Meet The Residents Wiki
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Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia, launched on January 15th 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Wikipedia is written and maintained by a community of volunteers through open collaboration and a wiki-based editing system. It is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization funded mainly through donations.

Wikipedia's combined editions comprise more than 59 million articles, attracting around 2 billion unique device visits per month and more than 17 million edits per month (1.9 edits per second) as of November 2020. It has received praise for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge, extent of coverage, unique structure, culture, and reduced degree of commercial bias; but criticism for exhibiting systemic bias, accuracy and reliability.

The Residents' Wikipedia article was created on the morning of September 11th 2001 (a day particularly notable for the terrorist attacks which destroyed the World Trade Center in New York); it has been edited more than two thousand times in the years since.

In all its permutations, the article has attracted criticism from both readers and Wikipedia contributors for its deference to myth and lack of substantiated information, and has been the focus of much discussion among the site's contributors on how to best approach the group's history, given the unusual difficulty of separating fact from fiction, even when using citable sources.

Over eight months in 2006, the article was subject to several edits from The Residents' then engineer, manager and composer Hardy Fox. Fox's "horse's-mouth" edits were controversially reverted by other Wikipedia users; he would later posthumously receive his own article on Wikipedia, recognizing him as a founding member of the group.

The difficulty of writing about The Residents within Wikipedia's (arguably) stringent editorial standards was a driving factor in The Mysterious Spanish Ladies' creation of this wiki, which nevertheless generally follows a basic derivation of Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

Hardy Fox's Wikipedia edits[]

Hardylogson

Wikipedia user "Hfox", pictured at an Apple II computer in the 1980s

Between January and August 2006, The Residents' Wikipedia article was edited several times by the group's then manager, engineer and co-composer Hardy Fox, under the username "Hfox". Most of these edits were reverted, due to Fox's closeness to the subject, as well as several unreferenced (and sometimes tongue-in-cheek) claims made in a number of his edits.

Fox's ire was raised by the revisions, claiming in January 2007 that he had been branded a "vandal" for "removing other people's erroneous speculations", and noting (perhaps presciently) that the article "remains flawed" without his authoritative input. Following this, Fox is not known to have edited Wikipedia again prior to his death in October 2018, and The Residents' Wikipedia article today reflects few (if any) of Fox's edits.

On February 9th 2019 Fox became the posthumous recipient of his own Wikipedia article, which recognized him as a founder of The Residents.

"The Residents" article[]

The below is a conglomeration of a number of versions of Wikipedia's article on The Residents as it appeared in 2006, featuring edits by Hardy Fox of The Cryptic Corporation, collected for this wiki by The Mysterious Spanish Ladies. Typographical and grammatical errors have been maintained as per the original text. Hardy's edits to the article are shown in italicized bold text.

The Residents are an avant garde music and visual arts group. They formed in 1972 and released their first record that year, a double-disc 45 RPM recording entitled Santa Dog. They have released nearly sixty albums, created numerous musical films, designed three CD-ROM projects, and undertaken six major world tours. They are still active and have released a new video-CD-Internet project in June 13 2006, entitled "The River Of Crime" and said to be modeled after the radio dramas of the 1940s. A new full length CD ("Tweedles") is expected in October 2006 on MUTE Records.

They are known for their secrecy, singular art, and embrace of new technology.

Who are the Residents?[]

Much of the speculation about the members' true identities swirls around their management team, known as "The Cryptic Corporation." Cryptic was formed by Jay Clem, Homer Flynn, Hardy Fox, and John Kennedy in 1976, all of whom denied having been band members. (Clem and Kennedy left the Corporation in 1982.)

William Poundstone author of the Big Secrets books, claimed Fox and Flynn are probably two of the four members of the Residents. If he is correct, my personal belief is that Flynn is the lyricist (a conclusion buttressed by the fact that his voice has an uncanny resemblance to that of the Singing Resident) and that Fox writes the music since we know both those things are done by somebody. In addition BMI's online database of the performance rights organization (of which the Residents and their publishing company, Pale Pachyderm Publishing (Warner Chappell), have been members for many years), lists Flynn and Fox as the "composers" of all original Residents songs, though as the legal representatives of The Residents, Cryptic Corp. signs all documents, acting on behalf of The Residents, that require a real name to protect the identity of the group. This includes those songs written 1972-1976 when future Cryptic Corporation people were only a business partnership. Songs written before 1972 are listed with BMI as composed by the actual member of the future group, The Residents. [1].

