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90-501: The Residents are an American art collective and art rock band best known for their avant-garde music and multimedia works. Since their first official release, Meet the Residents (1974), they have released over 60 albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects, and ten DVDs over the course of over half a century. They have undertaken seven major world tours and scored multiple films. Pioneers in exploring

180-874: A Residents project was the Gingerbread Man album, she officially became a member of the group in 1997, with a one-off performance at the Popkomm festival in Germany titled Disfigured Night . This performance later became the second act of a special 25th anniversary show at the Fillmore in San Francisco, in October 1997. Due to the collapse of the CD-ROM market, a collective decision was made to tour again. While keeping up with their theatrical tendencies by regular use of costumes and stage props,

270-586: A break from part three of the Mole Trilogy, the Residents began a new project entitled the American Composers Series , a planned series of 10 albums which would pay tribute to pop artists and instrumental composers from the United States. The first result of this pairing was George & James , featuring the music of George Gershwin and James Brown . Following the release of George & James ,

360-513: A collective space, for exhibiting or as workshop or studio facilities. Some newer, more experimental kinds of groups include intentional networks, anonymous, connector, hidden or nested groups, and groups with unconventional time-scales. Artist collectives may be formed: Vileness Fats Vileness Fats is an unfinished musical film project by avant-garde art collective The Residents , filmed primarily between 1972 and 1976. The Residents shot over fourteen hours of film and videotape for

450-434: A concert, the show focused on the titular Sam's life story, with the singer alternating between monologues and cover performances of various songs that were important in his life. During this period, the Residents also collaborated with Belgian dancer/choreographer Grace Ellen Barkey from Needcompany , composing the music for a show titled Mush-Room in 2013. Art collective Many artist collectives had and still have

540-666: A full-time band member. Fabrizio's connections with the Balinese gamelan ensemble Gamelan Sekar Jaya allowed for occasional collaborations between the two groups during this period. The first tour with this new band formation was for the 1998 album Wormwood , a collection of songs depicting typically gruesome stories from the Holy Bible , mostly from the Old Testament . While the studio album only featured Harvey, Fabrizio and Dammit as guests (with Dammit only taking occasional vocal duties),

630-410: A knife fight. A closing benediction is offered by Uncle Willy, as the victorious brother drags his dead twin from the club. The Residents had just moved into a studio at 20 Sycamore Street, San Francisco , which featured a completely open ground floor, perfect, it seemed, for a sound stage. The group felt that a film would be the perfect medium for the ideas they had been coming up with, and jumped at

720-610: A major and significant influence on the various epochs of art history . In a broader sense, literary groups and group formations of musicians can also be referred to as artist collectives or groups. The aim of the artistic initiatives was and still is to get in touch with other artists, to point out avant-garde or newly defined efforts in art in the broadest sense, to break away from traditional, academic approaches altogether, to break new ground and to follow them for example by organizing joint exhibitions. The boundaries between all areas of fine and applied art are fluid. In contrast to

810-410: A minor element integrated into the stories, not unlike product placement . In between certain songs, "Randy" also spoke to the audience, introducing the band and later describing his own history with supernatural appearances, and his subsequent fear of mirrors. The tour was financially successful, and the band continued to perform in this formation with only minor changes in stage and costume design. In

900-490: A number of delays in the release date. The sudden attention afforded to them by the success of the Duck Stab! EP and "Satisfaction" single required an album release as soon as possible to help fund the band's spiraling recording costs, and to meet the demand for new Residents material. This forced the release of the band's long-shelved "second album" Not Available in 1978. The Residents were not bothered by this deviation from

990-492: A promotional video created with the help of New York artist John Sanborn , which also presented a music video for "Harry the Head", animated by computer artist Jim Ludtke; both artists went on to collaborate with the Residents on many further projects. A partnership with Voyager in 1992 allowed the Residents to develop a laserdisc titled Twenty Twisted Questions to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. Along with this laserdisc,

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1080-591: A screen. On the event of the September 11 attacks , the Residents were still touring Icky Flix in Europe. The resulting fear and anxiety caused by the attacks resulted in the recording of Demons Dance Alone in 2002. While not a direct response to the events, the songs on the album portrayed the negative emotions felt by the group and its individual members, and this was reflected in the album's subsequent tour, from October 2002 to September 2003. The group's next major album,

