The Delta Nudes

"There are lots of tapes dating back decades, but they were all done before the people were officially "The Residents" so they don't count. They also say there is plenty of music that is actually by The Residents so it is unnecessary to make-up imaginary old recordings."
- Hardy Fox, 2006The Delta Nudes (also known as Delta Nu, Loss Leaders, Ensenada and Spontaneous Cumbustion, Ivory and the Brain Eaters, The College Walkers, Residents, Uninc., Univac Res Corp, The Pre-Residents, The Pre-sidents) were a loose assembly of friends, musicians and artists who existed in San Mateo, California between 1965 and 1972. Following the release of their debut EP Santa Dog, they became known as Residents, Uninc., and later, The Residents.
While the group existed for a number of years, recorded possibly hundreds of reels of tape, and performed at various open-mic nights and private parties in the San Francisco area, The Residents have not generally considered the Delta Nudes material to be part of their official discography, and their recordings remained largely unreleased until the 2018 and 2019 releases of the 1971 demo tapes The W***** B*** Album and B.S.
Between 2013 and 2016 The Cryptic Corporation retroactively referred to this era of the group's work under the name The Delta Nudes. Two (almost identical) compilation releases followed under this name, The Delta Nudes' Greatest Hiss and The Residents Present The Delta Nudes.
== History ==
==== Origins (1963-1968) ====
The Delta Nudes originated in Shreveport, Louisiana, where Randy Rose, Charles "Chuck" Bobuck, and Roger "Bunny" Hartley (also known as Harvey)Jim Knipfel, "Somethin' Devilish: The Untold (And Finally True) Pre-History of The Residents 1963-1971)" first met at high schoolMatt Groening, "The True Story of The Residents", 1979 in the mid-1960s and, discovering mutual interests in art and music, became close friends.
After high school, the group attended college together at Louisiana Tech in Ruston, Louisiana, where they met and befriended brothers Palmer and Barry Eiland, as well as Homer Flynn, Hardy Fox, Jay Clem and John Kennedy. The group of friends formed "Delta Nu", or what Flynn would later describe as "the anti-fraternity fraternity... the guys who hung out and created a clique that was against the cool stuff". The Delta Nu group are said to have recorded some "early Cajun music" in college,Meet The Residents liner notes, 1974 however no recorded material from this period has been confirmed to exist.
By 1966 the members of the "Delta Nu" group had begun to head their various ways. Kennedy had left for California to look for work, Flynn had dropped out of college and returned to Shreveport, and Fox had started managing The Alliance, a small rock 'n' roll group based in nearby Dubach which included guitarist Roland Sheehan.
In 1968, the remaining members of "Delta Nu", growing tired of life in the south, headed for northern California, and after staying in San Francisco for several months, ended up in San Mateo, where they decided to remain, living and working in near-total seclusion.
==== The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger and Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor (1969-1970) ====
"We were living in a weird kind of ramshackle building that was above a funky little car body shop... And you could tell - literally - what color they were painting the cars that day by looking in a mirror to see what color your nose hairs were."
Randy Rose
Flynn, Fox, Clem and Palmer Eiland would all move to California in 1969, effectively reuniting the "Delta Nu" group for the first time in more than a year. While attempting to make a living (with at least two members of the group working at the local post office),"And On The Eighth Day...", Kettles of Fish on the Outskirts of Town liner notes, 2002 they began to experiment with painting, silk-screening and photography, but despite a mutual interest in music and sound in general, they had not yet begun to experiment with recording their own music.
This would change when Sheehan, formerly of The Alliance (the band managed by Fox in Louisiana) turned up on Fox's doorstep with a U-Haul trailer full of musical instruments, including a Hammond B3 organ. Fox did not have room to keep the instruments, and Sheehan wished to stay in San Mateo, play music, and "lose his virginity", and so Fox directed Sheehan to the "Delta Nu" apartment, where Rose agreed to let him stay.
Around the same time, Bobuck received a two-track reel to reel tape recorder as a gift from a friend who was moving away. The tape recorder, relatively high-end for its time, performed a function called "Sound on Sound", a form of primitive overdubbing; this allowed the group to begin to make the first of possibly hundreds of loosely edited tapes, consisting mostly of home studio experiments, rehearsals and improvisational jams. The majority of these "drug induced" early tapes have apparently long since destroyed by The Residents.
Sheehan (having apparently "lost his virginity") left the group and San Mateo later in 1969, however by this point the group had gathered enough recorded material and pawn shop musical instruments to continue recording and compiling tapes without the assistance of the more musically proficient Sheehan. Two of these unreleased reel-to-reel items, titled The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger and Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor, would be rumored for years but completely unheard to fans until 2015, when both tapes began circulating via low-quality bootleg CD-Rs.
