Over the course of a recording career spanning
several decades, the Residents remained a riddle of Sphinx-like
proportions; cloaking their lives and music in a haze of willful
obscurity, the band's members never idenitified themselves by
name, always appearing in public in disguise — usually
tuxedos, top hats and giant eyeball masks — and refusing to
grant media interviews. Drawing inspiration from the likes of
fellow innovators including Harry Partch, Sun Ra and Captain
Beefheart, the Residents channelled the breadth of American music
into their idiosyncratic, satiric vision, their mercurial blend
of electronics, distortion, avant-jazz, classical symphonies and
gratingly nasal vocals reinterpreting everyone from John Philip
Sousa to James Brown while simultaneously expanding the
boundaries of theatrical performance and multimedia interaction.
It was commonly accepted that the four-member group emigrated to
San Francisco, California from Shreveport, Louisiana at some
point in the early '70s. According to longtime group spokesman
Jay Clem — one member of the so-called Cryptic Corporation,
the band's representative body — they received their name
when Warner Bros. mailed back their anonymous demo tape,
addressed simply "for the attention of residents."
Finding no takers for their oddball sounds, the Residents founded
their own label, Ralph Records, for the purposes of issuing their
1972 debut "Santa Dog," released in a pressing of 300
copies which were mailed out to luminaries from Frank Zappa to
President Richard Nixon. Their full-length 1973 Meet the
Residents reportedly sold fewer than 50 copies before the group
was threatened with a lawsuit from Capitol Records over its
cover, a twisted, dadaesque parody of the art to Meet the
Beatles.
The follow-up, 1974's neo-classical excursion Not Available, was
recorded with the intention of its music remaining unissued;
locked in cold storage upon its completion, only a 1978
contractual obligation resulted in its eventual release. 1976's
Third Reich 'N' Roll was the next official offering, a collection
of pop oldies covers presented in a controversial jacket
portraying Adolf Hitler clutching an enormous carrot. After a
1976 concert in Berkeley, California which cloaked the Residents
behind an opaque screen, wrapped up like mummies — the most
famous of only three live performances mounted during their first
decade of existence — they issued an abrasive 1977 cover of
the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction," which became an
underground hit on both sides of the Atlantic at the peak of the
punk movement. As the decade drew to a close, the group released
a flurry of recordings further building upon their growing cult
following; among them were 1977's Duck Stab/Buster & Glen,
1979's Eskimo (purportedly a collection of native Arctic chants)
and 1980's Commercial Album, a compilation of 40 one-minute mock
advertising jingles.
In 1981 the Residents embarked upon their "Mole
Trilogy," a prog-rock collection of albums — 1981's The
Mark of the Mole, 1982's The Tunes of Two Cities and 1985's The
Big Bubble — recounting an epic battle between a pair of
tribes named the Moles and the Chubs; a lavish, multimedia tour,
"The Mole Show," followed. In the interim, the group
also mounted another ambitious project, the "American
Composer" series, although only two of the projected titles
— 1984's George and James (a reinterpration of songs by
George Gershwin and James Brown) and 1986's Stars and Hank
Forever (celebrating John Philip Sousa and Hank Williams) —
ever appeared. Instead, in the wake of financial and corporate
difficulties which resulted in the creation of a New Ralph label,
the Residents issued the one-off God in Three Persons (a talking
blues outing) and 1989's The King and Eye (a reinterpretation of
Elvis Presley standards).
After losing control of the Ralph label as well as their back
catalog, the Residents regained the rights to their music in 1990
and began reissuing long-out-of-print material as well as the new
Freak Show, a meditation on circus sideshows and carnival
dementia. Four years later, Freak Show was reissued as a CD-ROM,
marking the group's first leap into the new digital interactive
technology; The Residents Have a Bad Day followed in 1996, and
included the soundtrack to the CD-ROM game "Bad Day on the
Midway." In 1997, the band celebrated their silver
anniversary with the release of the career-spanning overview Our
Tired, Our Poor, Our Huddled Masses. Wormwood: Curious Stories
from the Bible followed the next year, with Roadworms being
issued in mid-2000. — Jason Ankeny