Hardy Fox
Hardy Fox

I'll say it bluntly: Santa Claus does not exist.

So, who places the gifts under the tree?

I mean, there's someone who goes through the hassle of doing the dirty work, shops around, wraps everything up, spends the money, prepares the surprises, and then hides. And leaves all the credit to that chubby guy dressed in red.

And, damn it, that's how it works for the entire universe of imaginary characters that roam our lives: the tooth fairy, the man or woman of our dreams, The Powers That Be, God, do-gooders….

Who keeps these fantastic universes alive, who feeds them, hidden in the shadows? Well, from time to time, some of these nameless heroes (at least the good ones) deserve proper recognition.

Like the guy who smiles with his face painted like the Joker on the cover of this album.

Because Hardy Fox, and his accomplice Homer Flynn, have been the brilliant puppeteers of a parallel world made of characters more real than real, of freaks, weirdos, and little monsters. They orchestrated misdirections, elaborated pseudo-philosophical theories, and invented conspiracies plotted by obscure presences. They have been the playful dealers of a lot of "weirdness" and a lot of other stuff. And they gave us—above all—so much, really so much, Music.

Hardy Fox was one of the most influential and innovative composers of the 20th century.

But no one knows.

The Alliance

This story begins in '63, in Ruston, Louisiana.

Homer and Hardy are two students from Shreveport who find themselves sharing the same room in the local college dormitory. The two become fast friends, and after a while, a sort of non-fraternity brotherhood forms around them: Delta-Nu.

There are five of them: Palmer Eiland, John Kennedy, Jay Clem, and our Homer & Hardy.

Of the group, the one most interested in music is our Hardy who, in the meantime, has set out to produce a group of kids from those parts: the Alliance.

The leader of the group is multi-instrumentalist Roland Sheehan. The Alliance recorded a single in '67, "Somewhere They Can't Find Me"/ "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone". Only their friends buy the record (and not even all of them) and the group disbands, having done a few concerts and met the Jefferson Airplane in the meantime, Roland has become part of that circle of friends.

El Ralpho

In short, this is how it seems to have gone: Homer enjoyed buying very old used cars destined for the junkyard; he and Hardy would drive around until the poor jalopy gave up the ghost and they left it wherever it broke down.

Then along comes the "Summer of Love" and the two decide that Louisiana was too tight for them, it could rot right where fate and geography had placed it, and that the place to be at that moment was California.

So they embark on one of those old cars, a broken-down van, and set off for Frisco, where they clearly will never arrive. In fact, the van gives up the ghost near San Mateo.

The two settle first at 167½ 17th Avenue and then, by the early '70s, finally land in San Francisco in a kind of studio with a stage they would call "El Ralpho".

The Delta Nudes

Soon the rest of the group arrives: Eiland, Kennedy, and Clem, and also Sheehan, who arrives with a van full of musical instruments. After a while, a guy who frequented those parts joins them, a cool guy, a guitarist (and quite a good one!): Philip Charles Lithman. The future Snakefinger.

Much could be said about Lithman, a crooked and unfortunate genius, but this is not the place. However, whichever album you find in your hands in his name (whether as Lithman or as Snakefinger) don't let it slip away!

So, thanks to the instruments brought by Sheehan and a rudimentary two-track recording console bought by Charlie Bobuck (who is Charlie Bobuck?), the Delta Nudes are born!

Great band, the Delta Nudes! Freaks and experimenters. Very serious pranksters mixing tape manipulations, drunken folk, lysergic jams, aleatory music, and much else. Genius charlatans whom no one will know anything about for at least twenty years, until the future Ralph Records will circulate those tapes.

However, initially, music wasn't the main interest of our group, but cinema.

The idea was to make a project called "Vileness Fat", a film of about fifteen hours based on a very complicated story involving conjoined twins, a village inhabited by people with only one arm, shopping carts shooting bombs, Indian priestesses, youth gangs dressing up like steaks, and much more.

The film - naturally - will never be completed.

N. Senada

"If the public wants perfectly played music, then let them listen to the angels. Human music should be able to stumble in the most pitiful way." - N. Senada

Nigel Sinatra, born in Germany in 1907 and died somewhere in the States in 1993, was a genius!

