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1969–1972: Origins and Residents Unincorporated

In 1969, Texas born Hardy Fox moved from Louisiana to an apartment in San Mateo, California where he lived with his fellow Louisiana Tech University graduate and visual artist Homer Flynn, as well as two of the latter's high school friends, from Shreveport. Although the name would not be adopted until 1974, the earliest recordings credited to The Residents were made during this period.

While attempting to make a living, the group purchased crude recording equipment and began to refine their recording and editing skills, as well as photography, painting, and other affordable artistic endeavors. The Residents have acknowledged the existence of at least two unreleased reel-to-reel items from this era, titled The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger and Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor.

In 1971, the group, now accompanied by pianist James Whitaker and bassist Bob Tangney, sent a reel-to-reel demo tape, The Warner Bros. Album, to Hal Halverstadt at Warner Bros. Although the tape did not lead to a record deal, it did originate a name; as they had not included one on the return address, the rejection slip was addressed to "Residents", which led to them adopting the name Residents Uninc., and later, The Residents.

As Residents Uninc. the group began to make live appearances at open mic events, radio stations, and parties, most notably between October 18th and 31st, 1971, whilst they were working on a second demo tape for Warner, titled Baby Sex. The cover art for the tape box was a silk-screened copy of an old photo depicting a woman fellating a small child, an example of the extremely confrontational and deliberately puerile visual and lyrical style the group adopted during this period. These appearances and recordings were all accompanied by Philip 'Snakefinger' Lithman.

During this period the group also began to incorporate myth making and kayfabe into their work, when N. Senada became a prominent figure, appearing on stage, making radio appearances, even crediting him as the primary songwriter and performer on Baby Sex, merely accompanied by Residents Uninc.

1972–1980: "Classic" era

In 1972, Residents Uninc. relocated to 20 Sycamore St, San Francisco; a studio they named "El Ralpho", which boasted a completely open ground floor (seemingly ideal for a sound stage), allowing the group to expand their operations and also begin preliminary work on their most ambitious project up to that point, a full-length film entitled Vileness Fats, which consumed most of their attention for the next four years. Intended to be the first-ever long form music video, the Residents saw this project as an opportunity to create the ultimate cult film. After four years of filming (from 1972 to 1976) the project was reluctantly cancelled because of time, space, and monetary constraints. Fifteen hours of footage was shot for the project, yet only approximately 35 minutes of that footage has ever been released.

The group also formed Ralph Records at this time, as a small, independent label to release and promote their own work. In 1972, to inaugurate the new business, the group recorded and pressed the Santa Dog EP, their first recorded output to be released to the public. Designed to resemble a Christmas card from an insurance company, the EP consisted of two 7" singles, one song on each side. The four songs were presented as being by four different bands (Ivory & the Braineaters, Delta Nudes, the College Walkers, and Arf & Omega featuring the Singing Lawnchairs), with only a small note on the interior of the gatefold sleeve mentioning the participation of "Residents, Uninc."

They sent copies of Santa Dog to west coast radio stations with no response until Bill Reinhardt, program director of KBOO-FM in Portland, Oregon, received a copy and played it heavily on his show. Reinhardt met the Residents at their studio at 20 Sycamore St. in the summer of 1973 with the news of his broadcasts. The Residents gave Reinhardt exclusive access to all their recordings, including copies of the original masters of Stuffed Trigger, Baby Sex, and The Warner Bros. Album.

Throughout this point, the group had been manipulating old tapes they had collected and regularly recording jam sessions, and these recordings eventually became the group's debut full-length album, Meet the Residents, which was released in 1974 on Ralph. To aid in promoting the group, Reinhardt was given 50 of the first 1,000 copies of Meet the Residents. Some were sent to friends, listeners and critics, and two dozen were left for sale on consignment at the Music Millennium record store, where they sat unsold for months. KBOO DJ Barry Schwam (a.k.a. Schwump, who also recorded with the Residents) promoted them on his program as well. Eventually, KBOO airplay attracted a cult following.Following the release of Meet the Residents, the group began working on a follow-up entitled Not Available. Following N. Senada's theory of obscurity, the LP was recorded and compiled completely in private, and would not be released until the group had completely forgotten about its existence.

