The Residents to Debut ‘Duck Stab! Alive!’ Performance for ‘Night Flight’ 40th-Anniversary Special

The Residents will debut a special new performance, Duck Stab! Alive!, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the long-running alternative variety/music show, Night Flight. The performance will air June 5th on the Night Flight Plus app.

Duck Stab! Alive! is described in a release as a “contemporary ‘live-in-the-studio’ re-imagining” of the Residents’ 1978 album, Duck Stab! The performance was directed by video artist John Sanborn, who has regularly collaborated with the Residents since the Nineties.

Along with showing Duck Stab! Alive! the 40th-anniversary Night Flight special will include a marathon screening of Penelope Spheeris’ classic documentary trilogy about the Los Angeles music scene, The Decline of Western Civilization Parts 1, 2 and 3, as well as Modern Harmonic’s reissue of a 1986 performance featuring John Cage and Sun Ra.

Night Flight originally ran on the USA Network from 1981 to 1988, developing a cult following on the then-nascent cable network. The show was revived from 1990 to 1996, relaunched online in 2015, then briefly ran again as a 15-minute TV series on IFC in 2018. The new subscription streaming service, Night Flight Plus, features original episodes, a curated collection of cult films, music documentaries, independent music videos, and more. The 40th-anniversary special will be available to watch for all Night Flight Plus subscribers; a discounted annual membership is available with the code “NIGHTFLIGHT40.”

As for the Residents, the masked avant-garde rock collective is plotting their own 50th-anniversary celebration with a North American tour that is scheduled to launch in August.