I missed this article when it came out, but this is more or less exactly what I expected to find out if the truth ever came out. Particularly that last sentence.
I'm even more in love with the band now, if that was even possible...
I have fond memories of their CD-Rom, back when that was a thing. At the time I was managing a CD-Rom shop and this was one of the "things to have". Later in life, in San Francisco, I met someone who worked on that CD-Rom. He liked to insinuate that he knew who they were but I didn't buy it.
there were probably more people who knew who they were... or at least thought they really knew who they were. i mean... there's only so many people who hang out with well-known pop-stars and ask random passers-by to help them move their gamelan.
i remember being amazed and disappointed by the Freak Show CD-ROM. amazed because around 1990 there wasn't TOO much like it. disappointed because i KNEW that in a few years the tools would be much better and the production could have been just that much better.
I remember in 1999, seeing someone speculating that Robert Fripp was, if not a member of the residents, at least a guest artist at some point (the most compelling evidence, as I recall, being that a guitarist in an eye-ball bask played seated and towards the back of the stage).
I came late to The Residents, and haven't done their discography, although I've seen and love the "Theory of Obscurity" doco that porcoda mentioned.
What I know of The Residents and their genius is probably best summed up by their Gingerbread Man song / film clip. It's unbelivably haunting if you let it in:
I'm not sure why we're digging Hardy Fox up and dressing him in a suit of lights after four and a half years, but if anyone deserves another round of applause, it's the Residents.
The cool thing about being old is I knew of cool bands before they were well known. And the cool thing about the residents is they remain obscure yet popular. The story I heard was they headed out on the highway in the late 60s, headed for San Francisco. But they only had enough gas money to make it to San Mateo. Or at least that's the story people told in Redwood City.
Every now and again if the wind was just right, you could hear a few bars from "God in Three Persons" on the wind at the corner of El Camino and Roosevelt. Maybe you could hear it better from San Carlos.
I'm fairly certain I met some of them when I schlepped my gamelan up to Alameda to get it tuned. In the next room someone was testing out a gamelan they were going to buy by playing Diskimo.
But I was lucky enough to attend their Valentine's Day concert in Dallas as part of their 13th anniversary tour. Dallas sucked considerably less that evening.
He was really and truly one of the most original and brilliant musicians of his era. Came out of nowhere, created some amazing music, always renewing and reinventing ... and died too young. The residents go on, as a non-personified brand there is no significant change on the surface, and there's still a lot to love about them, but the absence of Hardy is very noticeable.
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I'm even more in love with the band now, if that was even possible...
i remember being amazed and disappointed by the Freak Show CD-ROM. amazed because around 1990 there wasn't TOO much like it. disappointed because i KNEW that in a few years the tools would be much better and the production could have been just that much better.
What I know of The Residents and their genius is probably best summed up by their Gingerbread Man song / film clip. It's unbelivably haunting if you let it in:
https://youtu.be/hr-I6-gxecg
"everybody feeds the fat boy"
Indeed.
Let the rabbit hole take you.
The cool thing about being old is I knew of cool bands before they were well known. And the cool thing about the residents is they remain obscure yet popular. The story I heard was they headed out on the highway in the late 60s, headed for San Francisco. But they only had enough gas money to make it to San Mateo. Or at least that's the story people told in Redwood City.
Every now and again if the wind was just right, you could hear a few bars from "God in Three Persons" on the wind at the corner of El Camino and Roosevelt. Maybe you could hear it better from San Carlos.
I'm fairly certain I met some of them when I schlepped my gamelan up to Alameda to get it tuned. In the next room someone was testing out a gamelan they were going to buy by playing Diskimo.
But I was lucky enough to attend their Valentine's Day concert in Dallas as part of their 13th anniversary tour. Dallas sucked considerably less that evening.
https://youtu.be/dDDVXlEG-_I
https://youtu.be/VC3W7o7_ho4