1981–1990: New technology and live performances

The Residents' follow up to Commercial Album was Mark of the Mole, released in 1981. The album was a reaction to the group feeling betrayed by a suddenly disinterested music press.

Shortly after the release of Mark of the Mole, the Residents purchased one of the first ever E-mu Emulator samplers, number #00005 specifically. The instrument was revolutionary for the band, as the sampling capacities of the keyboard not only allowed them to recreate instruments the members were not able to play, but also gave them the opportunity to create their meticulously crafted studio sound in a live setting. The first album the band recorded using the emulator was The Tunes of Two Cities, the second part of the Mole Trilogy, which was nearly entirely recorded using the Emulator.

Following the release of Cities, the Residents also released the EP Intermission. Then they started rehearsing for a possible live show, eventually developing their first touring project, the Mole Show, a theatrical retelling of their Mark of the Mole album. The band debuted the show with a test performance, on April 10, 1982, before a tour of California in October, and a European tour throughout mid 1983. The show featured Penn Jillette as the narrator, playing a similar role as he had previously done with the Ralph Records 10th Anniversary radio special.

A third leg, featuring dates in New York, was booked, but had to be cancelled after one performance due to lack of funding. Following the Mole Show, the band was broke, and as such attempted to recoup some of their losses with several archival releases, including a collection of outtakes called Residue in 1983, and a VHS containing recordings from the Mole Show as well as a newly scored edit of Vileness Fats footage.

Deciding to take a break from part three of the Mole Trilogy, the Residents began a new project entitled the American Composers Series, a planned series of 10 albums which would pay tribute to pop artists and instrumental composers from the United States. The first result of this pairing was George & James, featuring the music of George Gershwin and James Brown. Following the release of George & James, the Residents finally abandoned part three of the Mole Trilogy, choosing instead to record a fourth entry entitled The Big Bubble, featuring very stripped-down instrumentation in order to portray a fictional garage rock band. No further entries into the Mole Trilogy have been recorded, and the project is considered abandoned.

1990–1997: Multimedia projects

Recordings for a new studio album were worked on during breaks in the Cube-E tour, and shortly after the tour, Freak Show was released. An album detailing the lives and personalities of fictional carnival freaks, the Freak Show project spawned many other iterations, such as a graphic novel in collaboration with comic artists from Dark Horse, such as Brian Bolland and Matt Howarth, and a promotional video created with the help of New York artist John Sanborn, which also presented a music video for "Harry the Head", animated by computer artist Jim Ludtke; both artists went on to collaborate with the Residents on many further projects.

A partnership with Voyager in 1992 allowed the Residents to develop a laserdisc titled Twenty Twisted Questions to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. Along with this laserdisc, a studio album was recorded, titled Our Finest Flowers. Not quite a "greatest hits" compilation, many tracks on the album borrow elements from previous songs in the Residents' catalog.

The Residents' collaboration with Jim Ludtke resulted in the creation of the Freak Show and Bad Day on the Midway CD-ROMs. Both of these projects featured many other collaborations with visual artists, including returning collaborators from the Freak Show graphic novel, such as Richard Sala and Dave McKean. The Residents enjoyed quite a bit of critical and financial success with these CD-ROMs, winning several industry awards. However, during early development stages for a third CD-ROM, titled I Murdered Mommy, their distributor Inscape was forced to dissolve due to oversaturation and obsoletion of the CD-ROM market.

Despite majorly occupying themselves with CD-ROM development, the Residents still remained musically active, releasing an enhanced CD album titled Gingerbread Man (an observation and study of nine fictional characters) in 1994, and scoring the Discovery Channel documentary series Hunters in 1995. Freak Show also got a live adaptation in November 1995, at the Archa Theater in Prague. While the Residents did act as music and stage directors for the show, they did not actually perform; the music was conducted and performed by Czech band Už Jsme Doma, while actors and dancers played their roles on stage.

Freak Show Live was the last iteration of the Freak Show brand; while a DVD was being developed in 2003, the early death of animator Jim Ludtke immediately halted the project.