1170-514: A small, independent label to release and promote their own work. In 1972, to inaugurate the new business, the group recorded and pressed the Santa Dog EP, their first recorded output to be released to the public. Designed to resemble a Christmas card from an insurance company, the EP consisted of two 7" singles, one song on each side. The four songs were presented as being by four different bands (Ivory &

1260-548: A studio album was recorded, titled Our Finest Flowers . Not quite a "greatest hits" compilation, many tracks on the album borrow elements from previous songs in the Residents' catalog. The Residents' collaboration with Jim Ludtke resulted in the creation of the Freak Show and Bad Day on the Midway CD-ROMs . Both of these projects featured many other collaborations with visual artists, including returning collaborators from

1350-406: A studio they named "El Ralpho", which boasted a completely open ground floor (seemingly ideal for a sound stage), allowing the group to expand their operations and also begin preliminary work on their most ambitious project up to that point, a full-length film entitled Vileness Fats , which consumed most of their attention for the next four years. Intended to be the first-ever long form music video,

1440-496: A two-week tour of Japan for the group in October 1985. The tour was successful, and re-ignited the group's interest in creating live performances. As a result, they eventually embarked on their 13th Anniversary world tour, ranging from 1985 to 1987, with Snakefinger playing electric guitar. As for studio work, the group eventually released their second entry in the American Composers series, Stars & Hank Forever , featuring

1530-560: Is actually two people – Steve, the religious leader of Vileness Flats, and Lonesome Jack, the leader of the Bell Boys and the mastermind of the meat raids. To complicate matters further, both Steve and Jack are deeply in love with Weescoosa, who has spent eternity searching for her one true love. Sadly, whenever it looks like she has found him, he dies. The defeat of the Atomic Shopping Carts leads to another problem for Vileness Flats –

1620-609: Is also fluid. One speaks of the latter when it comes to large-scale settlements of artists of the same direction. Examples of this are the Nazarene movement in Rome and the Barbizon school . The decisive factor here is the personal decision of the individual to align their place of residence with that of like-minded artists, which can be conducive to the optimal further development of the respective art movement. The opposite extreme of an artist group

1710-507: Is considered one of the group's masterworks. On November 18, 1987, at a party in Amsterdam for Boudisque Records, the Residents' European label, they premiered a new work titled Buckaroo Blues , a suite of cowboy songs. After a choreographed TELE5 appearance in April 1988, this suite was coupled with a second one titled Black Barry , a suite of "black music" (that is, blues and gospel), and formed

1800-488: Is part of a plan to dispatch the twins so that Lonesome Jack and the Bell Boys will be safe to attack the village. Steve, confused and worried about the whole mess, decides to jump into a local volcano to kill himself and thus get rid of the problems facing Vileness Flats, but his two selves end up facing off on the volcano top as most of the town of Vileness Fats, and Weescoosa, look on. At the nightclub, Arf and Omega become so enraged with each other that they become engaged in

1890-526: Is taken directly from the film's soundtrack; Margaret Smik joined the Residents as Peggy Honeydew for the "Oh Mummy! Oh Daddy! Can't You See That It's True; What the Beatles Did to Me, 'I Love Lucy' Did to You" performance in 1976; and the famous Third Reich 'n' Roll promotional video was filmed, for the most part, on the Vileness Fats sets using Vileness Fats props. In 1984, the Residents discovered that

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1980-706: Is the artist duo – the smallest, but also the most symbiotic form. Often there are real-life partnerships (as with Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely , or also with Gilbert & George ). It is not uncommon for larger groups of artists to emerge from the "nucleus" of a duo, such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood , for example, developed from the founding duo John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt . Designations such as " The Tachists " or Junge Wilde (The Young Wild Ones) cannot be assigned to any real groups of artists; they merely indicate common stylistic features within an epoch. A clear indication of

