List of unfinished projects

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Abandoned reflective silver sphere mask design for the 1979 album Eskimo, later to be replaced with the now iconic eyeball masks

For a group as perennially ambitious as The Residents, it is not surprising that over the course of their career, many abandoned or unfinished projects have been developed alongside their enormous catalog of completed works.

These unfinished works have sometimes generated significant interest among fans, given that elements of these failed projects have often found their way onto publicly released products. On previous versions of the Historical section of The Residents' official website, former webmaster Big Brother referred to these failed projects collectively as the "Graveyard", and the related releases which arose from them as "zombies".

This page lists projects by The Residents which were abandoned or left unfinished (for now), and the "zombies" which resulted.

Unfinished projects by The Residents

Residents, Uninc. debut album (1972)

Residents, Uninc., 1972

Residents, Uninc. made at least one attempt at an "intended debut album" prior to recording Meet The Residents in 1973; an "early draft" of one version of the planned debut which is known to remain in The Cryptic Corporation archive is said to contain elements from a never-released rehearsal session for the group's appearance at a friend's party in Redwood, California in February 1972.

Another album-length tape consisting of a radically experimental jam session, titled 1-10 (With a Touch of 11), was compiled in August, seemingly in preparation for an intended release, however it would remain unreleased in its entirety until April 2022, when it was included on the pREServed compilation Warning: Uninc..

The group would ultimately create their debut, Meet The Residents, from material that emerged from a series of jam sessions with friends held on Tuesday afternoons between February and October 1973.

Related projects

• Party of '72
• 1-10 (With a Touch of 11)
• Meet The Residents
• Warning: Uninc. - Live and Experimental Recordings 1971-1972

Vileness Fats (1972-1976)

Shooting Vileness Fats

Vileness Fats is an incomplete film project which was conceived and shot by The Residents between 1972 and 1976. Perhaps the most notorious of their unfinished works, Vileness Fats was two-thirds complete when the group abandoned it for multiple reasons in 1976.

The footage has since been re-edited into shorter video releases, including Whatever Happened To Vileness Fats? in 1984, and a seventeen minute "concentrate" on the Icky Flix DVD in 2001, and outtakes feature in the documentary Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents and its promotional materials, but much of the material shot for the film remains unseen. Further footage will feature in the group's upcoming feature film Triple Trouble, framed by new footage shot by the group in 2016 and 2020.

Related projects

• "X Is For Xtra (A Conclusion)"
• Not Available
• Mole Show/Whatever Happened To Vileness Fats?
• Whatever Happened To Vileness Fats?
• Icky Flix (DVD)
• Icky Flix (album)
• RZ VF
• Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents
• Triple Trouble

Number 1 ballet (1973)

During the sessions that would become their 1974 debut album Meet The Residents, Residents, Uninc. began conceiving a ballet, "Number 1", based around a composition of the same name, to be performed by a short-lived off-shoot project, the Number One band.

The ballet never came to fruition, however a short instrumental version of the piece was released as "Numb Erone", the second track on Meet The Residents. A "live" studio version apparently performed by the Number One band was released in 2013 on the compilation The Delta Nudes' Greatest Hiss.

Related projects

• Meet The Residents
• The Delta Nudes' Greatest Hiss

Six Things To A Cycle ballet (1976)

Fingerprince photo session outtake, 1976

In the mid 1970s The Residents became acquainted with French dancer Maurice Bejart, who had used their music as part of a dance piece he had performed on a barge moving down the canals of Venice.

The Residents began to plan a collaboration with Bejart, composing a ballet titled "Six Things To A Cycle" which told the story of "a primitive humanoid" who is "consumed by his self-created environment only to be replaced by a new creature, still primitive, still faulty, but destined to rule the world just as poorly".

The ballet was never produced, however a truncated version was featured on The Residents' 1977 album Fingerprince, as a seventeen minute suite which occupies the entirety of the album's second side. Excerpts had also been performed live by the group at their Oh Mummy! show in June 1976.