1998–2009: New collaborators / The 2nd millennium

Due to the collapse of the CD-ROM market, a collective decision was made to tour again. While keeping up with their theatrical tendencies by regular use of costumes and stage props, the Residents also performed and recorded with a team of guest musicians: the aforementioned Molly Harvey (vocals), Nolan Cook (guitar), Carla Fabrizio (arrangements and vocals), Toby Dammit (drums), and later on in 2002, Eric Drew Feldman (keyboards). Some of the band members, notably Feldman and Fabrizio, went on to collaborate with the group on numerous other projects up until the present time, while Cook eventually became a full-time band member. Fabrizio's connections with the Balinese gamelan ensemble Gamelan Sekar Jaya allowed for occasional collaborations between the two groups during this period.

The first tour with this new band formation was for the 1998 album Wormwood, a collection of songs depicting typically gruesome stories from the Holy Bible, mostly from the Old Testament. While the studio album only featured Harvey, Fabrizio and Dammit as guests (with Dammit only taking occasional vocal duties), the band was mostly fully formed by the time of the show's live debut at the Fillmore in October 1998. The Wormwood show toured up to July 1999, and featured drastically different arrangements of songs from the album, mostly darker and heavier, as well as new or unused material related to the concept. Some of these arrangements were recorded for a studio album titled Roadworms, and a DVD of the live show was released in 2005.

The same band formation later toured to promote the Residents' first DVD, Icky Flix, a compilation of most of the group's music videos, as well as new animated videos and a re-recorded soundtrack, to celebrate the group's upcoming 30th anniversary. These re-recorded arrangements were performed on the show as their corresponding videos played from the DVD onto a screen.

On the event of the September 11 attacks, the Residents were still touring Icky Flix in Europe. The resulting fear and anxiety caused by the attacks resulted in the recording of Demons Dance Alone in 2002. While not a direct response to the events, the songs on the album portrayed the negative emotions felt by the group and its individual members; this was reflected in the album's subsequent tour, which took place from October 2002 to September 2003. The group's next major album, the 2005 Animal Lover, contained lyrics of a similarly tragic nature, although in a more abstract manner. The album also contained a booklet with stories which presented the songs from the point of view of animals. Animal Lover was also the first Residents album to be released on the Mute label, which was solely responsible for the Residents' major releases until 2008.

2005–2009: The "Storyteller" era

Due to the increasing numbers of illegal downloads of music on the Internet, which considerably decreased product sales, the Residents attempted a new artistic medium: the radio drama, in the form of a paid podcast distributed through Apple's iTunes service. This podcast, titled The River of Crime (a first-person tale of an individual's obsession with crime and criminals), ran for five weekly episodes in 2006 before its cancellation due to inconveniences surrounding the podcast's promotion on iTunes, thereby discouraging further production.

Aside from Animal Lover, the group's partnership with Mute produced three more albums: Tweedles in 2006 (a first-person character study of a sexually successful yet emotionally unavailable vampiric figure), The Voice of Midnight in 2007 (a retelling of the E.T.A. Hoffmann story Der Sandmann), and The Bunny Boy in 2008 (a first-person narrative and character study of the titular Bunny in search of his missing brother).

While Tweedles and The Voice of Midnight have not yet been developed further (aside from instrumental releases such as The UGHS! in 2009), The Bunny Boy proved a very accessible concept. A YouTube video series of the same name was done to promote and further elaborate on the project. The series was partially interactive; fans could communicate with Bunny via e-mail, and some of the interactions may or may not have altered the course of the series' plot (a book containing some of Bunny's correspondence was published by Bandits Mages in 2019). Soon afterwards the album was toured from October to December 2008. A second season of the video series was shown in 2009, concluding the project.

2010–2016: Randy, Chuck & Bob

Making a decision to shift focus from studio work to touring, and to enhance their show's portability, the Residents changed their live band to a "power trio" formation, and in a sort of meta stunt, appear to "unmask" themselves as lead singer / frontman "Randy", composer / keyboardist "Charles 'Chuck' Bobuck", and guitarist Nolan Cook as "Bob" – although all three band members were still costumed: "Randy" donned an old man mask and wore an overcoat with oversized red tie and shoes; "Chuck" and "Bob" wore red jackets, special goggles and fake dreadlocks. There was also mention of a fourth band member, drummer "Carlos", who allegedly had left the music business to take care of his mother in Mexico; however, despite being credited as singer in the group's 2012 album Coochie Brake, there is no further evidence of "Carlos" having ever been a real band member.

