The Residents value their anonymity
Meet the Residents was released in 1974. “The First Album by North Louisiana’s Phenomenal Pop Combo” by San Francisco-based art collective, the Residents featured an augmented image of the Meet the Beatles cover. The Fab Four’s faces were covered with collage cut-outs and graffiti. EMI and Capitol threatened legal action.
A second cover featuring four figures attired as the Beatles, but with crustacean heads — John Crawfish, George Crawfish, Paul McCrawfish and Ringo Starfish — was released. Any similarities between the two groups ceased there.
From the best-known, four-giant-eyeballs-in-tuxedo-look to numerous variations, the Residents’ entire career has been carried out in total anonymity.
“It’s good for people to know, particularly at times like this, that you can remain anonymous and pursue art for art’s sake,” said the president of the Cryptic Corporation, which oversees the Residents’ affairs. “In the same way that they have pushed the limits of technology, the group has pushed the limits of the way that music is perceived in the mainstream media with its fame obsessions. It’s all about the art creation.”
Meet the Residents was the first salvo by the Residents and the band has been steadily producing for more than four decades. Blending avant-garde music with genre-vaulting multimedia projects ranging from short film and video to CD -ROM and DVD releases and the 2015 documentary Theory of Obscurity, the group is often on the cutting edge of tech. Yet it also operates as a basic bass, drums, guitar, vocals combo whose music fits alongside such boundary-pushing artists as Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa and Pere Ubu.
Everything the group does is overseen by the corporation. Like the band members, it’s never clear who is who. The president of the corporation who conducted this interview may, or may not, be in the band.
The version of the Residents that hits the road now is a lean, mean touring machine. While album and merchandise sales kept the group afloat for years, it too has felt the shifting tides of the music business and that has meant fans have been getting a lot more opportunity to see the combo in all its costumed craziness.
“At the moment, the group has reconstituted as a pretty classical four-piece band who, for the most part, are playing material from the catalogue as a straight-up group would, live without almost any samples,” said the president. “The group is so solid and a great lighting guy they worked with back in the day has returned, which is wonderful. Then there is a bit of video as well.”
Which all sounds like any other musical performance of note. But most “straight-up” rock bands don’t feature a singer in a skintight cow onesie backed by musicians with weird beak head masks named Eekie, Erkie and Cha Cha. And then there is the music itself.
The Residents specialize in deconstructing the classic song into strange cut-and-paste snippets of off-kilter instrumentation that favours rhythmic textures far more than melody. Long before the idea of industrial music, this crew was performing classics such as James Brown’s It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World so it sounded like so many tin men hammering beats on their bodies while a trippy, mechanical voice messed with the lyrics.
Albums such as Duck Stab and The Commercial Album made this sound a tad more accessible. But the back-and-forth between fans trying to pick a favourite from the 44 albums and nearly equal number of compilations has almost become its own world. People into the Residents are really, really into them.
What does the president think it is that keeps people coming back to the band?
“At this point, after 45 years, they are still having fun,” he said. “And that’s as good as it gets in making art. There’s no question that people pick up on that honesty.”
And, still to this day, one of the best places to start appreciating the warped genius that is the Residents is by listening to Meet the Residents and also its followup. The provocatively titled Third Reich ’n’ Roll, is a spirited satire of both jingles and hits from the pop catalogue of the 1960s. From versions of Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler’s 1966 smash hit the Ballad of the Green Berets to Bill Haley and the Comets’ Rock Around the Clock or the Doors’ Light My Fire, the performances are both hilarious and hard not to want to hear over. Third Reich ’n’ Roll is often mentioned in essays on the origins of mash-up in modern music.
Since both of these records were recorded at a time when technology (and band finances) dictated lower-quality sound, the recent undertaking by U.K.-based indie label Cherry Red Records to begin an expansive archival reissue series of the Residents’ catalogue is a great development. Packaged with greatly enhanced booklets and art, these reissues sound great and really help to back the argument that the Residents might be one of the most influential musical-concept crews of all time. That won’t equal Pink Floyd-level sales, but the president is happy just to see the project come about.
“For almost 45 years, I had a partner called Hardy Fox who — to my surprise — wanted to retire two years ago,” he said.
“He wanted me to buy him out and I couldn’t, but partnering up with Music Video Distributors and Cherry Red made it possible and these reissues really are a lot richer.”
The goal at the moment is to try to work through the whole catalogue chronologically. Couldn’t the group do a “greatest-hits” package for those who might not desire such an in-depth collection? “Given the reality that the Residents has never had any hits, that is somewhat problematic,” he said. “They could do it from the point of view of the fans. Or they could let them do it themselves. The Residents has always offered an alternative.”
What he’s talking about is I Am a Resident, a PledgeMusic campaign where fans choose a song from the vast catalogue, record their own take on it and submit it. At the end of the campaign the Residents and their fans will select their favourites to appear on the I Am a Resident album due something this spring.
There is also a new album coming from the band titled, Intruders. Expect to hear some of it on the In Between Dreams tour, which is focusing on more dreamlike and spacey songs from the group’s career.