Related projects

• Oh Mummy! Oh Daddy! live performance
• Fingerprince

Live at the Ugly Grey Theater (1977)

The Ugly Grey Theater logo, 1977

The Ugly Grey Theater was to be a science fiction and fantasy themed movie theater, operating out of a theater on Howard Street in San Francisco which had been purchased by The Cryptic Corporation in early 1977. The theater was intended to open in the summer of 1977, and would have featured architectural and interior design by Ant Farm and The Residents.

Despite producing a promotional campaign (including leaflets with details of the proposal, balloons, and business cards), and with intentions to open a restaurant in the space within its first year of operation, the "predominately industrial" neighborhood the theater was intended for instead "revolted", having become convinced that The Cryptic Corporation were planning to use the space as a gay pornography theater, and petitioned the municipal government in opposition to the proposal, leading Cryptic to quietly drop the idea.

The Residents were also said to be planning a live performance specifically for the venue, which would have been only their second official live performance as The Residents, following their June 1976 show for Rather Ripped Records' fifth birthday in Berkeley. Little is known publicly of what the intended show at the theater would have entailed, other than that it would have occurred in late 1977 after the opening of the theater in the summer, and that the show was being developed specifically for the theater. Whatever the group's plans were for the show, they appear to have been quietly abandoned alongside the theater itself.

Kosmische musik "space opera" (ca. 1978)

The Residents in asbestos suits, 1978

In the mid-to-late 1970s The Residents developed an interest in the "kosmische musik" (later more popularly referred to as krautrock) being produced by German artists such as Kraftwerk. During sessions for what would become the 1978 album Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen, the group began work on a "space opera" inspired by the style, however the project was shortly abandoned.

Despite the project's abandonment, the Duck Stab! album retained a knowing nod to Kraftwerk, in the form of the song "Krafty Cheese". Two "kosmische" pieces retrieved from the Duck Stab! master tapes were released in May 2023 as a limited edition white label 7" single, "Duck Kosmische". A further experiment in this style (though recorded after the original sessions) titled "99 Space Music" was released on the compilation Third Noise Principle (Formative North American Electronica 1975-1984) in 2019.

In the last months of his life, The Residents' former producer and composer Hardy Fox claimed to have had a dream in which the late American composer Sun Ra told Fox that he should record "that space album [Fox] always wanted to make", however the project remained unrealized at the time of Fox's death on October 30th 2018.

Related projects

• Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen
• "Duck Kosmische"
• "99 Space Music"

Duck Stab! film (1978-1979)

Bridgit Terris in the unfinished Duck Stab! film (from the "Melon Collie Lassie" music video)

Around 1978, when The Residents were preparing to release their Duck Stab! EP, The Cryptic Corporation asked photographer and filmmaker Graeme Whifler to produce a number of short films based on the songs from the EP. Whifler began shooting footage with Bridgit Terris, a disabled man known to Whifler, who is said to have lived his life under the impression he was the French actress Brigitte Bardot.

Whifler expanded his concept for the Duck Stab! short films into a proposal for a full-length feature film, working with The Residents for at least a short time with this in mind; however The Cryptic Corporation were not particularly interested in the idea, feeling that it would cost a lot of money, and that they had no way of marketing a feature film.

The project was abandoned with only a small amount of footage being shot, when The Cryptic Corporation decided they were not overly interested in the idea due to the likely expense of such a project, and the film's intended star Terris left San Francisco partway through filming to live with his mother.

A small amount of footage shot for the film featuring Terris was used to create the music video "Hello Skinny" in 1980. Decades later, unused Duck Stab! footage was found in the Cryptic archives by Don Hardy when creating the 2015 documentary film Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents; some of this unseen footage was edited together by Hardy to create a music video for the song "Melon Collie Lassie" (from the 1979 EP Babyfingers).

Related projects

• "Hello Skinny" music video
• "Melon Collie Lassie" music video

Eskimo Live (1979-1980, 1992)

Design by Ron Davis for the abandoned Eskimo opera, 1992

The Residents had intended to turn their acclaimed 1979 "musical documentary" album Eskimo into their first live tour, but abandoned this idea, first in favor of a mooted "10th Anniversary Show" (only briefly rehearsed by the group, it would have featured a suite of tracks from Eskimo), and then The Mole Show, which ultimately became their debut live tour, running from April 1982 to October 1983.

