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Lisa Doop interviews Sparky, June 2021

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Graphic promoting Sparky's BOGcast, from The Residents' Official News BOG, ca. 2006

In June 2021, English Residents fan, Mysterious Spanish Lady and administrator of this wiki Lisa Doop conducted an audio interview with Residents fan, former BOGcast host and one-time tour manager "Sparky" (or Ryan), posting the video to her YouTube channel Dooper Views later that month.

The interview is the third in an ongoing series of interviews with Residents-related figures, fans and collectors, conducted as original research by members of The Mysterious Spanish Ladies.

Transcript

The below text has been transcribed as accurately as possible from the YouTube video by a Mysterious Spanish Lady. Headings are included to match chapter separations featured in the original video.

Introduction

Sparky:
Hello, everybody!
Miss Doop:
[unclear]
Sparky:
I am Sparky.
Miss Doop:
Yes.
Sparky:
Also known as Ryan. But, you can call me Sparky.
Miss Doop:
Yeah, it's, wha... it's Sparky! And Sparky is associated with The Residents. Can you tell... you tell me how you're associated with The Residents?
Sparky:
I... um, I will give you my Residents history.
Miss Doop:
Your CV.
Sparky:
My CV, exactly.
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
Um... so... and it also, kind of, is the story of how I got called Sparky.
Miss Doop:
Oh, right.

Discovering The Residents

Sparky:
Uh, when I was fourteen years old, I was introduced to The Residents. And I hated it. It was by my father, I was really into Devo at the time, and I was listening to a ton of Devo. And he came home from work one day, I was listening to... uh, Devo's "Satisfaction". And he says, "you're listening to this again?"
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
And I said, "yep". And he goes, "do you want to hear a real version of 'Satisfaction'?" And I said, "sure". And he pulls out his "Satisfaction"/"Loser is Congruent to Weed" 45, and puts it on, and I was just, like... "What in the hell is this? This is awful." As a side note, it's been... almost twenty-five years later? I still hate The Residents' "Satisfaction".
Miss Doop:
Oh, me too. [unclear]
Sparky:
I still can't even handle that song.
Miss Doop:
I'm not a fan of that... that song... [laughs]
Sparky:
And... it's... it's... I just have a negative association with it. Um...
Miss Doop:
Yeah.
Sparky:
And I was just, like, "okay, what... why are you showing this to me?" So then he goes and pulls out Duck Stab!/Buster Glen. And he jumps straight to "Birthday Boy". And that was the next... my second Residents track I heard. And it was just... even worse! And I legitimately had a bad dream about that song that night.
Miss Doop:
That's aw... [laughs] That's, that's so... that is... that's so Residential, isn't it?
Sparky:
Yeah.
Miss Doop:
Yeah! [laughs]
Sparky:
It was, like... I didn't know that not only did people make music like this, but other people bought this kind of music? Like... [laughs]
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
"Come on, Dad, what are you doing?" So...
Miss Doop:
Right, yeah.
Sparky:
So that would have been about 199... 8, '99. And I was in a record store one day looking for some Devo stuff, a Devo CD... like, just to see if there's anything new. Of course there wasn't, in... '99.
Miss Doop:
Mmhmm. Yeah. [laughs]
Sparky:
And I'm flipping through the stuff, and I go over to the Residents section, just like... "You know what, let's just see what they have, maybe I can get my Dad a gift or something like that."
Miss Doop:
Yeah.
Sparky:
And what they had was Wormwood.
Miss Doop:
Oh. [unclear]
Sparky:
And... because Wormwood was new at the time. And I'm just like, had a twenty dollar bill burning a hole in my pocket, and I'm, like, "you know what? Let's buy this album." I get it home, and I'm intrigued. I was really into "Fire Fall", and, um... "How to Get a Head", that was like, my favourite track at the time.
Miss Doop:
Yeah.
Sparky:
And... "Mr. Misery", and "Judas Saves", and I think that was... kind of, like, the kind of, like, poppy tracks, so to speak.
Miss Doop:
Yeah. I think that's... that's my general relationship with, um... Wormwood at this point. I like those tracks, and... the rest are kind of background at this point.
Sparky:
[unclear]
Miss Doop:
[laughs] I, well... I... I like the al... I liked a lot of it. Yeah.
Sparky:
It was just something that was, like, "okay, this was kind of weird, but whatever..." Um... and then maybe a few months go by, and - again, I must have had another twenty dollar bill burning a hole in my pocket...
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
...and I go back, and, uh... they have... the only record... no, they had three CDs, I think they had Third Reich 'n Roll, they had Mark of the Mole, and Meet The Residents.
Miss Doop:
Oh.
Sparky:
And they were all the same price, and I'm sitting there going, "why am I going to buy an album that has two songs on it..."
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
"...or why am I going to buy an album with, like, four songs on it... I'll get the one that has eleven songs on it," or whatever...
Miss Doop:
[unclear] The normal amount of...
Sparky:
Exactly. Um... and so I get Meet The Residents, and it's... something else, but reading those liner notes, which...
Miss Doop:
Yeah.
Sparky:
...have since been reprinted in the, um, in the pREServed version, and all the other kind of re-releases. It really struck a chord with me. There was one line in particular, and it said something along the lines of "look past the weirdness and just listen to the compositions". Something along those lines. And that clicked. It was like "wait a minute, if I can just listen to this music for being unique compositions, and not just... banging on a..."
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
"...piano, or banging on some sort of percussion..."
Miss Doop:
Whatever they play on that album. [laughs]
Sparky:
Exactly. "Maybe there's something deeper here." And it just... completely... it was like a switch going off. It just... it just clicked.
Miss Doop:
Mmhmm.