Musician, philosopher, experimenter, traveler, guru; he was one of the most important cultural agitators of the 20th century. Among other things, we owe him - the works "Pollex Christi" and "Cantaten To Der Dyin Prunen", in addition to the elaboration of the "theory of obscurity" (the work of art preserves its creativity and integrity as such only if hidden from the public) and the "theory of phonetic organization" (the musician must proceed starting first from the sounds that make up the melody rather than from the melody itself).

In 1970, Sinatra had moved from Germany to California to seek new sounds and new ideas; one day in a forest where he was recording the songs of some birds he meets Lithman/Snakefinger who immediately brings him to his friends down at El Ralpho.

The heavy German accent of the great composer makes our guys think that his name is N. Senada, the idea pleases the German genius so much that he will henceforth adopt the pseudonym “The mysterious N. Senada”. (Certainly in Spanish “ensenada” or “en se nada”, “no se nada” have a meaning that could give rise to various linguistic games. Certainly in those days capt. Beefheart was living at Ensenada Drive down in Los Angeles, but these are coincidences).

Senada would soon become the reference thinker of our heroes.

He will be the one to christen the new group based at El Ralpho: the Residents (that is, a nameless group that will later be called “The Residents”) who will be his most faithful followers. He will collaborate with them, organize their first performances (including the tape “Baby Sex”), give them two songs (“Kamikaze Lady” and “Eloise”), play saxophone at their first concerts, and show them the way.

Then, Senada, in '74 disappears to reappear two years later, in '76. He had set off on an Arctic expedition, true to his belief that the human brain is a very sophisticated electric circuit that works better in the cold. Here he had lived with the Eskimo tribe. Upon his return, he brought as a gift to his beloved followers local instruments, recordings of the music of those lands, and a bottle of pure Arctic air. (All of this will be the basis for the “Eskimo” album by the Residents).

Senada will distance himself from the scene, reappear in concert still in '87, then slip into obscurity until his death in 1993.

The Residents

The Residents are a quartet (just like the founders of Cryptic Corp.: John Kennedy, Jay Clem, Homer Flynn, and Hardy Fox. But this is just a coincidence!)

The Residents are a trio: Randy Rose on vocals, Chuck (Charles Bobuck) keyboards and electronics, and Bob on guitar (but these - in reality - are just the Residents, that is, the biggest cover-band of the Residents performing on their behalf).

The Residents are a duo: Homer (lyrics) and Hardy (music).

No one knows how many and who the Residents are, some swear that among them have been John Lennon and George Harrison, Capt. Beefheart, and the entire Magic Band, Les Claypool and Helios Creed, Frank Zappa, Harry Partch, Elvis Presley, the Jefferson Airplane, Devo, and many others.

Confused?

Maybe it's time to start from the beginning.

Origins 1: One fine day in 1971, Hal Halverstadt (the guy who brought Capt. Beefheart to Warner Bros.) receives a package containing musical tapes. The music is rather strange, Hal appreciates its originality, but he has no intention to produce them. So he sends the package back to the senders. On the package, however, there's no name of who sent it, there's just an address. So Hal sends the package to "The Residents", to whoever lived there, at 20 Sycamore Street, in Frisco.

Those tapes would appear many years later in the form of an album, the legendary "Warner Brothers Album" by the Residents, at first an object of cult underground sold at terminal collector prices, then repeatedly reissued (and even remixed) by Ralph Records.

Origins 2: In 1972, about fifty selected people (including characters like Frank Zappa and Richard Nixon) receive a double vinyl EP titled “Santa Dog” that two musicologists/researchers/musicians from San Mateo (California), Tychobrahe Samuelsson and Vanadium Zukofsky, had assembled with unreleased “Christmas” themed tracks from groups they discovered: Ivory and the Brain Eaters, The Delta Nudes, The College Walkers, and Arf and Omega featuring The Singing Lawn Chairs.

Some appreciate it (DJ Bill Reinhardt who would push those tracks in his shows), some do not receive it, like Frank Zappa, whose address was incorrect, some do not appreciate the gift.

The staff of President Nixon (which does not exactly sparkle with a sense of humor) sends the package back without even opening it to the address from which it was sent: 20 Sycamore Street, San Francisco. To the residents in that place.

Be it as it may, now the Residents have a name (and the awareness that it will be difficult for someone to dare to produce their music!). Thus their friends Homer, Hardy, John, and Jay decide to set up first Ralph Records and then the Cryptic Corporation, to manage and produce their music and Pore No Graphics to elaborate covers and graphics for the group. Then John and Jay would leave in the early '80s, leaving everything in the hands of the usual Homer and Hardy.