2070-562: The 13th Anniversary Show LP in 1986 and a cover of " Hit the Road Jack " in 1987, the Cryptic Corporation resigned control of Ralph Records over to Tom & Sheenah Timony, and the Residents signed to Rykodisc . Tom and Sheenah later turned Ralph into a new label, T.E.C. Tones, and established the Residents' official fan club from 1988 to 1993: UWEB (Uncle Willie's Eyeball Buddies). After two compilation CDs titled Heaven? and Hell! ,

2160-558: The Commercial Album ; and a video for "Hello Skinny" from the Duck Stab LP. Created at a time when MTV (and what later became known as "music video" in general) was in its infancy, the group's videos were in heavy rotation since they were among the few music videos available to broadcasters. The Residents' follow up to Commercial Album was Mark of the Mole , released in 1981. The album

2250-456: The Freak Show graphic novel, such as Richard Sala and Dave McKean . The Residents enjoyed quite a bit of critical and financial success with these CD-ROMs, winning several industry awards. However, during early development stages for a third CD-ROM, titled I Murdered Mommy , their distributor Inscape was forced to dissolve due to oversaturation and obsoletion of the CD-ROM market. Despite majorly occupying themselves with CD-ROM development,

2340-633: The Henry Selick -directed pilot "Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions." Recordings for a new studio album were worked on during breaks in the Cube-E tour, and shortly after the tour, Freak Show was released. An album detailing the lives and personalities of fictional carnival freaks, the Freak Show project spawned many other iterations, such as a graphic novel in collaboration with comic artists from Dark Horse , such as Brian Bolland and Matt Howarth , and

2430-527: The 1930s. The resulting LP was released in 1976, and was the group's first project to feature a music video , created by syncing an old video of the group performing with an edited version of "Swastikas on Parade". After the Third Reich 'n Roll ' s release, a group of enterprising friends and collaborators from their early days in San Mateo — Homer Flynn, Hardy Fox , Jay Clem and John Kennedy — also joined

2520-455: The 2005 Animal Lover , contained lyrics of a similarly tragic nature, although in a more abstract manner. The album also contained a booklet with stories which presented the songs from the point of view of animals. Animal Lover was also the first Residents album to be released on the Mute label, which was solely responsible for the Residents' major releases until 2008. Animal Lover is currently

2610-402: The Bell Boys, a gang of midgets who live in the desert on the other side of the bridge. They disguise themselves as meat in order to cross the now-safe bridge, to steal the real meat from the village. These raids are depriving the villagers of necessary protein. The raids are causing unrest in the village and fights are breaking out, due to lack of food. The villagers ask Arf and Omega to deal with

2700-484: The Bell Boys, and they agree. Before they do anything, however, they head off to a local nightclub, Uncle Willy's, to relax. The first act is The Mysterious N. Senada , performing the songs "Kamikaze Lady" and "Eloise", and the second is a performance of the Randy Newman song "Lonely At The Top" by the seductive singer Peggy Honeydew. Honeydew flirts with both twins, causing them to become jealous of each other. Honeydew

2790-662: The Braineaters, Delta Nudes, the College Walkers, and Arf & Omega featuring the Singing Lawnchairs), with only a small note on the interior of the gatefold sleeve mentioning the participation of "Residents, Uninc." They sent copies of Santa Dog to west coast radio stations with no response until Bill Reinhardt, program director of KBOO -FM in Portland, Oregon , received a copy and played it heavily on his show. Reinhardt met

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2880-589: The Cryptics. Following "Satisfaction", the group began recording Eskimo in April 1976; a concept album based upon the Theory of Phonetic Organisation that suggests that music should not be confined to chords and structures, but instead should simply be a collection of fascinating noises. The album featured acoustic soundscapes inspired by Inuit culture, whilst parodying American ignorance of other cultures. The Eskimo sessions lasted many years, and featured many divergences,

2970-581: The Mole Show, a theatrical retelling of their Mark of the Mole album. The band debuted the show with a test performance, on April 10, 1982, before a tour of California in October, and a European tour throughout mid 1983. The show featured Penn Jillette as the narrator, playing a similar role as he had previously done with the Ralph Records 10th Anniversary radio special. A third leg, featuring dates in New York,