This new band formation debuted in the Talking Light tour, which ran from January 2010 to April 2011. While the setlist once again consisted of assorted songs from the band's repertoire with greatly reworked arrangements, the show also featured newly written "ghost stories", in which a video of a narrator was projected onto the stage while the band improvised. These "ghost stories" were loosely threaded by the presence of television, TV commercials, and industrialized products such as Oscar Mayer hot dogs or Betty Crocker Pudding Roll-ups – although these were not endorsements; these products were simply a minor element integrated into the stories, not unlike product placement. In between certain songs, "Randy" also spoke to the audience, introducing the band and later describing his own history with supernatural appearances, and his subsequent fear of mirrors. The tour was financially successful, and the band continued to perform in this formation with only minor changes in stage and costume design.

In the next couple of years, "Randy" took on an increased role as frontman of the band, starting a "personal" Tumblr blog where he wrote mostly about life experiences and trivia regarding the Residents' history, as well as promoting his "solo" show, Sam's Enchanted Evening, which was presented in various incarnations between June 2010 and March 2012 with collaborators Joshua Raoul Brody and Carla Fabrizio. More akin to musical theater than a concert, the show focused on the titular Sam's life story, with the singer alternating between monologues and cover performances of various songs that were important in his life. During this period, the Residents also collaborated with Belgian dancer/choreographer Grace Ellen Barkey from Needcompany, composing the music for a show titled Mush-Room in 2013.

2017–present: Metal Meat & Bone, Triple Trouble and the pREServed series

In March 2017, the Residents presented their new lineup, advertised as "The Real Residents": "Tyrone" on vocals, "Eekie" (Nolan Cook) on guitar, "Erkie" (Eric Feldman) on keyboards, and "Cha Cha" on drums and percussion. Shortly after a preview of their In Between Dreams tour in Japan, the group released their first studio album since Coochie Brake, titled The Ghost of Hope, describing real train wreck stories from the 19th and early 20th century. The album was released on Cherry Red Records, the Residents' current label, and promoted with a single, and their first music video since 2001's Icky Flix – "Rushing Like a Banshee", directed by John Sanborn. Although The Ghost of Hope was not toured, the Residents played both sides of the "Rushing Like a Banshee" single on the In Between Dreams show, which ran from October 2017 up to February 2019 and followed a loose theme, much like Shadowland, this time of dreams.

During the tour, the Residents worked on new projects. Their next album, Intruders, released in October 2018, was advertised along with the I am a Resident! concept, which started as a sort of officially endorsed tribute project: fans would submit their interpretations of Residents songs, and the group would collect their favorites into an album. After the number of submissions vastly exceeded their expectations, the group decided to change the project into a type of collage, even recording segments and overdubs of their own. The final album was released to contributors in May 2018, and worldwide in August 2018.

In July 2018, the Residents also published their second novel (the first being a novelization of their game Bad Day on the Midway in 2012). The book, entitled The Brick-Eaters, was described as "an absurdist buddy movie story featuring a very tall internet content screener teaming up with an aging career criminal whose primary companions are an oxygen bottle and a .44 Magnum".

The group also began their ongoing pREServed reissue series in January 2018 – deluxe editions of the major albums in the band's discography, containing brand new remasters and unreleased recordings from the band's archives, previously in the care of Hardy Fox before he quit the group.

During the In Between Dreams tour, the Residents also previewed songs from their "upcoming blues album", which was eventually titled Metal, Meat & Bone: The Songs of Dyin' Dog. The premise of the album was to present the long-lost recordings of a fictional albino blues singer named Alvin Snow, also known as "Dyin' Dog". The Residents would present the original "Dyin' Dog demos" on one disc and their own interpretations of the same songs on another disc. The album was released in July 2020 and promoted with two music videos for the Residents' new versions of "Bury My Bone" and "DIE! DIE! DIE!", the latter being sung by alternative rock musician and Pixies frontman Black Francis.

