The Residents

The Residents is a collective of American artists producing, above all, avant-garde and experimental music. Their albums are generally either a totally conceptual approach to a theme, a theory, an intrigue, or a total deconstruction of Pop music. They participated in the creation of B.O. film and documentaries, producing dozens of multimedia audiovisual projects and creating an opera Rock. During their long career, they learned very quickly to use new media and dissemination media such as cd-roms, dvds, Internet, Youtube, podcasting, etc. to deepen or complete their work. They founded their own label, Ralf Records and Criptic Corporation, their management team. The Residents have the particularity of never revealing the real faces of its active members, as well as the history and origin of the group. Virtually no information about the real names of members, current or former, is known (with few exceptions) and it is difficult to know when the group began its career. Nor is it known how many people contributed to their different projects. In order to maintain the mystery around their identity, in concert, they always find a way to hide their real face. Most of the time, they are dressed in a tuxedo, hats and wear dreadful eyeball masks. But they can also be seen disguised as clowns or wearing hoods or masks. They also use nicknames to avoid revealing their identity. On the other hand, they were hardly ever interviewed, and when necessary, it was members of the Cryptic Corporation who handled it. The band was founded by a band of young experimental artists in the mid-1950s in Louisiana. They began to work on projects linking music, photography, and everything that comes close to art in general, from near or far. The news of such a band's existence has been repeated and in the late 1960s the British guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Phil Lithman joined the troupe under the name of Snakefinger. It is one of the few known names of the group, as it died in 1987. He reportedly took with him a supposed German composer and theorist, a certain N. Senada, inventor of the "Theory of Darkness" and the "Theory of Phonetic Organization". He was born in 1907 and died in 1993. There is, however, no evidence of the existence of N. Senada and it may well be the fruit of the overwhelming imagination of the members of The Residents, who simply "imagined" an additional member of the group, then gave him a name and invented a career. They would have started recording their first demo in 1969 which was sent to a producer of the Warner Bros, but unfortunately their effort was not retained by the label. In 1971, they gave their first concert in San Francisco and it was this year that they formalized the band's name, The Residents. That same year, they recorded new tapes named Baby Sex. The following year, they decided to move to San Francisco and founded the Ralf Records label. Their first known and dated project to date is a musical film, Vileness Fats, which was never finished but parts of the film were preserved and published much later in 1984 and maliciously called Whater Happened To Vileness Fats? . Some other passages were included in the 2001 DVD, Icky Flix. Officially, their first effort finished and distributed was a double single, Santa Dog. They had to send their singles to several media outlets before finally being broadcast by a certain Bill Reinhardt via his radio show in Portland. The members of the band were so happy that they finally managed to broadcast their sound on the air that they gave him all the tapes already recorded. He promised to broadcast them on his show. Among these bands were their first real album, Meet The Residents. After that, the group began to make themselves known throughout the country, especially in Portland, where they became cults. In 1974, tensions disrupted the proper functioning of the group. By common accord, they then recorded several titles which were later locked in a safe and forgot for a few years. It was during this period that N. Senada established his "Theory of Darkness". In 1976, they released The Third Reich An album parodying Pop music and advertising from the 1960s. The album is actually a pastiche of 60s Pop songs such as Light My Fire (The Doors), Sympathy For The Devil ( Rolling Stones) or Hey Jude (The Beatles). The various passages were remixed and reworked with new texts, in such a way that the original title was not recognized at all. All titles were then condensed into two beaches of about 17 minutes. In addition to this sound capharnaum, the album cover is no longer shocking, at least at the time. Dick Clark, a well-known presenter in the states, wearing a Nazi uniform, holding carrots in his hands, surrounded by sgammy crosses and several Hitlers dressed as women and men. The following year, they released Fingerprince , their third album and, in 1978, Duck Stab/Buster&Glen, which is, to date, their most accessible album and allowed them to expand their audience. The same year, they released their old tapes recorded in 1974 and published them. The album is not available . In 1979 Eskimo was born. A complex album, made of sounds, sound effects and scores played with homemade instruments. The texts were said to be of the Inuit, but the album is, in fact, a critique of the Western world. A world that increasingly stifles primitive civilizations and it turns out that voices are nothing other than reworked age advertisements. Eskimo became the band's flagship album. In 1980, they produced their seventh album, ironically titled Commercial Album. The album consists of 40 tracks of more or less one minute. In 81, they planned to release an album trilogy, the first of which, Mark Of The Mole, was followed in 1982 by The Tunes Of Two Cities. However, the trilogy was not immediately completed because the third part was never published. It was their 1985 album The Big Bubble: Part Four Of The Mole Trilogy that closed the trilogy. Meanwhile, the band released three other albums between 1982 and 1985. They then toured Japan for the first time in their career and then, across the United States, produced eleven albums between 1985 and 1998, not counting singles, eps and live albums. In 1998, they released a concept album, Wormwood: Curious Stories From The Bible , designed to explain some curious passages in the Bible. In 2002, after releasing three other albums (including Icky Flix , album and dvd that already marked their thirtieth anniversary), The Residents proposed a new album concept, Demons Dance Alone . The album was a turning point for the band because, in the cover, it is written: The Residents have left the building. This would imply that there were no more original members when the album was released. It should be noted, however, that the album in question deals with the emotional effects of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and this may explain this anecdotal phrase. Three years and three albums later, in 2005, Animal Lover appeared in the bins. With a cover more than odd, this concept album depicts human life through the eyes of different wild animals. The album Tweedles , released in 2006, also features a strange artwork. The album concept is a story of a sexual predator disguised as an evil clown, told to the first person. In 2007, The voice Of Midnight was an adaptation of the new Der Sandmann written in 1817 by German writer Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann. Since 2007, The Residents have continued to release album after album, their latest efforts are Lonely Teenager and Dolor Generar, both released in 2011. In all, the group produced no less than 48 albums, 12 live albums, 31 singles and eps, 23 multimedia projects (dvds, cd-roms, podcast and video series on the internet) and 29 compilations of all genres (remix, unreleased etc.). What we can say is that this so mysterious group that has lasted for more than 50 years will never be short of members or ideas.
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