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The Residents' Historical is a subsection of The Residents' official website, found at residents.com/historical. Containing more than 150 articles dedicated to individual Residents projects, featuring photo galleries, lyrics, and commentary, the Historical pages are commonly seen as the definitive official online resource on The Residents.
First developed between July and October 2005 by The Cryptic Corporation's webmaster Will Rothers (aka Big Brother),[1] the section was largely derived from the now-defunct fan website RZWeb, operated by fan "tzoq" in the 1990s and early 2000s.[2] In the past, the Historical section has featured essays by Big Brother on aspects of the Residents history and mythos, and a mini-blog by Rothers titled The Last Word was hosted within the Historical section between 2007 and 2010.
For many years the website (including The Residents Historical) was maintained by Big Brother; since Rothers' retirement in 2016 it has been maintained by the site's current webmaster Chris Combs (affectionately known as "goatie").[2] The Residents Historical is still actively updated, with new releases and projects being added to the section shortly after release.
History[]
Early Historical (July 2005 - November 2007)[]
The earliest known mention of The Residents' Historical was in a July 2005 News BOG update, announcing the release of the Wormwood concert film. The announcement featured a hyperlink labelled "HISTORICAL."[3] This linked to a page on what was then labelled the Bog Historical (BH for short) dedicated to the Wormwood Live releases; although unlike the modern Historical, these pages would not feature the miniature essays found on later versions of the Historical, instead just relaying information found on the physical releases' liner notes such as recording dates, track listing, and personnel.[4]
Wormwood Live's Historical Page, December 27th, 2005
Despite this, no version of the Bog Historical home page from before March 2006 is on the Internet Archive.[5] Although several individual articles such as Wormwood Live,[4] The Third Reich N Roll,[6] and The Mole Trilogy[7] are archived.
On October 3rd, 2005, it was announced that the Bog Historical would be retitled The Residents Historical, although, the URL would remain residents.com/bh ("BH" standing for Bog Historical).
The March 2006 version of Historical features 114 pages dedicated to Residents projects, organised categorically into music projects, DVD projects, mutli-media projects, performance pieces and abandoned "graveyard" projects. The website also teases the names of all four Residents; John, Paul, George & Reginald.
By this point the pages featured on Historical were more detailed and written entirely by Big Brother. Around October 2006, the page was updated to feature articles on the group's newer projects, and declared that their Band era was over, and that they had entered their Storyteller Era, by that point defined by River of Crime, Tweedles & Timmy.[8] In March 2007, the subheading for the page was retitled 'Career overview,' and more emphasis was put on linking users to the more cohesive discography.
The Historical page, December 6th, 2007
The Residents' Historical (December 2007- December 2017)[]
On December 2nd, 2007, the historical was given the URL residents.com/historical and a complete visual revamp. This new version was initially fronted by three different "top 10" Residents album lists by figures involved in management; Robert Schilling, of Mute, Dren McDonald of Ralph, and Homer Flynn of The Cryptic Corporation. To the right of these reviews were articles on every Residents project categorised. The following week, a new article was fronting the Historical page, which explained The Residents' era concept. A third article on Fan Clubs was then published, before a more broad intro to the band went into use. The homage page was later updated in October of 2010 to feature more images of the group, as well as a new category section found on the left, before being was removed completely in the Summer of 2011.
Present (February 2017 - present)[]
In February of 2017, The Residents' Historical was re-instated in its modern form. Whilst the original had been maintained by Hardy Fox himself, the identity of the people writing for Historical today is unknown, although it is likely that Chris Combs, credited in The Theory of Obscurity as a Residents.Com contributor, contributes.
See also[]
External links and references[]
- ↑ Big Brother, "The Residents release the plot of Vileness Fats", The Residents' Official News BOG, November 9th 2005
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Copyright/Credits" at residents.com
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20051029121944/http://residents.com/C1016472556/E626632031/index.html
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20051227124707/http://residents.com/bh/wwlive.htm
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20060308063633/http://www.residents.com/bh/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20051227135309/http://residents.com/bh/thirdreich.htm
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20051227124359/http://residents.com/bh/mole.htm
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20061020053557/http://www.residents.com:80/bh/