Clearly (CLEARLY…..) the four friends have nothing to do with the group! They are only their managers and spokespersons.

The rest is 50 years of other music (and of crazy stories), alien and disorienting. A mad mix of pop, psychedelia, avant-garde, concrete music, rock, drunken nursery rhymes… Ahead of everything that will come, forward enough to be “beyond”, absurd and grotesque, childish and dramatic.

In short, in one word: geniuses!

God

I'm not saying this is also the work of Homer and Hardy (though I am sure they would have liked it!). A character with the best support entourage ever! Versions of this can be found in every corner of the world. The one most in vogue in our parts even had a son who, it seems, met a bad end.

Charles Bobuck

“What made my work so special was that I wrote music after masturbating. There was an explanation for this: as a child, I would describe my nightmares to my mother by pounding on a piano and speaking in strange voices. Once I reached puberty, I realized that orgasm had a strange auditory effect on me. When I told my parents, I was hospitalized to see if I had a brain tumor.

The other day I masturbated after seeing the Pope. A beautiful brass quartet filled my mind.”

Charles Bobuck is Chuck, the keyboardist of the Residents, or rather, Chuck is Charles Bobuck.

Charles Bobuck composed almost all the music for the Residents.

Bobuck was born in Texas in '45 (the same year as Hardy) and died in 2018 (just like Hardy).

Since 2011 he had combined his work with the Residents with a prolific solo career. More than fifteen works in his name or under other pseudonyms (Roman de la Rose, Black Tar and Cry Babies, Bob Huck, Combo de Mecanico, Sonidos de la Noche….)

He stopped playing with the Residents in 2015 for health reasons (just like Hardy!) and Rico stepped in his place.

Roman De La Rose

“The man or woman of your dreams” is a great invention!

Only, in the end, we all have to settle for the “man or woman of our life”. Which, when you think about it, is a good thing.

The man in the life of Charles Bobuck is Roman. Roman is not interested in Charles' music, but he wanted to dedicate this album to him anyway.

Sonidos De La Noche

Carlos was the percussionist of the Residents; then - one day - he had a quarrel with Randy and left.

Charles and Carlos formed a band together: Sonidos De La Noche.

Hardy Fox

Hardy Fox is the best character created by Hardy Fox.

Hardy, on his website, stated that Hardy would die in 2018. Which then indeed happened for both the character and his creator.

Hardy recorded four albums in his name and one with Fred Frith.

I am very attached to this one carrying his name. It's a bare album, you could say the record of a singer-songwriter, a Nick Drake with electronic gadgets and studio effects instead of a guitar. Small fragile and bare songs sung with the whispered voice of an old man.

It's a bare album in which the lyrics finally play a central role.

But I think - maybe - it's not the album I would recommend to get into Hardy. Surely neither is the posthumous “25 Minus Minutes” or his testament “Rilla Contemplates Love” (a concept on a gorilla's thoughts of love). All more than excellent of course! To start, I would say the best thing is to listen to “A Day Hanging Dead Between Heaven and Earth”, the album with Fred Frith.

“We were on the beach, completely relaxed and naked. Fred began to sing to the rhythm of the waves. I asked him if I could record his voice. Then, in my studio, I reworked those tapes and forgot about them for some years. By chance, I met Fred again and decided to let him listen to those tapes. So we decided to make an album around them.”

And now, after writing all these pages about him, I still don’t know who the hell Hardy Fox was, and I'm not even sure how many albums (and he also wrote a couple of books) and how many names he recorded under. Already with what there is here we are talking over a hundred titles!

And, I swear to you, there would still be a lot of things to tell: of the tribe of moles, of Nazi rock, of preachers in love with Siamese twins, of forgotten languages with magical powers….

But, in the end, perhaps the only one who knows who Hardy Fox really was is his partner Steven. But I don't think anyone would think to ask him.

Dyin Dog

Because it doesn’t end here! The Residents are still alive and kicking (Homer wasn't a Resident…). The last album is based on the music of Dyin Dog, an obscure bluesman with whom Sheehan had played.

Lector

He was born in 2016 among the pages of a site that, in supreme haughtiness, prides itself on having been dead or dying for years.

He is a pedant, convinced he knows tons about music. A strange musicophile with a transistor ear. I could tell you about his fondness for the moldy paper of old books or some of his quirks….

But I have really abused your patience and time too much and, anyway, it would really be another story.

Completely another story.