors and 4 different Eyeball flavors. We have a limited amount right now, and hope to get more soon. So don't be too disappointed if we run out of the first batch quickly. We should be getting more eventually.
Check out this monumentally retarded video I just made.

Some shirts have to go!

One or more of our Residents shirt designs will have to be removed from the RalphAmerica store this week. If you've had yer EYE (not a hint, but a bad pun) on any of the designs currently available, this would be the week to act on that impulse!

We have some new stuff coming soon, and we just can't keep up with all of these designs. So don't take them for granted, pick up one that you've been thinking about before it's too late!

Sad State of Cd distribution

Hi Ralph pals -
For a while RalphAmerica will not be carrying the Mute titles (the nice ones in the hardbound book) as the world of CD distribution and one stops (an excuse of a business that collects a bunch of releases from the major distributors, marks up the items, and sells them to smaller accounts), is a seedy, dirty little troll world (I just saw Hellboy 2 last night, it's kinda like that.)

We were dealing with a one stop (I'll leave them nameless right now, but unlike their namesake, they aren't very super), that gave us tons of trouble. We would order thru their ordering system, sometimes we'd get what we ordered, sometimes not. Then we'd order something else, and might get something we'd ordered the previous month with no warning. We never got invoices with our orders, the invoices we did get never made any sense. When we dealt with EMI directly, huge company, they were easier to deal with and a LOT more friendly than this MickeyMouse outfit. (When EMI got bought they changed their policies about selling to small accounts like us, even though we'd sell more Mute Residents titles than anyone in N. America.) Gripe gripe gripe.

When we started getting shipped double the stock we ordered, and then couldn't return it for various Cheney-like reasons, we decided we had better end the relationship. If you are at all like us, you are careful about which businesses you support, and we just didn't feel good about supporting this particular business anymore. The music business is too competitive for this sort of crap, and life is too short to deal with it. So hopefully we'll get something worked out soon, as MuteUK is being helpful in helping us find a solution.

We thought that you, our thoughtful customer, might want to know what was up. In the long run (and as you probably already know), these distributors won't be around much longer anyhow. In fact I find it hard to understand how they're even keeping the lights on these days, but it has something to do with the parasitic relationship they have with major labels and major label distribution. Pretty soon WalMart and Target will stop carrying CDs and DVDs and they'll all come crumbling down. I'll take some solace in that.

Do you have any ideas/predictions about how this industry will change in the next few years?