3060-433: The Residents also performed and recorded with a team of guest musicians: the aforementioned Molly Harvey (vocals), Nolan Cook (guitar), Carla Fabrizio (arrangements and vocals), Toby Dammit (drums), and later on in 2002, Eric Drew Feldman (keyboards). Some of the band members, notably Feldman and Fabrizio, went on to collaborate with the group on numerous other projects up until the present time, while Cook eventually became

3150-445: The Residents at their studio at 20 Sycamore St. in the summer of 1973 with the news of his broadcasts. The Residents gave Reinhardt exclusive access to all their recordings, including copies of the original masters of Stuffed Trigger , Baby Sex , and The Warner Bros. Album . Throughout this point, the group had been manipulating old tapes they had collected and regularly recording jam sessions, and these recordings eventually became

3240-463: The Residents changed their live band to a "power trio" formation, and in a sort of meta stunt, appear to "unmask" themselves as lead singer / frontman "Randy," composer / keyboardist "Charles 'Chuck' Bobuck," and guitarist Nolan Cook as "Bob" – although all three band members were still costumed: "Randy" donned an old man mask and wore an overcoat with oversized red tie and shoes; "Chuck" and "Bob" wore red jackets, special goggles and fake dreadlocks. There

3330-562: The Residents finally abandoned part three of the Mole Trilogy, choosing instead to record a fourth entry entitled The Big Bubble , featuring very stripped-down instrumentation in order to portray a fictional garage rock band. No further entries into the Mole Trilogy have been recorded, and the project is considered abandoned. When The Big Bubble was released in Japan by Wave Records, it was an unquestioned success, its popularity resulting in Wave funding

3420-402: The Residents saw this project as an opportunity to create the ultimate cult film . After four years of filming (from 1972 to 1976) the project was reluctantly cancelled because of time, space, and monetary constraints. Fifteen hours of footage was shot for the project, yet only approximately 35 minutes of that footage has ever been released. The group also formed Ralph Records at this time, as

3510-652: The Residents still remained musically active, releasing an enhanced CD album titled Gingerbread Man (an observation and study of nine fictional characters) in 1994, and scoring the Discovery Channel documentary series Hunters in 1995. Freak Show also got a live adaptation in November 1995, at the Archa Theater in Prague. While the Residents did act as music and stage directors for the show, they did not actually perform;

3600-548: The Residents' first new project for Ryko was titled God in Three Persons , an hour-long poem in the form of a spoken-word rock opera . This was the first new Residents album to be released on CD , and the last Residents project to be entirely recorded on analog tape, as the group moved on to MIDI technology; their first venture into MIDI was scoring episodes for Pee-wee's Playhouse in 1987. Despite initially mixed critical and commercial reaction, God in Three Persons today

3690-523: The Residents) promoted them on his program as well. Eventually, KBOO airplay attracted a cult following. Following the release of Meet the Residents , the group began working on a follow-up entitled Not Available . Following N. Senada's theory of obscurity, the LP was recorded and compiled completely in private, and would not be released until the group had completely forgotten about its existence. During breaks in

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3780-630: The actual existence of such a group is a written memorandum such as that published in André Breton 's Surrealist Manifesto in Paris in 1924 and signed by several like-minded artists. As a result, the members of such a group committed themselves to subordinate themselves to a common goal. This also included the group exhibitions, to which everyone should contribute their part instead of just showing themselves. Artist collectives have occurred throughout history, often gathered around central resources, for instance

3870-648: The ancient sculpture workshops at the marble quarries on Milos in Greece and Carrara in Italy. During the French Revolution the Louvre in Paris was occupied as an artist collective. More traditional artist collectives tend to be smallish groups of two to eight artists who produce work, either collaboratively or as individuals toward exhibiting together in gallery shows or public spaces. Often an artist collective will maintain

3960-478: The band some attention from the press (namely NME , Sounds and Melody Maker ), and was followed in 1978 by the Duck Stab/Buster & Glen album, which paired the EP with a similar, concurrently recorded EP which had not been released separately. The group then continued work on Eskimo , which proved a very difficult project, marked by many conflicts between the band and their management which led to