The group's as well as other band's artwork was often done by Flynn, Rex Ray, Helen Purdum and others, under the name Porno Graphics (now abandoned), a pseudonym rarely spelled the same way twice (example: Pore No Graphix); and that Fox used to be their recording technician before the group required more professionally recorded results and that role was taken over by Kevin Ink. Both Fox and Flynn have had to move into more administrative positions as The Residents have become more successful as a result of signing with major distribution (EMI and Warner Music Group). Both guys say they are honored to be fantasied about as "Residents" by fans and only wish there were more of them and they would send money. Many other rumors have come and gone over the years, including the idea that the band members are physically disfigured, or are in fact The Beatles (dead) in disguise. All are irrelevant to the art that The Residents produce.

Rumors have also Circulated about 60's psychedelic band Cromagnon having certain members move on to the residents. Although Cromagnon's vocalist does not sound similiar to The Resident's vocalist(s), There may have been a different vocalist altogether In Cromagnon.

A much more amusing rumor is that The Residents are actually "The Residents," a Dutch Indorock band from Den Haag (1966-69) who released their only single in 1968, "Gabrielle"/"This is my Dream."

Early history[]

Due to the obscure nature of the band, it is difficult to get an accurate history of The Residents. What follows is information from unauthorized accounts which may or may not be entirely reliable.

The Residents supposedly hail from Shreveport, Louisiana, where they met in high school in the 1960s. In 1966, members headed west to San Francisco, California. After their truck broke down in San Mateo, they decided to remain there. Like all information, this is provided by The Cryptic Corporation and is likely false. Newer information indicates they are probably from Slidell, Louisiana, and picked Shreveport as the "place to be from" since it is the city in Louisiana that was furtherest from Slidell.

Whilst attempting to eke out a living they experimented with tape machines, photography, and anything remotely to do with "art" that they could get their hands on. Word of their experimentation spread and, in 1969, a British guitarist named Philip Lithman and the mysterious N. Senada (who Lithman had picked up in Bavaria where the aged avant-gardist was recording birds singing) paid them a visit, and decided to remain.

The two Europeans would eventually become great influences on the band. Lithman's guitar playing technique earned him the name Snakefinger (upon seeing a picture of Lithman playing the guitar, a Resident exclaimed that his little finger resembled a snake).

The group purchased crude recording equipment and instruments and began to make tapes, refusing to let an almost complete lack of musical proficiency stand in the way. One of their first public performances was at the Longbranch in Berkeley, California.

Also in 1959 the Residents began to make the first of their unreleased tapes. Rumors have surfaced of two of perhaps hundreds of unreleased reel-to-reel items entitled Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor and The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger. The titles may be in question (as is the idea that these were album-length recordings), but the first title has been confirmed by a former head of the, now defunct, Smelly Tongues fan club, and the second by a friend on acid. Further evidence of pre-1970 recordings surfaced with the release of the song "I Hear You Got Religion", supposedly recorded in 1969, and released originally as a downloadable track from Ralph America in 1999. Cryptic says there are lots of tapes dating back decades, but they were all done before the people were officially "The Residents" so they don't count. They also say there is plenty of music that is actually by The Residents so it is unnecessary to make-up imaginary old recordings.

In 1971 the group sent a reel-to-reel tape to Hal Halverstadt at Warner Brothers, since he had worked with Captain Beefheart. Halverstadt was not overly impressed with "The Warner Bros. Album" (he describes it as "okay at best" in "Uncle Willie's Cryptic Guide to the Residents"), but awarded the tape an "A for Ariginality". Because the band had not included any name in the return address, the rejection slip was simply addressed to "The Residents". The members of the band unanimously decided to use that name ever since. Well actually, the group has never had a name and "The Residents" properly represents that.