In 1992 The Residents began developing a live opera adaptation of the album, even commissioning artist Ron Davis to design and create stage sets, however the idea was abandoned before production of the show began in full.

To this day Eskimo has never been performed live by The Residents; the group did however realize their long-held desire to adapt the album to a visual format with the 2002 release of the 5.1 surround sound remix on DVD, accompanied by a slideshow of still images depicting the album's stories (supposedly derived from photographs taken by the group's late mentor N. Senada on his Arctic expedition in the mid-1970s), alongside explanatory text from the original album liner notes.

Related projects

• The 10th Anniversary Show
• Eskimo Opera Proposal
• Eskimo DVD

The 10th Anniversary Show (1982)

The Residents enshrouded in toothpicks, 1982

For their 10th Anniversary in 1982, The Residents began conceiving what would have been their first live tour; a retrospective performance featuring selected tracks from their catalog of albums.

This touring concept got as far as rehearsals, before the group abandoned the concept in favor of what would become The Mole Show, a far more elaborate and narrative-driven performance which the group toured across America and Europe between 1982 and 1983. They would ultimately enact a retrospective concept for their second tour, The 13th Anniversary Show, between 1985 and 1987.

Live-in-the-studio rehearsals of material intended for this abandoned tour were released on the cassette Assorted Secrets in 1984, with further recordings from these sessions being released on its CD reissue in 2000. Additional outtakes from these rehearsals have been issued on a number of the group's pREServed expanded and remastered album releases.

Related projects

• The Mole Show
• Assorted Secrets
• The 13th Anniversary Show

Mark of the Mole video game (1983)

File:Motm1.png

Mark of the Mole Atari 2600 game prototype, 1983

In 1983, Residents fan and video game developer Greg Easter approached The Cryptic Corporation with an idea to adapt their concept album Mark of the Mole into a music-based video game for the Atari 2600.

The Mark of the Mole game, which was designed to teach the player "perfect pitch", was abandoned before it could be completed or released. An early prototype (and now the only known copy of the game) was kept in the Cryptic archive for many years, before being sold to a private collector.

Some gameplay footage and screenshots from the unfinished game have circulated online, but the full prototype has not yet surfaced publicly.

The Mole Trilogy - Parts 3, 5 and 6 (1983-1992?)

Promotional graphic for The Mole Trilogy, 1982

In 1981, The Residents began a trilogy of concept albums with the release of Mark of the Mole. The trilogy then became a tetralogy with odd-numbered albums telling the story and even-numbered albums presenting the music of the fictional cultures depicted within, and in 1982 the second volume, The Tunes of Two Cities was released, followed by the fourth, The Big Bubble, in 1985.

Though a handful of pieces of music thought to be from the sessions of the unreleased Part Three have surfaced (on the 2019 pREServed box set Mole Box and the RSD EP Mole Suite), it has never been confirmed how much work was completed on the remaining three installments before The Residents abandoned the trilogy.

Related projects

• Part Three of The Mole Trilogy
• Mole Suite
• Mole Box

Man (1983-1986)

The Residents began working on a project tentatively titled Man in 1983, with a concept focused around men, and the male perspective. The sessions were brought to a halt in 1985, when the group began production on The Big Bubble, the fourth installment of their ongoing (and soon to be abandoned) Mole Trilogy, but resulted in the release of "This Is A Man's Man's Man's World" in 1984.

The group returned to this project in 1986, but their enthusiasm for the concept had lost most (if not all) of its momentum by this point. Two tracks recorded during these later sessions, "Siren Song (of the Shrunken Head)" and "Ugly Beauty", were later featured on Our Tired, Our Poor, Our Huddled Masses. Its remains can be found today scattered through "For Elsie", "Safety Is A Cootie Wootie" and other non-album recordings.

Related projects

• The White Single
• For Elsie
• Our Tired, Our Poor, Our Huddled Masses
• "That'll Be the Day (Baby Baby)"

Santa Dog '84 (1984)

"Santa Dog '84" cover art by Rex Ray

In 1984, The Residents began to work on a new version of their 1972 song "Fire" (or "Santa Dog"), to release as a new single, similar to their 1978 re-recording of the song, "Santa Dog '78".