4050-450: The band was mostly fully formed by the time of the show's live debut at the Fillmore in October 1998. The Wormwood show toured up to July 1999, and featured drastically different arrangements of songs from the album, mostly darker and heavier, as well as new or unused material related to the concept. Some of these arrangements were recorded for a studio album titled Roadworms , and a DVD of

4140-468: The current name. The first known public performance of the Residents, Uninc. was at the Boarding House in San Francisco in 1971. The brief, guerrilla-style performance took the audience by surprise. A photo from it, showing Lithman playing violin with his pinky "about to strike the violin like a snake", originated the stage name he used for the rest of his life, Snakefinger . Later in 1971, a second tape

4230-594: The early 1960s. Around 1965, they began making their first amateur home tape recordings and making art together with a number of friends. In 1966, intending to join the flourishing hippie movement, they headed west for San Francisco, but when their truck broke down in San Mateo , California , they decided to remain there. While attempting to make a living, the group purchased crude recording equipment and began to refine their recording and editing skills, as well as photography, painting, and anything remotely to do with art that they could afford. The Residents have acknowledged

4320-448: The existence of at least two unreleased reel-to-reel items from this era, titled The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger and Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor . The Cryptic Corporation has confirmed that their archives contain many tapes dating back decades, but because they were recorded before the group officially became the Residents, the band does not consider them part of its discography. Word of

4410-517: The first act of the Residents' next touring project, Cube-E: The History of American Music in 3EZ Pieces . After the show's debut in New York, on July 21, 1989, it was decided to add a third act consisting of covers of Elvis Presley songs, completing the equation "Cowboy music + Black music = Rock and roll." The show took on a much more theatrical approach than the 13th Anniversary tour, with elaborate set designs, costumes, lighting and choreography. Cube-E toured from September 1989 to November 1990, and

4500-601: The first instance of the group wearing eyeball masks and tuxedos, which was later considered by many to be the group's signature costume. The Residents had only intended to wear these costumes for the cover of Eskimo , but adopted the costumes in the longer term as it provided them with a unique and recognisable image. The group followed Eskimo with Commercial Album in 1980. The LP featured 40 songs, each exactly one minute in length. Around this time, two short films were made in collaboration with Graeme Whifler : One Minute Movies , consisting of four music videos for tracks from

4590-606: The first of which, in November 1976, resulted in Fingerprince , a collection of unused recordings from the Third Reich 'n Roll , Not Available , and Eskimo sessions. Fingerprince received considerable coverage in the British press, and was the first LP by the group to receive any critical attention when Jon Savage reviewed the album and its two predecessors favorably for the December 31st issue of Sounds magazine. This review gained

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4680-505: The four). The Cryptic Corporation took over the day-to-day operations of Ralph Records, and provided the band with an improved public relations platform. Shortly after the introduction of the Cryptic Corporation, the Residents recorded their " Satisfaction " single, the B-side of which featured the Residents' first work with the ARP Odyssey , the first synthesizer owned by the group, purchased by

4770-430: The group considerable attention, with many of their previously unsold mail-order items being sold seemingly overnight. The sudden success of Fingerprince and its predecessors caused the group to briefly halt production on Eskimo to create something more appealing to their newfound audience. The Residents followed up Fingerprince with their Duck Stab! EP – their most accessible release up to that point. This EP got

4860-466: The group in San Francisco, forming what became the Cryptic Corporation to manage and represent the band. Clem became the band's spokesman; Fox edited, produced and compiled the band's increasingly prolific output; Flynn was already handling the group's cover design and promotional art under the banner of Pore Know Graphics; and Kennedy took the role of "President" (admittedly a fairly empty title, as overall responsibilities were handled more or less equally by

4950-511: The group sent a reel-to-reel demo tape to Hal Halverstadt at Warner Bros. , as he had signed Captain Beefheart , one of the group's heroes, to the label. Halverstadt was not impressed with The Warner Bros. Album , but gave it an "A for Ariginality". Because the band had not included a name in the return address, the rejection slip was addressed to "Residents". The group decided to use this name, first becoming Residents Uninc., then shortening it to

