randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  24 (continued)

One last footnote and I’ll move on. This is a photo of the wedding ring. Of course, the irony here is that they never actually got married. Either the dumb fuck Universal Life so-called minister never registered it or they never got a marriage license, so it was an indelible  moment fraught with psychological horror for no reason whatsoever. Just like Thanksgiving at your grandparents’ house or something. A couple of months later, Snakefinger returned to England and The Residents (us) moved from San Mateo to San Francisco.

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  23 (continued)

Okay! So this is it - the picture that created the name, SNAKEFINGER! I realize this picture is kind of funky, well all of them are kind of funky (some asshole did a really shitty job of processing the film, so this is the best we could do with what we had - okay, alright, I admit it. The asshole was me.) But what you have here is Philip/Snakefinger playing the violin and and somehow after the film was processed and the print was made, THERE IT WAS! A finger that appeared to be turning into a snake. Okay, it does look a little more like sickle, but we couldn’t call him Sicklefinger, for christsake, so he became SNAKEFINGER! I swear it’s true - I was there.

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  22 (continued)

Okay, here’s a strange one (as if that means anything around here). The picture on the left is a woman freaking out on acid at Snakefinger’s wedding. It was really uncomfortable… like disturbing… like how did I get here and how can I be somewhere else. Her name was Sally - I guess it still is. She moved to San Francisco a few years later and became Weescoosa, the mystical Indian Priestess, in Vileness Fats. That’s the photo on the right. She was cool - and probably still is.

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  21 (continued)

Here is the actual photo of the bride and groom at Snakefinger’s wedding.

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  20 (continued)

Okay, here it is - THE KNIFE! The one that Mabel from Mountains always carried. I think she was taking a nap in the barn when I took this photo, but she sure held on to that goddam knife! I knew I had a picture of it somewhere and there it was in a box under a bunch of stuff. I remember putting it there now - it always gave me the creeps.

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  19 (continued)

It’s Her! The hippie chick with the knife. I’m remembering now - they all called her Mabel. I guess she liked that Joni Mitchell song, Michael from Mountains, cause she sang it all the time, walking around with that knife and a crazy look in her eye. Except of course she sang it “Mabel from Mountains.” I don’t think I’ll sleep very well tonight.

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  17 (continued)

More of Snakefinger’s Wedding. If this was a horror movie, and at times it felt like one, this would be the establishing shot - THE BARN! This is where it all happened!

randyresident:

Hey, here’s one more Vileness Fats photo. They’re getting ready to shoot the bridge scene. The guy on the right is obviously a doctor. I guess could do one or two more of these “behind-the-scenes” exclusives, but I’m getting kind of tired of them. You probably are, too.

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  15 (continued)

Okay here’s another one. This photo was used on the cover of the first BUY or DIE!, Ralph Records’ mail order catalog. It was back in the 70’s - I think. (Sometimes I don’t remember all this stuff so good.) Anyway, we thought it had a kind of spunky, way-to-go, hang-in-there-Jesus quality that typified Ralph back in those days. We even put it on a T-shirt, but I don’t think I have one any more.

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  14 (continued)

Hey, everybody seems to like the Vileness Fats photos, so here’s another one. This is Arf & Omega, the Siamese twin wrestlers, getting ready for THEIR BIG KNIFE FIGHT SCENE.  The twins were played by George Ewart and Palmer Eiland. George only had one arm, which is why they became Siamese twins. The goofy looking guy in front is John Kennedy, who eventually became president of the Cryptic Corp. John was helping us out some back then.

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  13 (continued)

This is a photo of “Skinny” from the Hello Skinny video we made back in 1980. The video was directed by Graeme Whifler, who also shot this photo. When the video was shot, “Skinny” believed that he was Brigette Bardot. We never knew his real name - everyone just called him Brigettte. The shooting of the end of the video had to be rushed because Brigette was having a breakdown. When you watch the video, you’ll see him in a phone booth and sitting watching a coin operated TV. Those photos were made in the Greyhound Bus Terminal in San Francisco just before Brigette got on a bus to go home. We never saw him again. (You can check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvJiyOPmsJs)

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  12 (continued)

Another old one. This  is picture of Bunny at our place on Sycamore St in San Francisco. He used to hang our there a lot back in the early 70’s. Weird guy, that Bunny, but we were pretty good pals back then.

randyresident:

Okay - here’s another weird picture from the way, way back. This is of course the one and only Tricky Dick, along with his trusty sidekick, Spider Agnew. Our first studio in San Francisco was at 20 Sycamore St, and Thrift Town, one of the all time great SF thrift stores, was only half a block away, so we had tons of stuff like this. I have to say Nixon was a personal favorite and, in my opinion, easily the most entertaining president of my lifetime.

randyresident:

RESIDENTS HISTORY - part  10 (continued)

Okay, this is kind of weird and probably nobody will like it, but it’s a photo taken on a light table in the way back of the early 70’s. I don’t know why I kept it - I just kind of like it, I guess. The light table came from an auction at a sign company that was going out of business. We also bought two skulls at the auction and one of them became Mr. Skull, the eyeball in mourning, when one of the eyeballs masks was stolen from a show in LA. No shit.   

thefoundphotoguy:

Congress of Freaks with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey (combined) Circus

1929

Photographer: Edward J. Kelty

Ok, HERE’S THE PHOTO!