At this time, the group intended to revisit "Santa Dog" every six years to demonstrate their development, however they abandoned "Santa Dog '84" when they felt they had not changed enough since the last rendition to warrant a new version. The next attempt to record "Santa Dog" would be in 1988 with "Santa Dog 88" single, which included the unfinished, instrumental demo version from 1984.

The 1984 version is also featured on the 2019 Klanggalerie reissue of the compilation album Refused, and was privately released in an extremely limited edition on a number of lathe-cut 7" singles by noted Residents collector Jannis Tsakalis.

Related projects

• "Santa Dog 88"
• Refused

The American Composer Series Volumes 3-10 (1984-1986)

American Composer Series logo

Around the time they first decided to abandon The Mole Trilogy, The Residents began work on another ambitious, long-term conceptual series of releases - The American Composer Series, in which they would reinterpret the work of twenty American composers over ten albums.

The first two volumes, George & James (pairing George Gershwin and James Brown) and Stars & Hank Forever (featuring John Philip Sousa and Hank Williams Sr.) were released in 1984 and 1986 respectively, but no further volumes were released.

Other albums in the series were known to have been developed and even at least partially recorded, including the projected third album in the series, The Trouble With Harrys (featuring Harry Partch and Harry Nilsson), and an album pairing the compositions of Bob Dylan and Barry White tentatively titled Bob & The Blob. Part of a track from the latter can be heard mixed with another outtake from the series ("Space Is The Place" by Sun Ra) in the track "Daydream In Space", released on the UWEB compilation Daydream B-Liver.

Related projects

• Daydream B-Liver

Mark of the Mole novel (1985)

A sample from an unpublished novel based on The Residents' album Mark of the Mole was featured in the 1993 book Uncle Willie's Highly Opinionated Guide To The Residents, credited to T.D. Wade, an old college friend of the group.

The novel is said to have been completed by Wade in 1985 but to date has never been released, aside from the short excerpt featured in the Highly Opinionated Guide.

Related projects

• Uncle Willie's Highly Opinionated Guide To The Residents

Science Fiction's Greatest Hits (1985)

Still from Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers

In 1985, The Residents developed a concept for a series of music video releases, entitled Science Fiction's Greatest Hits. Each video was to be a two to four minute piece edited from classic 1950s and 1960s science fiction films.

These clips would be computer enhanced and coloured, with a new song recorded specifically for each one. As a demonstration of the concept, the band created Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers using scenes from Fred F. Sears's 1956 film of the same name.

Unfortunately negotiations for any further installments in the series fell through due in large part to the expense in securing the rights to the films.

Related projects

• Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers

The Big Bubble Christmas single (1985)

"The Big Bubble", 1985

Following the release of The Residents' fourth entry in The Mole Trilogy, The Big Bubble, in 1985, the group considered releasing a "Christmas single" featuring tracks recorded during the sessions for that album, as that album's fictional band The Big Bubble.

The outtake "Jingle Bell" was earmarked for this purpose, however the single was not produced; "Jingle Bell" was reworked for incusion in their For Elsie intermission suite premiered circa October of 1985. The 'single' mix would remain unreleased until the compilation Our Tired, Our Poor, Our Huddled Masses in 1997.

Related projects

• "Jingle Bell"

Monkey On My Back (1989)

In 1989, Uncle Willie reported to UWEB fan club subscribers on an album The Residents were secretly recording entitled Monkey On My Back. The Residents felt that the release of this information spoiled the conditions under which they wanted to record the album, and they abandoned it entirely as a result.

The album as described in the Uncle Willie article was similar to what was ultimately released in 1990 as Our Finest Flowers.

Related projects

• Our Finest Flowers

The Teds (1993)

First page of The Teds comic by Sergio Ponchione, 2020

The Teds is a project developed by The Residents in the early 1990s, originally as a film and performance piece. The project was said by Hardy Fox to revolve around "two guys that together made one person". The film was to have been co-directed by the group with David Lynch. In 1993, The Residents released a limited edition EP entitled Prelude To "The Teds", featuring four songs intended as an introduction to this project, however The Teds would remain shelved for almost another thirty years.