5040-493: The group's debut full-length album, Meet the Residents , which was released in 1974 on Ralph. To aid in promoting the group, Reinhardt was given 50 of the first 1,000 copies of Meet the Residents . Some were sent to friends, listeners and critics, and two dozen were left for sale on consignment at the Music Millennium record store, where they sat unsold for months. KBOO DJ Barry Schwam (a.k.a. Schwump, who also recorded with

5130-457: The group. In public, they appear silent and costumed, often wearing eyeball helmets, top hats and tails—a costume now recognized as their signature iconography. In 2017, Hardy Fox , long known to be associated with the Residents, identified himself as the band's co-founder and primary composer; he died in 2018. The artists who became the Residents met in high school in Shreveport , Louisiana , in

5220-468: The idea. The studio was roomy, but not quite big enough to produce a film. In order to be able to fit sets into the ground floor space, the group made most of the characters in the film midgets (not real midgets – the costumes were designed so that full-height people could crouch down in them and waddle around). The sets were very elaborate, in a sort of German Expressionist style reminiscent of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari . They were made of cardboard and

5310-524: The increasing numbers of illegal downloads of music on the Internet, which considerably decreased product sales, the Residents attempted a new artistic medium: the radio drama , in the form of a paid podcast distributed through Apple's iTunes service. This podcast, titled The River of Crime (a first-person tale of an individual's obsession with crime and criminals), ran for five weekly episodes in 2006 before its cancellation due to inconveniences surrounding

5400-434: The interactions may or may not have altered the course of the series' plot (a book containing some of Bunny's correspondence was published by Bandits Mages in 2019). Soon afterwards the album was toured from October to December 2008. A second season of the video series was shown in 2009, somewhat officially ending the project. Making a decision to shift focus from studio work to touring, and to enhance their show's portability,

5490-494: The introduction of the Beta and VHS colour formats, so the footage looked dated even though it was brand new. There was no way that the video could be transferred to film and re-shooting the footage was out of the question. The space limitations were becoming too restrictive, as well – it took a full year to build the set for and film the nightclub scene. Finally, shortly after the band released The Third Reich 'n' Roll , they abandoned

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5580-465: The knife fight at the nightclub. It also spends a lot of time on Steve's mother, but touches only briefly on the Bell Boys, Lonesome Jack, and Weescoosa. Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats? has very little dialogue and is not very concerned with conveying a coherent story. In 2001, The Residents released their retrospective Icky Flix project on DVD and CD, the DVD featuring their classic music videos with

5670-465: The last Residents album to feature Molly Harvey, who moved to Atlanta to live with her husband at the time. Her last appearance as a member of the Residents was at a small series of shows titled The Way We Were at the "What is Music?" festival in Australia. The show's setlist was a career retrospective much in the style of the 13th Anniversary tour, the last time the Residents had toured Australia. Due to

5760-403: The live show was released in 2005. The same band formation later toured to promote the Residents' first DVD, Icky Flix , a compilation of most of the group's music videos, as well as new animated videos and a re-recorded soundtrack, to celebrate the group's upcoming 30th anniversary. These re-recorded arrangements were performed on the show as their corresponding videos played from the DVD onto

5850-431: The mostly programmatically oriented artist collectives, only the costs for the use of common workspaces or artist ateliers are usually shared in studio communities. Due to long-standing friendships, thematic joint exhibitions and the inevitable examination of the work of the other members, however, mixed forms can form that go beyond the pure community of convenience. The transition from artist collective to artist colony

5940-508: The music of Hank Williams and John Philip Sousa . Their version of the Williams song "Kaw-liga" was particularly successful in the emerging club scene. Due to licensing costs and the emerging CD format, the American Composers series was later abandoned. Stars & Hank Forever was the last Residents project Snakefinger played on, as he died of a heart attack in July 1987. Following the release of

6030-421: The music was conducted and performed by Czech band Už Jsme Doma , while actors and dancers played their roles on stage. Freak Show Live was the last iteration of the Freak Show brand; while a DVD was being developed in 2003, the early death of animator Jim Ludtke immediately halted the project. Around this time, singer/performer Molly Harvey was recruited to work with the group. While her first appearance in

