Who were the Residents

Hmm... What are suggesting?

Not an original member though.

sorry to pimp

i'd guess none of us would recognize the residents' real names anyway....

shoot me now!

Anyway, it always sounded to me like the guy who does the voice-over work in They Might Be Giants' self-titled song ("To make the merry-go-round go faster..." etc.) always sounded EXACTLY like one of the Residents' vocalists, only without the Southern accent.

nf

Just kidding, folks.

the four original residents (the four charter members of the cryptic corporation) were hardy fox, homer flynn, jay clem and john kennedy. clem and kennedy left years ago. fox has remained "spokesperson" and most likely "mr. skull" in the most recent lineup. and i think flynn has sporadically run the cryptic corp business and probably still performs. everyone else has been a ringer.

Actually, Mr. Skull's most likely Homer Flynn, or a close relative.

http://www.residents.com/oldimages/cryptic/homer.gif
http://photos.bravenet.com/128/582/597/2/462AA5EDC2.jpg

There's also a second vocalist (the one on "Godsong," "Skratz," and quite a bit of the Commercial Album) who recently reemerged on a cover of "1999." (I always liked his laid back and humourous voice, even though it's not quite as expressive as the Singing Resident's, and I wish he would sing more often.) Also, they seem to have had the same keyboardist for the entire 30 years, judging by hir distinctive playing style.

So there's at least two regulars. Most fans of theirs don't care who they really are, and a number of them (me included) think that the games that they play with their identity are an important, and quite enjoyable, part of their art.

It seems odd that copies of Radiohead records can leak months before they're released, and after 30 years, we still don't know who the Residents are.

It's also odd that even people who have had disagreements with them--Schwump, for example--don't seem to want to tell all to the press. Either the Rez are the nicest people in the world (I've been told that they are, actually), so nice that no one wants to ruin the mystery, or they have plenty of lawyers at their command.

no, no, no, no - it's Klaatu!

http://www.theresidents.co.uk/performances/outskirts/early2.jpg

http://www.theresidents.co.uk/performances/13th_ann/13menpic.jpg

http://www.residents.com/images/rz/eyesoff.jpg

Speaking of Schwump, how much does the "Aphids in the Hall" 7" go for these days? I love that song.

Okay, maybe the sixth member after Snakefinger - RIP.

This has been unsurprisingly effective.

Homer Flynn spotted in the wild
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8594357@N07/2831943609/

favorite anecdote about how H & H met for the first time: dorm rooms at their college were filled alphabetically

fate is like that

Cheers to NF for blowing the cover...

I too did an interview, that I never finished. I made the mistake of asking them if they had anything in the works, at which point everyone froze, and I had to spoon feed them the "I mean, have they told you what they're working on" or similar, at which point they all relaxed.

I still have an autographed "nose & eyeglasses" somewhere, signed, of course, "a resident".

it seems to me every time I listen to the Residents is that one of the untoward consequences of the internet & the rapid democratization of access to technology has been the demystification of the Residents - they lost their ability to be weird. you know? like, if you ran across the Residents as a teenager and all the information you could get about them was 1) what people told you and 2) whatever was on the sleeves, you had, at least, something really off and bizarre. their attempts to keep up (getting in on CD-ROMs early, for example) were pretty forward-looking at the time, maybe, but they dated quickly, and like everything else in the digital age, are permanent as soon as they're expressed; the ageless weirdness of the Residents becomes a time-bound thing like anything else.

this is maybe a consequence of making "weirdness" a big part of your project; certainly plenty of "out" stuff (Jandek the most obvious example) remains weird even as the mystification washes off a little.

Yeah, the times have caught up with them, and to some extent Homer's giving up the ghost, if this current art show is any indication:

http://johanssonprojects.net/phpflickr/homer_show.php

An admitted "involvement with the Residents" would have been unthinkable, what, some 20 years ago, whenever I first heard them. Stuff stays enjoyable though; well, the "classic" stuff at least.

well, it's worth noting that they backed off from enforcing certain aspects of their mystery through the early 90's because they saw the way things were going (and because it was getting tiresome for them to keep it up).

personally I still find the 70's records pretty weird! and musically compelling even without the support mechanism of their narrative. and I also think that the narratives they constructed behind each album are still interesting in and of themselves. it's true that weirdness for weirdness' sake is a lot easier to come by these days, whether or not you're looking for it on youtube, and this lessens some of the impact that those records once had when you found them in the racks at record stores. but I think the thing that was time-bound about their project was less their weirdness than their ability to remain anonymous.

yeah stuff like "smelly tongues" will be alltime abstruse weirdo jams, even latter period efforts like demons dance alone were quality genreless bizarro.

I kind of miss the days when you might not know what yr favorite bands looked like tho. I don't think I ever saw a photo of 9353 or no trend until somebody posted them here a few years ago.

The Who were the Residents?!?!

: http://www.website.com/34821_1746546067252_1346809321_1893284_1131482_n

http://www.website.com/34821_1746546067252_1346809321_1893284_1131482_n[/img]

oops, no idea what i'm doing. tried to post a pic of homer. guess i shouldn't.

I wondered about this, and so I went to the Wikipedia page.

It's pretty much all there. Or, it was back when I looked at it last.

I saw the Residents last month and they were really weird.