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-- The Residents. No surprise that the first CD-ROM from the eyeball-headed San Francisco group should be called Freak Show -- a virtual version of their 1990 set. The user enters a carnival big top to see and hear such freaks as Harry the Head, Herman the Human Mole, Wanda the Worm Woman, Jello Jack the Boneless Boy and Bouncing Benny the Bump. Later the user can wander backstage and sneak into the freaks' trailers, flip through their photo albums, read their love letters, watch music videos on their TV sets. Animated by Jim Ludtke, Freak Show has an artfully eerie feel. "We didn't want it to be a techie thing," says Homer Flynn, the band's manager. "But we do like being the only CD-ROM with a worm eater on it."
-- David Bowie. The first CD-ROM from this charismatic chameleon, Jump: David Bowie Interactive, to be released shortly, will be as theatrical as its star's performances: the disk will allow users to create their own music videos using songs from Bowie's Black Tie White Noise album. "It's like you're playing a live TV producer with five cameras," says software designer Ty Roberts. "You have to pick which one to use." Jump will also feature three Black Tie music videos.
-- Heart. Power popsters Ann and Nancy Wilson will release this month an interactive CD-ROM called Heart/20 Years of Rock and Roll, including their songs, videos, a discography of past releases and notable events in the band's history, plus childhood photos and bio data. As a group retrospective, efforts like Heart's will surely become standard reissue in the format: a computer version of boxed-set CDs.
-- Elvis. The King is not dead -- we know that from reading Weekly World News -- but soon he will live, and sing, on the CD-ROM Virtual Graceland. Due out this summer, the Crunch Media disk allows users to roam freely through Presley's haunted mansion, room by room, in 360 degrees shots. Wander into the TV room and play Elvis' hits on his personal phonograph. Noodle on Elvis' piano, strum his guitar, open drawers by clicking on them. Just don't try peeking into Elvis' medicine chest; the bathroom is not open to the public.
Technological razzle-jazzle has energized rock music ever since the Moog- and-groove, sound-and-light-show days of the '60s. The synthesizer, a . computerized one-man band, has become the instrumental instrument in many a rock group. Heavy-metal outfits like Guns N' Roses and Metallica, as well as such megatheatrical performers as Janet Jackson and David Bowie, have shown that computerized control of stage lighting creates a wide range of effects. The Grateful Dead, on a perpetual postmortem tour, keeps things fresh with computerized psychedelia synchronized to the music and projected on big screens. The aim is to find a visual corollary to the spontaneity of live (or Dead) rock 'n' roll.