In 2020 Italian independent comics magazine Capek approached The Cryptic Corporation,asking for a contribution from The Residents. The group submitted a revised treatment for The Teds, and Capek hired artist Sergio Ponchione to illustrate it.

Related projects

• Prelude To "The Teds"
• The Teds

Freak Show animated series (1995)

Shortly after the premiere of Freak Show Live in 1995, The Residents pitched an animated series based on the Freak Show album to MTV, who were known at the time for their boundary-pushing adult animation series (Liquid Television, Beavis & Butthead, The Grunt Brothers, The Head, The Maxx, Æon Flux). The Residents had previously worked with MTV on the second season of Liquid Television, on the 'Adventures of Tom and Nardo' segment.

These plans came to nothing, however, after the group realised that they would have to sell the rights to the characters and backed out of the project.

Tales From The Crypt CD-ROM soundtrack (1996)

The Cryptkeeper by Jim Ludtke

In August 1996, The Residents agreed to compose and perform the musical score for a CD-ROM video game based on the horror anthology TV series Tales From The Crypt, which was being developed by iNSCAPE. The game (designed by Jim Ludtke) was scheduled for release in Fall 1997.

It is not known how much work The Residents completed for this project; they were "kicked off" the project after only two months as the developers decided to use in-house composers for the soundtrack, in an attempt to avoid exceeding the project's budget. The game itself was ultimately never released as iNSCAPE was bought out by Graphix Zone, who filed for bankruptcy soon thereafter.

Uncle Willie's Highly Opinionated Guide to The Residents CD-ROM (1997)

In 1997, when asked about the whereabouts of Uncle Willie after the closure of the fan club UWEB, Homer Flynn of The Cryptic Corporation casually mentioned that Willie was trying to get a CD-ROM made of his book.

Bad Day On The Midway TV series (1997-1998)

Around 1997, The Residents began developing a television series based on their 1996 CD-ROM game Bad Day On The Midway with "a couple of producers and a writer" from the recently concluded Tales From The Crypt series, however this creative team was removed from the project within the year.

Instead, The Residents announced in early 1998 that they had signed a deal with David Lynch's The Picture Factory and Ron Howard's Imagine production companies, to produce a two-hour TV pilot based on the game Bad Day On The Midway.

If produced, the pilot was expected to air Fall 1999; however, negotiations with Touchstone Pictures were suspended in September 1998 when Lynch was contracted to do a new film. Both Touchstone and The Cryptic Corporation felt that Lynch was the only man for the job, and thus decided to shelve the project until further notice.

I Murdered Mommy! CD-ROM (1998)

I Murdered Mommy! cast of characters

I Murdered Mommy! was going to be The Residents' follow up to their acclaimed 1996 CD-ROM game Bad Day On The Midway, but was abandoned part-way through development.

The Residents had completed preliminary design work as well as some soundtrack music, which was released in a limited edition as I Murdered Mommy! in 2004.

Related projects

• I Murdered Mommy!

Icky Flix sequel (2001?)

Following the release of The Residents' 2000 video compilation DVD Icky Flix, the group briefly worked on a proposed "sequel" DVD, for which they completed at least one clip, an S&M-themed video for the song "Teddy", before abandoning the project.

The "Teddy" video was "pushed off into a corner" until it was rediscovered in summer 2003, and included on the group's DVD single "Golden Goat" (aka "Pickle"), which was available through mail order and at stops on their Demons Dance Alone live tour.

Related projects

• Golden Goat DVD

The Civil War Album (2001)

Around 2001, The Residents began work on a new album of songs derived from old Civil War-era tunes, which was referred to internally as "The Civil War Album". However, the "rather un-sexy" idea received a lackluster response from the group's European distributors, as the war meant little outside the United States.

Instead, the group began work on a new concept album focusing on the relationship between people and animals, titled Animal Lover, which was released on Mute Records in 2005. The Residents' lead composer Charles Bobuck returned to the Civil War Album sketches in 2015, producing the solo "contraption" Missing Soldiers - The Favorite Songs of Clara Barton.