The first performance of the band using the "Residents" moniker was at the Boarding House in San Francisco in 1971. That same year another tape was completed called Baby Sex.

In 1972 they moved to San Francisco and formed Ralph Records. At that time The Cryptic Corporation was operating as a parnership and incorporated to take over the running of Ralph Records.

Around this time, the band adopted, for one album (Not Available) N. Senada's "Theory of Obscurity", which states that the artist can only produce pure art when the expectations and influences of the outside world are not taken into consideration.

Noted projects[]

One of the first projects The Residents undertook, before even the Santa Dog single, was the ambitious Vileness Fats film project, which was later reluctantly cancelled, after four years of filming (from 1972 to 1976). Fourteen hours of footage was shot for the project, of which only about three-quarters of an hour have ever been released. The Residents saw this project as the opportunity to create the ultimate cult film. It was intended to be the first-ever video clip.

The album Third Reich & Roll, tackled the theme of the corporate music industry. The sleeve, adorned with swastikas, showed Dick Clark dressed in full Nazi regalia, surrounded by tiny dancing Hitlers. On each side of the record was a single composition, approximately 17 ½ minutes long, using recordings of classic rock & roll songs that were spliced, overdubbed and edited with new vocals, instrumentation and tape noises. The original songs were finally removed leaving entirely new and bizarre performances.

The Residents took the Theory of Obscurity to its logical conclusion when they allegedly recorded Not Available in 1974 with the intention of not releasing it. Placed in storage to be issued when no one remembered it, contractual obligations forced its release in 1978 after the band had almost forgotten about it. The Residents were unbothered by this deviation from their plan since the 1978 decision to release the album couldn't affect the philosophical conditions under which it was recorded in 1974.

Eskimo (1979) contained music consisting of non-musical sounds, percussion, and wordless voices. Rather than being songs in the orthodox sense, the compositions sounded like "live-action stories" without dialogue. The Residents remixed the "songs" in disco style, the results of which appeared on the EP Diskomo. Eskimo was reissued in surround sound on DVD in 2003.

The Commercial Album (1980) consisted of 40 songs that, like Eskimo, rejected traditional song structure. Each consisted of a verse and a chorus and lasted approximately one minute. The songs pastiched the advertising jingle although the songs were not endorsements of known products or services. The liner notes state that songs should be repeated three times in a row to form a pop song. With a leap of promotional imagination, The Residents purchased 40 one-minute advertising slots on San Francisco's most popular Top-40 radio station KFRC forcing the station to play each track of their album over three days. This prompted an editorial in Billboard magazine questioning whether the act was art or advertising.

The Residents are also credited with the creation of the first music video.[2] When MTV was in its infancy, The Residents' videos were in heavy rotation since they were among the few music videos available to broadcasters. The Residents' earliest videos are in the New York Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection and were eventually released together in 2001 on the Icky Flix DVD, which includes an optional audio track of remixes.

The 80s saw the release of the Mark of the Mole album (and its sequels) and the band's first official tour, narrated nightly by Penn Jillette. The Mole Trilogy is still missing some of its volumes (only parts I, II and IV have been released) which are, allegedly, lurking somewhere in the periphery of the Residential imagination, not entirely lost.

Backstage at the Hollywood Palace show in December 26 1985 one member's eyeball mask (Mr. RedEye) was stolen, so it was replaced with a giant skull mask. The eye was returned by a devoted fan who discovered where the thief lived and stole it back (although Homer Flynn has stated that the person who returned the mask was most probably the thief himself). It was put into retirement because it was now "unclean" (and in a bad condition) and had become a superfluous shell.

In the 90s they created the epic recording "God in 3 Persons", a story about the exploitation of two siamese twins with healing powers by a male dominant force; "The King & Eye", a surreal biography of Elvis Presley and the birth of rock and roll; and "Freak Show", a title that intended to depict that freaks are still being ostracized by society and laughed at - they just don't get paid to do that any more.

