The Residents

According to legend, the Residents were school friends from Shreveport, Louisiana, who hopped into their car and high-tailed it to California in the late '60s, making it as far as San Mateo. Abandoning their car, they established their first residence and set about doing what they wanted to do. Not easy, since they wanted to make music, but had no idea how to play their instruments.

The music that they did make can best be divided into three periods. The first is from about 1969-1980, in which the band actually matured into something listenable. The first four releases (Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor, The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger, The Warner Bros. Album and Baby Sex) still remain unreleased as a whole. What has been released is heavily influenced by Frank Zappa, and made musical only by the presence of English guitar virtuoso Phil "Snakefinger" Lithman.

The Warner Bros. Album gave the group their name, since it was rejected by Warner Bros. and sent back to "Residents", due to the fact the group had not included a return name. The concept of anononymity was helped along by N. Senada (thought by some to be avant-Jazz composer Harry Partch), and the group decided to forever hide their identity. The early '70s albums used this mystique to hide a blatant amateurishness, even though the music is endearing in itself. Santa Dog and Meet The Residents are extensions of the unreleased Baby Sex, though a bit more cohesive and less offensive. The Third Reich and Roll features mutilated '60s radio nuggets thrown together into side-long suites. Fingerprince is probably the most progressive, originally intended as a three-sided album, featuring a number of shorter songs and the side-long percussive workout "Six Things to a Cycle". Duck Stab!/Buster and Glen stuck to more "normal" song structures, while Not Available, originally recorded in 1974 and intended to be unreleased until it was completely forgotten, is some sort of concept about souls and porcupines, etc. Eskimo featured mainly sound effects and "tribal" music, meant to be listened to while reading the stories in the liner notes about supposed Eskimo life. The culmination of this period was Commercial Album, a disk consisting of 40 one-minute songs.

The second period, from 1981-1987, is more chaotic. The Residents truly started the new decade with the Mole concept albums, meaning to release them as a six-part series, of which only parts one, two and four have been released. It dealt with the contact, war and ultimate forced integration between the Moles, a race of work-obsessed underground dwellers, and the hedonistic Chubs. The first record, Mark of the Mole, tells the story of the war, while the second, The Tunes of Two Cities, contrasts the musical styles of the two cultures. The Big Bubble is part four, supposedly a record released by a half-breed rock band for political reasons. The records resulted in an artistically successful, but financially disasterous world tour, documented best on 1987's The Mole Show Live in Holland. The second concept of the decade was the "American Composers' Series", of which George and James and Stars and Hank Forever are the only two full releases. The former, featuring selections by George Gershwin and James Brown, is one of the few Residents records to truly disappoint. Stars and Hank, featuring music by Hank Williams and John Philip Sousa, is better, at least on the Hank side. Vileness Fats is a soundtrack album to a short version of a video movie the group was working on in 1984, while Residue is an interesting compilation of outtakes. Heaven? and Hell! are also great compilations, including a number of hard-to-find singles, that would be of interest to beginners.

The third stage is that of a full concept band, and a trend toward more synthesized sounds after Snakefinger's death in 1988. God in 3 Persons, released along with an instrumental "soundtrack," tells the story of a huckster coming in contact with Siamese twins who have a true power of healing. The Cube-E performance, together with The King and Eye, is a show based on showing the roots of American music. Freak Show, which was later made into a CD-Rom, features stories about the participants and audience in a carnival sideshow. Gingerbread Man and Have a Bad Day are similar, both being tied to CD-Roms, and both featuring stories about tortured souls in the FS vein. Wormwood, the most recent release, features a number of violent and disturbing stories from none other than the Bible.

The reason for not reviewing each single album in its place is that Residents music must be taken as an entire body of work. The first period is probably the most interesting and adventurous, and the group has never sounded better than when working, or trying to work, with real instruments. Snakefinger was also a wonderful guitarist, and his best work is with the Residents during this period. Most of the '80s output is chaotic, a lot of it instrumental, and quite a bit unsatisfying. During this time half the group left, leading to a loss of creative direction, and Ralph Records, the record company that released everything, was going under. As for the third period, the group had trouble adjusting to life without Snakefinger. God in 3 Persons and the Cube-E related stuff was great, and Freak Show showed what the group could do with new digital technology. However, they got too involved in CD-Roms, and both Gingerbread Man and Have a Bad Day generally fall flat. Live at the Fillmore features performances from FS, GB and HaBD, all of which are much better than what was released. Also, a new direction was seen in the last part of the Fillmore performance, "Disfigured Night". The group has begun adding real instruments back into the mix, making the Wormwood project accessible, but still musically challenging.

The Residents' residence is currently thought to be in San Francisco. But who really knows? -- Eric Wincentsen