Related projects

• Animal Lover
• Missing Soldiers - The Favorite Songs of Clara Barton

Freak Show DVD (2003 - 2004)

A still from the unfinished Freak Show film

From early 2003 to March of 2004, The Residents and Jim Ludtke worked on a DVD adaptation of the group's 1990 album Freak Show, in a similar vein to their Eskimo DVD released in 2002. The Freak Show DVD was to be fully animated in CGI, taking advantage of Ludtke's talent for computer animation. It was announced through The Residents' official website in October of 2003 with a Spring 2004 release date.

The project was abandoned following the tragic and sudden death of Jim Ludtke in March 2004. The Residents instead began work on Commercial DVD, which features a tribute to Ludtke in the form of the "Loss of Innocence" music video. Later on, unused audio and visuals from the project was used for the Timmy web series.

A few finished excerpts from the film were released on the 2006 Freak Show DVD, The Theory of Obscurity DVD, and on Free! Weird!

Related projects

• Commercial DVD
• Freak Show DVD

Loveland (2004)

Loveland is an unproduced feature film screenplay written by The Residents in 2004. Set in the Delta region of Mississippi in 1982, the screenplay opens with a researcher from the Smithsonian Institution, who falls into a 200 foot hole and becomes trapped while investigating a mysterious structure.

The story then focuses on the riddles and grim family secrets connected to the "kudzu-covered" structure. A "shadowy albino character" who appears throughout the screenplay seems to "foretell" The Residents' later discovery of the albino blues singer Alvin "Dyin' Dog" Snow.

Despite never having been produced, The Residents are still said to be fond of the concept and apparently still hope to "do something with it one of these days". In April 2023, it was announced that The Residents are again trying to produce the film and are currently seeking financial backing. A full-page treatment is said to be available to interested parties.

Residents with Orchestra (2008)

In December 2007 The Cryptic Corporation announced that The Residents were considering a live performance project where they would be backed by an orchestra, in association with an unspecified European music festival.

These plans were ultimately shelved only six days after being announced, due to schedule conflicts and the prohibitive expense of hiring an orchestra for the show.

Related projects

• So Long Sam
• 50th Anniversary secret show

Bunny Boy sequel (2009)

A number of tracks recorded in 2009 for an abandoned sequel to The Bunny Boy were later released on the Ozan, Arkansas, and Ozark albums.

Related projects

• Ozan
• Arkansas
• Ozark

King of the Future (2010)

King of the Future is the title of an unproduced feature film project by The Residents, conceived in 2010 following the tragic death of long-time Cryptic friend Doug Michels of the art collective Ant Farm.

The film focuses on Michels' real death (while he was climbing to a whale-watching post on a cliff top in Eden Bay, near Sydney, Australia on June 12th 2003) and depicts a fictional relationship between Michels and a television weatherman in flashback, and from the weatherman's perspective.

Duck Stab! Reimagined (2012)

D*ck S*ab album art, 2012

Around the time of the 35th anniversary of the release of Duck Stab!/Buster & Glenin 2012, The Residents began composing sketches for a "reimagining" of the classic album, but abandoned this idea before developing it any further.

These sketches were released on the D*ck S*ab 35th anniversary compilation through RSD in 2012 and some later featured on the pREServed reissue of the original album.

Related projects

• D*ck S*ab
• Duck Stab!/Buster & Glen pREServed edition

Meet The Residents 40th anniversary re-recording (2013)

Similarly to the unfinished Duck Stab! Reimagined project, it seems that The Residents began work on a new version of their debut album in the lead-up to its 40th anniversary in 2013.

Excerpts from this project were first released on the Bobuck EP, Clank Clank Clank, with more appearing on the 2018 pREServed edition of Meet The Residents.

Related projects

• Clank Clank Clank by Charles Bobuck
• Meet The Residents pREServed edition

See also

• Vileness Fats
• Part Three of The Mole Trilogy
• The American Composer Series
• pREServed

External links and references

• Graveyard at The Residents Historical (archived from 2012 via archive.org)