mutilated by self obscuring clouds

Prior to the limited 2 x 45 Ralph released "Santa Dog" in 1972, agitators The Residents were prompted to furnish their own private recording studio, utilizing consumer marketed 4 track technology as it emerged. Allegedly, their collective nom de guerre was arrived at inadvertently when Warner Bros. rejected those first tentative demos; returning the tape c/o "residents" to their San Mateo address. The seed of the theory of obscurity was sewn.

"According to mythology, The Residents hail from Louisiana’s largest northern city, Shreveport. However, information so clearly handed out is almost certainly inaccurate, knowing how they create myths within myths...

Their musical history actually does start somewhere: San Mateo, found some twenty miles south of San Francisco. The myth claims they ran out of gas on the way to San Francisco and took it as a sign to settle there. Further, the myth says that they never put more gas into the car and it was eventually towed away..."

- Uncle Willie.
A number of the those demos from the abandoned "Baby Sex" project would later surface on various Ralph materials. More interesting than the puerile, or just plain nasty, working title is concrete evidence of their nascent collaboration with English guitarist, Philip 'Snakefinger' Lithman - as testified by "We Stole This Riff"✝ and their cover of Frank Zappa's "King Kong" - who had only just arrived then on the underground scene in San Francisco.

For their part, The Residents have long resisted attempts to classify their output.

As zealously, perhaps, as they have striven over three decades to preserve their anonymity. Publicly courted by the Music Press in the late seventies, the column inches waned as it began to register that The Residents were not content to simply plough the furrow as purveyors of a predetermined cryptic prank.

Where the "Duck Stab / Buster and Glen" EPs were decipherable and concise and "The Third Reich N' Roll" retrospectively celebrated as the product of Dadaist irony, 1980's "The Commercial Album" was almost universally censured as just so much more of the same. The sniffing was virtually audible.

The Residents remained conspicuous in absentia. Persistently declining to step forth and drop the act - to play ball and deliver an 'exclusive' - their timing was deemed flawed.

The joke had worn thin.

Who are The Residents ? And what price their awful heads ?

✝ From Tim Buckley's "Down By the Borderline".

▼ THE RESIDENTS: HOLELOTTADICK from "**** Sex" Demo (Unreleased) 1971 (US)
▼ THE RESIDENTS: SOMETHING DEVILISH from "**** Sex" Demo (Unreleased) 1971 (US)
▼ THE RESIDENTS: WE STOLE THIS RIFF from "**** Sex" Demo (Unreleased) 1971 (US)