The Residents

The Residents

By Daniel Robert Epstein
Aug 31, 2006

I may have interviewed The Residents the other day, but one can never be sure. I spoke to Hardy Fox who is a founding member of The Cryptic Corporation, a company created in 1976 to help the band. He may or may not be a member of The Residents, but the people of earth will never know. One thing we do know is that the Residents have always broken new ground and continue to do the same in the 21st century with podcasting. You can now purchase The Residents serial radio drama, called River of Crime, on CD.

Buy The Residents – River of Crime

Daniel Robert Epstein: Is it tough to be weird nowadays?
Hardy Fox: Well it is not really a calculated process. You are what you are. I think it’s always been difficult to stand apart, which is what that means. The culture goes through stages where there’s more of a tendency to conform and then there’s the next stage where there’s the tendency to separate yourself. Right now maybe we’re in one that’s in between. The culture’s pretty conservative right now, but there are plenty of people trying to stand out.
DRE:
With things like satellite radio and the different cable channels, there’s so much niche material out there.
Fox:
That’s absolutely true. But for The Residents though it’s been 33 years of doing this. It’s just not what you think about at all at this point. It’s not really a calculated thing about what to do to stand out. It’s more like, “What do we want to do?”
DRE:
There is nothing more niche right now than serialized radio drama, who’s idea was that?
Fox:
I think it was a spin-off of the fascination with Podcasts in general. Podcasting is the new radio, particularly the new talk radio. So it made sense to think, “How would that connect to the world of music?” Talk radio music turned into musical drama or a type of form that’s more prepped, dialogue-driven, but still has a real strong musical element to it. I’ve always been interested in things that are story-driven and things that have characters and things like that. So it’s a natural progression.
DRE:
Was the story written first and then the songs around it?
Fox:
It’s all done at once. It’s as if it was done in a studio and you were doing a song where people are singing with it, but instead of singing melodies and stuff, the dialogue is just being delivered at certain points to go with the music. Sometimes that has to be adjusted to make it work better after the recording. So it’s a mixture of the two.
DRE:
Is there an ending to the story or is it just going to go on for as long as The Residents want to keep doing it?
Fox:
There is an ending. This is the first five episodes of a projected 20 episode series. So each of the five has a concept of how those five go together. It’s four series of five and each of the four things has a different aspect and a different take on things. By the time it gets to the last section, there will have been a larger arc that’s gone over the entire 20. Hopefully it’ll all pull together at that point. Of course those haven’t been recorded yet.
DRE:
What fascinates The Residents about the old crime serials?
Fox:
Crime is just one of those things that is fascinating to everyone. That’s why there’s so many TV shows about crime. So I don’t think there’s anything in particular that’s especially interesting about it to them. They’ve talked about doing a whole River of series and River of Crime would just be one of them. It could be River of Food. It’s just things that are of interest that human nature is fascinated with in some way or another.
DRE:
You keep switching from we to they. I’m not going to call you on that because that’s pointless. What does the veil of secrecy do for The Residents?
Fox:
I don’t know that they dislike it, but the basic concept is that the band doesn’t want to be a collection of individuals, they want to be a group. As a group, it doesn’t have any members. It just has the group.
DRE:
Was that concept in their minds from the very beginning?
Fox:
Yes, when you work as a group, you work very differently than you do separately. It’s really the difference between The Beatles and John, George, Paul and Ringo. It’s like John, Paul, George and Ringo are almost competing with each other than working together. It’s a different image and type of ego that’s involved in it. The Residents really like to separate that whole element of the work into the group. Themselves as individuals is something that’s entirely outside of the group.
DRE:
Is there a time when they’ll take off the make up like KISS did?
Fox:
The Residents don’t wear makeup. That’s their problem.
DRE:
You know what I mean though.
Fox:
I do know what you mean, but I don’t know why KISS was doing it. I never really followed KISS. I don’t know if they were doing it as an image or something. KISS were still people. The Residents are not people. You won’t find names for them on albums or pictures in any normal sense. In fact, they wouldn’t have pictures on there at all. We have to promote them so we can sell this stuff. It’s hard enough to sell it without them making it even more difficult.
DRE:
I read there might be video retrospective of The Residents at the Museum of Modern Art.
Fox:
Yes The Residents are basically credited with inventing the music video and have quite a few videos in the permanent collection at MoMa. The Residents had five videos in circulation the day MTV started. This would be a look at following videos from the 70’s to today.
DRE:
Are The Residents doing anything new video wise?
Fox:
Constantly. There are hours and hours and hours of videos but the retrospective would be an overview of their ten to 12 DVDs.
DRE:
How much are The Residents into new television and movies?
Fox:
I consider those delivery systems which they are very much into. That’s why they’re pioneers and the whole technology thing is their entire career. They broke into the CD-ROM game developer market so many years ago and they were one of the first people with DVDs. They’re very interested in technology and they’re always riding on the edge of that.
DRE:
Are they into SuicideGirls?
Fox:
I have no idea.
DRE:
How about you?
Fox:
I’ve been on the website. I don’t belong.
DRE:
Why not?
Fox:
I don’t really belong to anything. I’m just not a joiner. There are the people that lead the stuff and the people who join the stuff. I’m more in the group that creates stuff for the other people to join.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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