Meet The Residents

anoutsideraday:

Today’s Outsider: The Residents (1969-)

Bio: The Residents are an art collective who operate completely anonymously. Their names have never been released, and when they appear in public they remain silent and wear costumes that cover their faces (most often their iconic eyeball helmets). According to their company Cryptic Corporation, they met in Shreveport, Louisiana as high school students in the 1960s. They traveled to San Francisco in 1966, and when their truck broke down in San Mateo they decided to stay there. They began experimenting with music and visual art and were eventually discovered by British musician Phil Lithman and his mysterious collaborator N. Senada. Senada may not have been a real person (his name is probably a play on ”en se nada”, meaning ”in himself nothing”). If real, rumor has it he was either Captain Beefheart or Harry Partch. The Residents’ first official release was 1972’s double single Santa Dog. From there they attempted to make a “long-form music video”, Vileness Fats, but the project was cancelled after four years of work. The collective gained popularity when radio programmer Bill Reinhardt began promoting them. Unfortunately, this was a dark time for the Residents. Inter-band turmoil resulted in an embarassing food fight, but they soon resolved their conflict and began recording albums regularly, releasing at least one a year. Notable among them are ’60s-style rock-and-roll-and-Nazis extravaganza The Third Reich ‘n Roll; Eskimo, which consists of non-musical sounds, percussion, and wordless vocals; and Commercial Album, 40 one-minute songs each with one verse and one chorus. They continue to put out albums at this rate and have released over sixty as of 2012. Fans still speculate over the Residents’ identities. Some who have worked with them allege that their “representatives” at Cryptic Corporation are really the musicians themselves. With a group like this, however, what matters isn’t the men behind the giant eyeballs; it’s the music.

Music: Difficult to describe, because every album is conceptually completely different from every other album. “Wonderful”, the song embedded in this post, has rather nice harmonies and guitar and amusing lyrics about what would happen if they got a four-figure record deal. Meanwhile Third Reich sounds like something my dog created on Finale. Predictable these guys are not, which is of course the entire point.

Notable Works: Santa Dog, Commercial Album

Trivia: One single, The Beatles Play The Residents and The Residents Play The Beatles, is an audio collage of Beatles recordings and a cover of the Beatles song “Flying”. In 1981, Penn Jillette toured with them and delivered rambling monologues.

Quote: “Santa Dog’s a Jesus Fetus.” -The Residents