6120-444: The next couple of years, "Randy" took on an increased role as frontman of the band, starting a "personal" Tumblr blog where he wrote mostly about life experiences and trivia regarding the Residents' history, as well as promoting his "solo" show, Sam's Enchanted Evening , which was presented in various incarnations between June 2010 and March 2012 with collaborators Joshua Raoul Brody and Carla Fabrizio. More akin to musical theater than

6210-564: The opportunity to create their meticulously crafted studio sound in a live setting. The first album the band recorded using the emulator was The Tunes of Two Cities , the second part of the Mole Trilogy, which was nearly entirely recorded using the Emulator. Following the release of Cities The Residents also released the EP Intermission . Then they started rehearsing for a possible live show, eventually developing their first touring project,

6300-521: The option of a brand new soundtrack. Also featured was a newly edited 17-minute "concentrate" of Vileness Fats , also with a new soundtrack. This version focuses mainly on Steve, touches only briefly on the Atomic Shopping Cart battle, and features the Bell Boys and Lonesome Jack more prominently. This is considered the best place to see the Vileness Fats footage, as it has been cleaned up and restored to its best quality, taking into consideration

6390-500: The original plan not to release the album, as the 1978 release ultimately did not affect the philosophical conditions under which it was originally recorded. Eskimo was finally released in 1979 to much acclaim, even making it to the final list for nominations for a Grammy award in 1980, although the album wasn't nominated. Rather than being songs in the orthodox sense, the compositions on Eskimo sounded like "live-action stories" without dialogue. The cover art of Eskimo also presents

6480-466: The podcast's promotion on iTunes, thereby discouraging further production. Aside from Animal Lover , the group's partnership with Mute produced three more albums: Tweedles in 2006 (a first-person character study of a sexually successful yet emotionally unavailable vampiric figure), The Voice of Midnight in 2007 (a retelling of the E.T.A. Hoffmann story Der Sandmann ), and The Bunny Boy in 2008 (a first-person narrative and character study of

6570-419: The potential of CD-ROM and similar technologies, the Residents have won several awards for their multimedia projects. They founded Ralph Records , a record label focusing on avant-garde music, in 1972. Throughout the group's existence, the individual members have ostensibly attempted to work anonymously, preferring to have attention focused on their art. Much speculation and rumor has focused on this aspect of

6660-533: The production were seen in the 2015 documentary Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents . The village of Vileness Flats is constantly under attack by the Atomic Shopping Carts, armored carts with large drills. A bridge keeps the Carts away, but the villagers enlist the Siamese twin tag-team wrestlers, Arf and Omega, to protect them. Arf and Omega summon the immortal Indian priestess Weescoosa for assistance, who strafes

6750-453: The project, but were not even two-thirds of the way through their incomplete script before they cancelled the production. Sections of the film have been released on home video as the 30 minute Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats? featurette in 1984, and on the Icky Flix DVD in 2001 as a remastered 17 minute "concentrate", excising numerous plot points. Additional clips and outtakes from

6840-474: The project. Not ones to let even failed projects go to waste, they proceeded to tease the outside world with stills from the film, incorporating the mysterious film that never was into their mythology. Vileness Fats dominated the Residents' lives for the four years that it was in production. Even when they were taking breaks from the film and working on other projects, Fats would creep in. The "Arf & Omega, featuring The Singing Lawnchairs" track from Santa Dog

6930-500: The results of their work immediately after filming, which was useful as it let them get right on with re-shooting when necessary. And most importantly, they didn't have to pay for developing. Unfortunately, the lack of direction on the project meant that it dragged on for many years. By 1976 the band had fourteen hours of film and were not even two-thirds of the way through what they had of the incomplete script. To make things worse, 1/2" black and white video tape had become obsolete due to

7020-399: The sessions for Vileness Fats , the group recorded their next project, entitled The Third Reich 'n Roll , over the course of a year between October 1974 and October 1975. The album consisted of two side-long medleys of the band covering popular songs from 1950s and 1960s, whilst toying with the concept of the popularity of rock 'n' roll being comparable to that of the rise of Nazism in

