THE ART OF ANONYMITY
Avant- garde rock band The Residents, masters of mystique, are the subject of a new documentary
Who are these guys? More than 40 years after forming, Bay Area band The Residents have released some 60 albums, earned international acclaim as groundbreakers in avant- garde rock and multimedia performance art, seen their videos enshrined in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and now are the subject of a documentary screening Saturday at the San Francisco Film Festival.
And after all that, the band’s members remain anonymous.
That’s extraordinary in an age in which privacy is nearly impossible, but The Residents refuse to show their faces, re-
veal their names in public or be interviewed by the media.
“They steadfastly stand behind the curtain and are determined to stay there until the day they die,” says band spokesman Homer Flynn, who works for The Residents’ management group, Cryptic Corp., and in fact has been rumored to be an actual band member. “Why give away the secrets? It’s the same as a magician’s trick. Once you find out what the trick is, the mystique is gone.”
The importance of the mystique cannot be overstated. The Residents are better known to most of the world for donning huge eyeballs and other weird masks and costumes than for any particular album or song. Their music can be unstructured and abrasive. Their lyrics can be tough to decipher. Their stage shows, multimedia projects and films are wildly surreal efforts that often viciously deconstruct and mock Western music, society, politics and pop culture.
These are hardly hallmarks of longevity in the popular music world. Yet the band’s uncompromising art and its anonymity go hand in hand. And curiosity over the members’ identities is still running strong — ironically at a time when most entertainers are doing everything they can to promote themselves on Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr.
The Residents are a band of mystery at a time when mystery is in short supply.
That’s one reason why there’s much intrigue surrounding the new documentary, “Theory of Obscurity: A Film About the Residents,” which screens three times — Saturday and May 1 and 3 — at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The movie shines a bright light — arguably the brightest to date — on a group that has long fought to remain in the shadows.
No, band members aren’t revealed in the film. Director Don Hardy says he wasn’t out to bust the band’s mystique. He was more interested in making sense of it.
“I don’t understand the fascination with the outing of who they are,” says Hardy, a San Jose resident. “And there have been some people over the course of The Residents’ career that have tried to do this, for whatever fame and fortune that they hope to achieve from doing it. It just doesn’t make sense.”
The documentary doesn’t focus on the band’s members but rather on the group’s concept that its obscurity is essential to its art.
“They are free from the influence of their audience, critics and marketing,” says Flynn, explaining the “Theory of Obscurity.”
“At that point, what they are doing is very pure.”
Shortly after forming, The Residents moved from Louisiana to San Mateo in the late 1960s to be part of the Bay Area’s thriving arts scene. Debuting in the old Boarding House nightclub in San Francisco in 1971, the band’s early performances were wildly theatrical, proudly chaotic affairs that embraced improvisation and valued originality over commercial viability.
“In a lot of ways, the ’ 70s were catching sort of the death rattle of the Summer of Love,” Hardy says. “Things had taken a darker turn. That’s what really gave the first breath to The Residents.”
The group relocated to San Francisco and released its first full- length album, “Meet the Residents,” in 1974, offering up a bizarre mix of popular and experimental styles through such songs as “Smelly Tongues,” “Spotted Pinto Beans” and “Seasoned Greetings.” The debut, largely ignored at its release, is now widely considered an avant- garde classic — as is the followup, 1976’ s pop- music parody “The Third Reich ’ n Roll.” It was the start of an absolute avalanche of recorded material, with the band often releasing several full- length efforts in a single year.
The albums never sold in big numbers, but along with the band’s videos and short films, they inspired several artists, including Primus’ Les Claypool, “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, Ween’s Mickey Melchiondo Jr. and Penn & Teller’s Penn Jillette — all of whom are interviewed in “Theory of Obscurity.” Of course, not all of these artists started out as admirers.
“At first, I was like, ‘ What the hell is this?’ ” Bay Area bassist Claypool recounts in the film. “I absolutely hated it. To me, it was the music