Identity

In the group's early days, many rumors circulated about its membership. As the cover art of Meet the Residents was a parody of the Beatles' 1964 North American release, Meet the Beatles!, rumors circulated that the Residents were actually the Beatles, even specifically naming George Harrison. Many other rumors have come and gone over the years, one being that 1960's experimental band Cromagnon shared members with the band. Les Claypool, frontman of rock band Primus, and Gerald Casale of new wave band Devo claimed to have been rumored to have been members of the band; and Mark Mothersbaugh (also of Devo) is alleged to have played keyboards during the band's 13th-anniversary tour.

Since the late 1970s, much of the speculation about the members' identities has involved the group's management team, the Cryptic Corporation. It was formed in 1976 as a corporation in California by Jay Clem, Homer Flynn, Hardy W. Fox, and John Kennedy. All but Fox have denied having been band members. Clem and Kennedy left the Corporation in 1982. The Residents members do not grant interviews, although Flynn, Fox, and Clem have conducted interviews on behalf of the group.

In a July 2017 newsletter, Fox confirmed that Jay Clem's voice was featured uncredited on "Whoopy Snorp" and that the Residents often used his voice on early recordings to add a sense of variety. Fox insisted that as Clem became more invested in running Ralph Records, he became less interested in the Residents' studio work and that the Not Available sessions would have been his last time in the studio - although Fox seemed unsure if Clem was involved in the production of that album at all.

Nolan Cook, a prominent collaborator in the band's live and studio work (and a live member of I Am Spoonbender) denied in an interview that Fox and Flynn were the Residents. However, some consider Cook himself a member of the band, as he is known to wear the same head coverings as the group in live shows, and wore the trademark eyeball mask on the Wormwood Tour. He also played the part of "Bob" during the "Randy," "Chuck," and "Bob" trilogy of shows.

William Poundstone, author of the Big Secrets books, compared voiceprints of a Flynn lecture with those of spoken word segments from the Residents discography in his book Biggest Secrets. He concluded, "The similarities in the spectograms second the convincing subjective impression that the voices are identical", and that "it is possible that the creative core of the Residents is the duo of Flynn and Fox." A subset of that belief is that Flynn is the lyricist and that Fox writes the music. The online database of the performance rights organization BMI (of which the Residents and their publishing company, Pale Pachyderm Publishing [Warner-Chappell] have been members for their entire careers) lists Flynn and Fox as the composers of all original Residents songs, including pre-1974 songs from the "Residents Unincorporated" years.

Hardy Fox

In October 2017, former Residents manager Hardy Fox identified himself as both the anonymous primary composer and producer for the Residents as well as the pseudonymous Charles Bobuck. Fox was born in Longview, Texas, where his father worked in the oil industry; his mother was a nurse. The family moved several times, and Fox graduated from Rayville High School in Louisiana in 1963. He then studied art and business at Louisiana Tech University, where he met Homer Flynn, and graduated in 1967.

In September 2018, Fox added to his website the dates "1945–2018", although he was known to be alive (but unwell) after the dates were published. Fox died on October 30, 2018, from brain cancer, aged 73. He was identified in obituaries as the co-founder and primary composer of the Residents. On December 14, 2018, the official Residents mailing list acknowledged Fox as "engineer, producer and sometime composer of much of the Residents’ best-loved work".

Frequent collaborators

Since their inception, the Residents have had a number of credited collaborators.

During the band's formative years, the group's primary members consisted of 'the Singing Resident', Hardy Fox, pianist James Whittaker, and bassist Bob Tagney, the latter two of which were credited as writers on the 2018 LP release of The Warner Brothers Album. This lineup, along with Snakefinger, who joined the group in Autumn of 1971, are credited as members of The Delta Nudes, (a retroactive group name applied to recordings involving members of the Residents made prior to 1974,) on the 2013 demos compilation, the Delta Nudes' Greatest Hiss. Bob Tagney and James Whittaker are also credited on the band's debut album, Meet the Residents; Whittaker, as the pianist on "Spotted Pinto Bean", and Tagney as bassist on "Infant Tango". Female vocalist Pamela Zeibak was also among the group's regular collaborators at this time, with credits on The Delta Nudes Greatest Hiss, Meet the Residents, The Third Reich 'n Roll, and Fingerprince. She also performed vocals on 'Spotted Pinto Bean' at the group's debut live performance in 1976. Also performing at that live show was Snakefinger, and drummer Don Jakovich.