==== Philip Lithman and The Mysterious N. Senada (1970) ====
Word of the group's experimentation spread, and in 1970 the group's friend Margaret Smyk introduced them to a visiting British guitarist and multi-instrumentalist named Philip Lithman, who quickly befriended and moved in with the group, and began participating in their jam sessions. Despite their relative lack of musical experience, Lithman appreciated the aesthetics of what the group were doing, and their styles seemed to work together naturally.
Shortly after Lithman moved in, another stranger appeared on the group's doorstep - The Mysterious N. Senada , a Bavarian experimental composer and musical theorist in his early 60s, who had previously met Lithman in Europe (Lithman had discovered the eccentric composer recording birds in a forest). Both Lithman and Senada would become heavily influential in the group's work from this point onwards, and throughout their later existence as The Residents.
==== The Warner Bros. Album and foundation of Residents, Uninc. (1970-1971) ====
In 1971, the still-unnamed group sent a reel-to-reel tape to Hal Halverstadt at Warner Bros. Records, who had worked with Captain Beefheart (one of the group's musical heroes). Although Halverstadt was not overly impressed with The Warner Bros. Album (describing it years later as "okay at best"Uncle Willie's Highly Opinionated Guide To The Residents), he awarded it a grading of "AXPp":
* A - for Ariginality
* X - for Xecution
* P - for Presentation
* p - for potential
Because the band had not included any name in the return address, the rejection slip was simply addressed to "Residents, 167½ 17th Avenue, San Mateo". Finding the "bland, colorless name" to be suitable,RandyLand Episode 1 the group decided that this would be the name they would use, first becoming Residents, Uninc.. By this time the group had also formed Porno Graphics, the graphic design arm of the organization, led primarily by Flynn (which continues to the present day).
====Residents, Uninc. and the birth of Ralph Records (1971-1972) ====
Residents, Uninc.'s first known live performance was at The Boarding House in San Francisco in 1971. A performance at Lithman's wedding followed days later which would be known as the Party of '71. The same year another demo tape was completed and submitted to Halverstadt, entitled Baby Sex - named after its disturbing cover art; a silk-screened copy of a photo blown up from an advertisement for a Dutch pornographic magazine that the group received in the mail,http://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-residents-return-to-vancouver-homer.html depicting a woman fellating a small child.
Wishing to "get serious", in late 1971 Residents, Uninc. relocated to 20 Sycamore Street in San Francisco; a former print-works which boasted a completely open ground floor. The warehouse had enough space to house the entire group (at this point numbering five), and contained a totally open ground floor which the group transformed into a small soundstage, allowing them to begin work on their most ambitious project up to that point; a feature-length video musical film entitled Vileness Fats, which would consume most of their attention for the next four years.
In 1972, the group formed Ralph Records to release and promote their own work, beginning with the Santa Dog EP, their first recorded output to be released to the public. Designed to resemble a Christmas card from an insurance company, the EP consisted of two 7" singles, with four songs between them. Following the formation of Ralph, the group formally adopted The Residents as their moniker and released their debut album Meet The Residents in 1974. 
==Members and collaborators ==
=== Regular Members ===
*R. Rose (1969 - 1973)
*C. Bobuck (1969 - 1973)
*R. Hartley (???? - ????)
*B. Tangney (Circa May 1970 - 1973)
*J. Whitiker (Circa May 1970 - 1973)
*P. Lithman (August 1971 - April 1972)
=== Infrequent Collaborators ===
*N. Senada (Circa May 1970 - 1973)
*Zeibak (Circa May 1970 - 1973)
*R. Sheehan (1970 - 1971)
*G. Ewart (Circa 1972 - 1973)
*J. Clem (1970 - 1973)
*H. Flynn (1969 - 1973)
*H. Fox (1969 - 1973)
*J. Kennedy (1969 - 1973)
*P. Eiland (???? - 1973)
*D. Paulsen (???? - ????)
*P. Honeydew (Cira 1971 - 1973)
*G. Whifler (???? - 1973)
== Discography==
*The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger (1970, unreleased)
*Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor (1970, unreleased)
*The Warner Bros. Album (1971, released 2018)
==== Compilations====
*ERA B474 (2012)
*The Delta Nudes' Greatest Hiss (2013)
*The Residents Present The Delta Nudes (2016)
*A Nickle If Your Dick's This Big (2019)
*Warning: Uninc. - Live and Experimental Recordings 1971-1972 (2022)
==External links and references==
Category:The Residents
Category:The Delta Nudes
Category:Other Artists
Category:Ralph stablemates