7110-574: The setlist once again consisted of assorted songs from the band's repertoire (although with greatly reworked arrangements), the show also featured newly written "ghost stories," in which a video of a narrator telling said stories was projected onto the stage while the band performed in a somewhat improvisational manner. These "ghost stories" were loosely threaded by the presence of television, TV commercials, and industrialized products such as Oscar Mayer hot dogs or Betty Crocker Pudding Roll-ups – although these weren't endorsements; these products were simply

7200-460: The space limitations meant that each set had to be completely dismantled before the next one could be built. This affected the filming schedule and sometimes even the developing plot. The Residents hired people as they found a need, grabbing Graeme Whifler to do lighting and some directing, and J. Raoul Brody to act. Without a film company in control of the project, the Residents were completely free in their artistic expression, something they felt

7290-408: The state of video technology had advanced to the point where they could salvage their old 1/2" Vileness Fats work and transfer it to VHS . They created a half-hour video from their original fourteen hours of footage and created an all-new soundtrack, releasing the result as Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats? The new video focused on Arf and Omega's story, from the Atomic Shopping Cart battle to

7380-449: The titular Bunny in search of his missing brother). While Tweedles and The Voice of Midnight have not yet been developed further (aside from instrumental releases such as The UGHS! in 2009), The Bunny Boy proved a very accessible concept. A YouTube video series of the same name was done to promote and further elaborate on the project. The series was partially interactive; fans could communicate with Bunny via e-mail , and some of

7470-469: The unnamed group's experimentation spread, and in 1969 British guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Philip Lithman, later known as Snakefinger , began to participate with them. Around this time they also met the mysterious (and perhaps apocryphal) N. Senada , whom Lithman had picked up during an expedition in Bavaria . The two Europeans became great influences and life-long collaborators with the group. In 1971,

7560-452: The village from the sky in a fighter plane - unable to tell villager from villain as they are all so small. Arf and Omega fight off the invading Shopping Carts, and a banquet is held in their honor where the mayor thanks them. Steve, Vileness Flats' resident religious leader, gives a lengthy, boring speech. The twins heckle and throw their food at Steve, and he walks away, dejected. Steve has his own problems. No one but his mother knows that he

7650-426: Was a reaction to the group feeling betrayed by a suddenly disinterested music press. Shortly after the release of Mark of the Mole , the Residents purchased one of the first ever E-mu Emulator samplers, number #00005 specifically. The instrument was revolutionary for the band, as the sampling capacities of the keyboard not only allowed them to recreate instruments the members were not able to play, but also gave them

7740-518: Was also mention of a fourth band member, drummer "Carlos," who allegedly had left the music business to take care of his mother in Mexico; however, despite being credited as singer in the group's 2012 album Coochie Brake , there is no further evidence of "Carlos" having ever been a real band member. This new band formation debuted in the Talking Light tour, which ran from January 2010 to April 2011. While

7830-403: Was booked, but had to be cancelled after one performance due to lack of funding. Following the Mole Show, the band was broke, and as such attempted to recoup some of their losses with several archival releases, including a collection of outtakes called Residue in 1983, and a VHS containing recordings from the Mole Show as well as a newly scored edit of Vileness Fats footage. Deciding to take

7920-467: Was completed called Baby Sex , featuring a long collage partially consisting of recordings from the Boarding House performance. The cover art for the tape box was a silk-screened copy of an old photo depicting a woman fellating a small child, an example of the extremely confrontational and deliberately puerile visual and lyrical style the group adopted during this period. In early 1972, the band left San Mateo and relocated to 20 Sycamore St, San Francisco ;

8010-453: Was successful, both critically and financially. A studio version of the third act was also released and titled The King & Eye . The album was recorded at Different Fur Studios and released on Enigma Records around the time the tour began in September 1989. Further television work was also being done for MTV , with the Residents scoring and doing voice work for Liquid Television and

8100-443: Was very important. They financed it all themselves (one of them selling his sports car for $ 1200) and could only work on it during evenings and weekends due to the jobs they were holding down in order to pay for it all. They used 1/2" black and white video tape in the filming, for a variety of reasons. They felt that video was the coming medium, and wanted to be on the leading edge of the technology. Also, with video tape they could see

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