The Residents Homer Flynn Punk77 Interview 4.2.25

Punk77 had a long Zoom chat with Homer Flynn of the Cryptic Corp that speaks for the legendary Residents. We spoke about the new album, death, his friend Hardy Fox, what drives The Residents and the artistic process, technology and the exciting news they plan to tour Eskimo around the world! See also our review of the album.

Punk77: It’s 2025 now, which means you’ve been going for some 60 years or so. You’ve produced such a varied body of work, that’s pretty much confounded expectations at every release, and probably I’d say this album as well which is called Doctor Dark.  What was the inspiration for the album and why did it take so long to make?

The primary inspiration was a film documentary called Dream Deceivers and it was released around 1992. This has to do with Judas priest and these two teenage boys In Reno, NV. who had too much alcohol, too much drugs and too much heavy metal. They went to a playground with a shotgun and bam, bam. The thing that got all the attention was their parents taking absolutely no responsibility whatsoever. Their parents sued Judas Priest and Warner Brothers Records, and it was the trial that got the attention.

So this filmmaker David Van Taylor came over to document the trial and what should he discover when he got there was that one of them, James Vance, was actually still alive. He had failed to commit suicide and had blown off a good portion of his head. The filmmaker wound up shooting a documentary and an interview with him and one of The Residents saw that film when it came out. His reaction was that this was a train wreck that you could not take your eyes off.

He was fascinated with the whole situation and wanted to do something with it. But they never could figure out exactly what felt right. Just to recreate that incident just didn’t feel like enough and it wasn’t until 5-6, seven years ago, that somebody came up with the idea to combine this horribly, miserable disfigured young man with Dr Kerkovian who was a huge proponent of assisted suicide.

Punk77: The sound of the album comes across like a requiem in a lot of places and the sad fact is The Residents are coming towards the end of their lives where the likelihood of sudden terminal illness or sudden death is probably a lot more common. And obviously, members of the Cryptic Corps have passed away. Is there a subtext to the album?

Right. You’re obviously referring to Hardy and most people are not aware that he died from assisted suicide. His health was not good near the end; he had heart surgery several months before and he was not recovering as he should have been. So he went back in and they examined him more and discovered that he had brain cancer. At that point, they gave him six weeks to live and they were accurate to within two or three days really.

Hardy was always someone who liked to be in control of himself and a lot of things and he was told that if he did not choose assisted suicide by a certain date, he would no longer have that option. His point of view was he would rather go out on his own terms which he did.

Punk77: Obviously, The Residents are not a typical band? Are they like a football team that carries on regardless of personnel changes?

Nobody knows. Obviously, the way things are structured, that option is there. The Residents are collaborators. They really enjoy working with people and they’re working with new people all the time. So, if indeed some of those people seem to rise to the occasion, the occasion being The Residents reality, then they could easily carry it on. But at this point, nobody really knows.

One of his ambitions was to collaborate with The Residents and you don’t get that kind of opportunity regularly.  And so they met with him, talked to him, and really liked him a lot.

Punk77: The difference between demos and end product?

The album kind of initially to them it kind of broke down fairly obviously into two musical forms. You know one is heavy metalish coming from those teenagers. Then the other more kind of orchestrated classical kind of sound seemed to fit Doctor Dark.

The Residents are kind of intuitive about their creativity. They love for things to just kind of spill out and then unfold and all and all the heavy metal and the more orchestrated stuff seemed so obvious to them. There were really no decisions to make, almost just following what felt right.

Once again The Residents are collaborators and they love to leave room for other people to bring something to what they’re doing. They don’t really like to have it all nailed down. Because you know, there’s an expression ‘read between the lines’ and The Residents like to have the lines, you know, pretty, pretty far apart to give the obvious to other people to make their own interpretation of what they’re doing.

In the very beginning of the album that prelude that leads into the heavy metal piece was strictly Edwin. He really felt like it needed something like that to kind of set the tone and the mood and to have those two pieces almost juxtaposed against each other. That seemed like a really interesting and appropriate way to start the album.

