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The Residents are an avant garde music and visual arts group. They started performing in the early 1970s and released their first album in 1974.
The Residents have always cloaked their lives and music in obscurity. The band's members have never identified themselves by name, always appearing in public in disguise—usually white tie tuxedos, top hats and giant eyeball masks (and later on, one member would appear in a giant skull mask which replaced an eyeball mask which had been stolen). The band refuses to grant media interviews, and instead speaks through two spokesmen, Hardy Fox and Homer Flynn, both of whom deny they are members. Trouser Press magazine in the late 1970s identified the members of the arts collective associated with the Residents, Poor Noh Graphics, as being the members of the band. The band denies this.
In publicity photos, stage perfomances, and music videos, there are always four Residents. It is not a given that there are actually four members. Some speculate that the band may actually be composed of only two, or even one person.
According to the official account, the Residents originally 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.
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) 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.
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.
By 1970 they had completed two tapes, Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor and The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger. In 1971 the group sent a third tape to Hal Halverstadt at Warner Brothers. Unfortunately, despite having worked with Captain Beefheart, Halverstadt wasn't at all impressed with "The Warner Bros. Album" and it was rejected. Because the band had not included any name in the return address, the rejection slip was simply addressed to Residents.
The first performance of the band using the "Residents" moniker was at the Boarding House Club in San Francisco in 1971. That same year another tape was completed, the charmingly named Baby Sex with its cover lifted from the pages of a Danish porn mag.
In 1972 they moved to San Francisco and formed Ralph Records.
Around this time, the band developed their "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.
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