Snakefinger had relocated to the US earlier that year, and continued his collaborations with the Residents, and was credited on all their albums (minus Not Available) from Fingerprince to Commercial Album. During this period, he also released two solo albums, which the Residents co-produced and co-wrote. In 1981 he began writing and recording material without their involvement, and only appeared on a small handful of tracks on their albums from The Tunes of Two Cities to Stars & Hank Forever. Despite this lessened involvement in the studio, Snakefinger also toured with the Residents as an unmasked guest from October 1985 to January 1987, before his death on July 1, 1987.

Don Jakovich, made credited appearances on "Satisfaction," Fingerprince, Snakefinger's Chewing Hides the Sound, and Commercial Album.

Joshua Raoul Brody began working with the Residents shortly before their 1976 live show, after he was invited to the set of their film Vileness Fats. After this, he began collaborating with the group anonymously, arranging the backing vocals on 1976 cover of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". In the 1980s, Brody began to receive credit for his work with the Residents under the pseudonym "Raoul N. Di Seimbote", but by 1987, was using his birth name. Brody worked with the Residents as late on their 2023 'Secret' live show.

Artistry

Musical style

The Residents' albums generally fall into two categories: deconstructions of Western popular music, and complex conceptual pieces composed around a theme, theory or plot. The group is noted for surrealistic lyrics and sound, with a disregard for conventional music composition. The Residents' musical style encompasses elements of art rock, art pop, avant-pop, avant-rock, electronic, industrial, dark ambient, ambient, electronica, industrial dance, talking blues, alternative rock, noise rock and post-punk. The Residents have been described as pioneers of punk rock, art rock and techno.

Influences

The Residents have claimed to have been influenced by N. Senada (which may be a play on Ensenada, en se nada meaning "in himself nothing," no sé nada meaning "I don't know anything" or enseñada, a form of the past participle meaning "taught"), who they alleged was a Bavarian composer and music theorist who formulated the "Theory of Obscurity" and the "Theory of Phonetic Organization". His "Theory of Obscurity" states that an artist can only produce pure art when the expectations and influences of the outside world are not taken into consideration; while his "Theory of Phonetic Organization" states, "the musician should put the sounds first, building the music up from [them] rather than developing the music, then working down to the sounds that make it up."

There is a debate as to whether or not Senada, supposedly having been born in 1907 and dying in 1993 at the age of 86, actually existed, or was simply an invention of the Residents. It is frequently speculated that, if real, N. Senada may have been the famous avant-garde composer and instrument designer Harry Partch, the influence of whose work may be heard in Residents compositions such as "Six Things to a Cycle"; his death is also referenced in the song "Death in Barstow". Another rumor speculates that N. Senada may have been Captain Beefheart, because in the late 1960s Beefheart and his "Magic Band" lived in a residence on Ensenada Drive in Woodland Hills, California, while recording Trout Mask Replica and Safe as Milk; Beefheart's influence can also be heard in early Residents works. The Residents also sent an early demo tape to the Warner Brothers executive Hal Halverstadt, who had signed Beefheart.

According to the Residents, in 1937, N. Senada premiered his masterpiece, Pollex Christi, which means either Thumb of Christ or Big Toe of Christ. This work mainly consisted of borrowed pieces from other composers, namely Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, among others. He also left large holes in the work so that the performers could insert music of their choosing, thus "becoming composers themselves". Senada justified his work with "house" analogies claiming that he did not make the "bricks" but "cemented them together"; he was not the "architect", just the "builder". N. Senada allegedly collaborated with the Residents on their work prior to Santa Dog and Meet the Residents, and then disappeared. He resurfaced in the mid-1970s, returning from an Arctic expedition and bearing a sealed bottle of pure Arctic air; this served as inspiration for the Eskimo project.

Discography

Miscellaneous

Freak Show (1992)

Freak Show (1994; CD-ROM)