The Residents see this in many ways as a very modern opera in three acts and you know they would love to see it presented as a modern opera. They very definitely feel like this is not something for them to tour. Because it needs, bigger production and a whole lot more than The Residents and the Cryptic Corporation can provide. But the main objective at this point is to get the album out there and just see what kind of attention it gets and see if maybe somebody comes along that is interested in producing that.

Punk77: What sort of feedback has there been to the album
The feedback has been quite positive. Most of the people that listen to it at first are kind of like, huh? That’s like, you know, that just doesn’t sound like anything out there. It isn’t anything like The Residents have done before which of course, only delights them. They have always enjoyed finding new directions and new sounds and this totally fits in there and you know it hasn’t gotten out to the fans. So it’ll be interesting to see how they react, but in general, the feedback has been quite positive.

Punk77: I really enjoyed it. I find it something that it’s not something you can really dip into. I find it’s something that you have to play from start to finish to get the most out of it, which isn’t a bad thing in this day and age, but people’s attention spans seem to be shorter nowadays.

The Residents really love the album as a form, you know, I mean this goes back to Sergeant Pepper and, the concept album as it was invented in the late ’60s and the ’70s.

Punk77: How has design impact of the technology change from record to CD to digital impacted The Residents. The ability to be able to convey information along with the audio package has kind of gone.

I’m The Residents graphics person. I’m the one who has done most of their album covers and you know a lot of their promotional photography and I’m their primary visual person I’ve certainly watched that as a graphic artist, it was great having 12” of space to work with. Then it went to a CD. And then, yeah, now it’s a little 2 x 2 inch square. You really have to distill the essence of your idea and it’s just not nearly as much fun.

Punk77: Do you think that the residents have always stayed abreast of technology, or do you think it hasn’t really mattered in terms of, you know, what the work that they’ve done? Well.

The Residents strongly embraced the technology of multi-track recording. You know they were not particularly good musicians, but they realised that if they had their own recording studio and they could go in and could layer things, they could create sounds that were much more interesting and complex than what anybody could play.

That was a huge influence on them in terms of their interest in technology to begin with. But what really worked for them, was that technology was becoming more and more available on a consumer level. Their first tape recorder was stereo but it did what was called sound on sound. So you could record the two stereo channels separately. So they would record the two channels, mix them together and then record that one again, mix it with the other two and then once again they were able to create a much more interesting sound like that. Then at a consumer level 4 track came along then 8 track and 16 track, they were early adopters of all that. But they were also pretty early into MIDI and more computer-driven digital technology.

They were early into video with their Vileness Fats. Black and white and it was called industrial quality video. At the time it was reel to reel half inch. Then later CD Roms.

The Residents really love the concept of juxtaposition. They love to take their own crude technique and ability and then marry that with a much higher level of technique and then create this strange juxtaposition. That’s kind of one of their things to do whether in the music, concepts or graphics.

Punk77: How does how do they see then the whole thing about AI? Because you could probably feed in all The Residents, lyrics and music over the 60 years and let it churn out new Residents album.

I think they’re watching the technology and curious to see where it goes, but for them, for the most part, they really see AI as a tool to ultimately use. They just haven’t found the right context for it yet. I’ve been using AI in terms of graphics and just finished working on a three minute long AI video for the album. It features characters having a conversation about the album. I had a lot of fun with it and it’s pretty wacky.

Punk77: The Residents are actually planning on touring with their Eskimo album.

Yeah. It’s kind of an interesting story. There was an event about a year ago at the French consulate in San Francisco called a Night of Ideas but it’s actually a whole day. They went to the San Francisco Public Library which has a million different rooms and they brought in all of these speakers, they had meetings, musicians, entertainers. Comedians, whatever, and they all come in on this one day. They wanted The Residents to headline this thing but they didn’t really have anything prepared at that point. However, they only wanted a 20 minute performance which is not that hard to do.

We had been given the original tapes but digitized by the Cherry Red guy in Seattle. You put the headphones on all of a sudden you’re back into the recording studio with The Residents in the 1970s. It’s kind of amazing.

They’re talking about American tour, European Tour, you know, including the UK and Japan.

God bless The Residents!

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