Great Unknowns

The mystery of The Residents isn't who they are — it's why.

by Shaun Brady

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Published: Sep 30, 2008

FOUR EYES: Only two of these guys are in the band. Probably. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

There's nothing more discomfiting than an unsolved mystery. There's nothing more disappointing than a mystery solved.

The limbo between those two facts has provided a haven for certain artists who enjoy peering into the darkness, not quite sure whether there's a bottom to be seen. The Residents, more than most, dwell in that region of rich mystery.

The most obvious facet of this enigmatic existence comes in The Residents' career-long anonymity. Even those who've never heard a single note of Residents music are aware of the iconic top-hatted eyeball heads and the fact that no one knows who's been making that twisted noise for more than 35 years.

That's not entirely true; the band's die-hard fans (and other kinds are rare) have a strong idea of the names and faces of the primary players behind those masks. But the mystery The Residents have conjured over the decades cannot be laid to rest by a simple unmasking. The band's anonymity is not a simple matter of disguising identities to protect privacy.

There is not, in fact, such a simple one-to-one correspondence between the people who create The Residents' art and the eyeball-headed quartet that represents it — instead, "The Residents" is arguably a work of fantasy, a complete construct, a work of performance art whose manifestation is in the form of a pop band's career. The real names and faces, therefore, aren't The Residents — they simply created them.

This idea is manifest in the band's official bio. The Residents in fact do have a history — just not one that can be trusted to be entirely "factual." There's a good probability, especially given the heavy accent of the main singing Resident, that the group really were high school friends from Shreveport, La., who headed west, ending up in the Bay Area in the late '60s. There were probably four of them, two of whom seem to have left after the band's first tour in 1982. The fact that photos still represent four figures has less to do with actually representing the membership and more to do with the fact that pop groups, as Residents lore frequently points out, usually have four members.

One of the first flights of fancy that seems to enter the legend is that of The Mysterious N. Senada, an alleged composer who mentored the young Residents. Speculation has it that Senada is based on outsider composer Harry Partch, whose invented instruments and interest in Balinese gamelan were certainly an abiding influence. Then there's the story of Not Available, which was supposedly recorded years before its release and meant to be shelved until its existence was completely forgotten, thereby removing commercial considerations. The music on the album refutes the timeline, but the truth is unclear — and provides a conceptual context which normal albums simply don't have.

Their latest, The Bunny Boy, is a multimedia project encompassing a CD, a series of online videos and a live show, each of which complements the others. It's another mystery unlikely to be satisfactorily unraveled, about a rabbit-obsessed man who's received apocalyptic postcards from his missing brother in Greece. The album is 19 miniature slices of pop insanity, including a song about a 5-year-old girl's drawings with a sing-songy chorus of "Fear, terror, panic and doom"; and "My Nigerian Friend," a mournful song about everyone's favorite e-mail scam.

The Bunny Boy's brother is named (what else?) Harvey, not just another of the pop-culture winks that The Residents love so, but a typically wry retake, imagining the harmless kook Elwood P. Dowd more in line with Jimmy Stewart's later sexual deviant from Vertigo. Regurgitating pop culture through a funhouse mirror has been a lifelong pursuit, from their growling synth Elvis covers to the deconstructed bubblegum of The Third Reich and Roll.

See, The Residents don't dislike the mythology of popular culture, they embrace it — and mean to maintain control of shaping their own. Ultimately, knowing about Paul McCartney's divorce or that Keith Richards snorted his father's ashes means nothing when you listen to "Yesterday" or "Satisfaction." But every legend The Residents invent feeds into the music they make. Their career is rife with such (semi) invented contextualizing, creating an alternate universe uncannily reflecting our own. Which makes those eyeball heads more than a marketing coup. While you may not be able to see past the masks and opaque yarns spun by The Residents, they are most certainly watching you, the audience, and regurgitating your expectations in the form of this bizarro-world pop band.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

The Residents present The Bunny Boy, Wed., Oct. 8, 7 p.m., $27.50-$30, The Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-LIVE, thetroc.com.

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