More recently The Residents have recorded the dramatic album "Demons Dance Alone" (also a tour and DVD in 2002) and "Animal Lover" in 2005.

The Residents were also one of the first bands to release multi-media CDs, featuring the work of illustrators such as Jim Ludtke. The first two of which ("The Gingerbread Man" and "Bad Day on the Midway") were both cited as top computer entertainment software by Entertainment Weekly. They have also contributed to a number of soundtracks including Pee Wee's Playhouse. The band continues to release new material (they have over 700 songs in their catalogue), special re-releases and more DVDs. They have toured three times in the last decade, though speculation is that this period of heavy touring is over.

From the mid 90s to mid 00's Molly Harvey, Nolan Cook, Carla Fabrizio, Toby Dammit, Eric Feldman, and many other artists continuously worked with the band, recording and performing live. The Residents' increased reliance on singer, Harvey--essentially handing her half of the vocal duties on the Demons Dance Alone tour. In 2006 The Residents are again reaccessing their performing group, though still working with Cook and Fabrizio.

In February of 2005 the Residents toured Australia as part of the "What is Music?" festival, performing a two hour retrospective set entitled the 33rd Anniversary Tour: The Way We Were. These shows saw a fairly minimal band; three eyeball-headed Residents (one on guitar and two laptop/sample operators), a "stage hand" performer, and a male and female vocalist in costumes reminiscent of the Wormwood tour. They added video projections and unusual flexible screens to the stage set, creating an unsettling ambience. The performances on the Way We Were tour were recorded and were released on CD and DVD in 2005.

Summer of 2006 brought the internet download project, River of Crime (Episodes 1-5). River of Crime was their first project with Warner Music Group's Cordless label. Following the sucess of River of Crime. The Residents launched their weekly TIMMY viral video project on YouTube.

Albums[]

Multimedia[]

Singles[]

Compilations[]

Trivia[]

  • Simpsons creator Matt Groening and journalist Jim Knipfel are fans of the band.
  • Les Claypool is a fan of the band, and they are a main influence on Claypool's musical trio, Primus, who covered "Sinister Exaggerator" on their Miscellaneous Debris EP, and "Hello Skinny" on the Re-release of their album Frizzle Fry.
  • The cover of The Residents' LP Eskimo appeared in a Spanish TV commercial of FNAC

References and footnotes[]

  1. ↑ BMI.com online listing of songs written or co-written by Homer Flynn and Hardy Fox, accessed May 24, 2005
  2. ↑ All Music Guide biography of The Residents

External links[]

Fox's response to revisions[]

Hardy-wikipedia-vandal

Hardy Fox's final missive to Wikipedia, January 26th 2007

After discovering the revisions to the article following his edits, Fox posted a displeased response to the user Viridae's talk page on January 26th 2007.

This is the last Wikipedia edit to be ascribed to the user "Hfox"; he is not known to have ever edited Wikipedia again following this comment.

whaa? vandal?[]

Last spring I was looking at the group, The Residents, listing and found it full of mistakes and suppositions. I made extensive corrections which as manager and historian of the group seemed a rightful responsibility. Acutally I am the only authority for this subject as I also oversee www.residents.com. I am even named in the article as a participant in the group. I made all the changes under my real name as I was not playing games. I just discovered that back in June all my corrections reverted back to the errors and I was branded a "vandal" for removing other people's erroneous speculations where it seems to me the person who revereted the material back to the errors is the vandal. I had a message from you from June that I am now resonding to claiming this. Maybe it was you who vandalized my corrections. I don't know since I am not a power user.

Anyway, I do not monitor The Residents page nor will I start doing so, but do wish that the term vandal was not so generously handed out to us authorized individuals. Meanwhile, the Wikipedia page for The Residents remains flawed and by naming me a vandal I guess it will stay that way. I do not understand allowing the ignorant to freely speculate on Wikipedia while blocking the knowledgable from correcting data.

Hardy Fox <email removed> www.residents.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hfox (talk • contribs) 18:20, 26 January 2007 (UTC).

Huh? I never warned you for vandalism. 02:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

See also[]

External links and references[]

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