Origin of "Sparky"

Sparky:
Um... and then from there, as we were kind of mentioning before, you kind of go into collector mode, and the next thing you know... I think... I think the next thing I got was The Eyes Scream... the...
Miss Doop:
Oh, yeah. Mmhmm.
Sparky:
...which was like a VHS, uh... narrated by Penn and Teller. So that was like, my third thing I ever had of theirs. And that was such a great... such a great introduction, to, kind of, the body and breadth of their work up 'til the early nineties. And it really, really does a great job with the mystique and the mythology and the mystery behind The Residents, so... and that just pulls you in more and more. Um... and so I just kind of became a fan and started collecting more and more, and at the time Ralph America was under another company that was called Astro Pitch.
Miss Doop:
Yeah?
Sparky:
And Astro Pitch was the company that was make... you know, silk-screening all the shirts and the sweatshirts, and printing the posters, and doing all the orders... um... and, so Astro Pitch pretty much worked with Ralph America, and then Anticon, which is a San Francisco Bay Area... uh, kind of alternative hip-hop record label...
Miss Doop:
Mmhmm.
Sparky:
So, very kind of opposite ends of the spectrum, um... they were looking for a web designer. I know nothing about web design.
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
But I'd... emailed them, like... I had, in the past, made a Flash animation for "Bach is Dead". And it was awful.
Miss Doop:
Oh.
Sparky:
It was absolutely awful. Um... it does not exist, thankfully, any more. [laughs]
Miss Doop:
Oh, good.
Sparky:
[laughs] Um...
Miss Doop:
"Hmm... did I do that?" [laughs]
Sparky:
Uh, it was... it was some weird tentacle monster dancing to "Bach is Dead". So I sent it to them, and they were, like, "hey, yeah, you are not qualified for that other job..." [laughing]
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
"But, if you just wanted to be an intern, feel free." And I'm, like, "great". And... an intern like that, it's pretty much just, you know... putting labels on packages, and mailing stuff out, and picking up coffee, I mean there's... pretty... uh, mundane work for a... I think I would have been nineteen at the time. Um... but, I had a lot of fun. And eventually, uh, in 2004, there was... the Commercial DVD was released. And they were having a screening party in this giant warehouse, this huge warehouse, they were doing a screening of the Commercial DVD. And, um... oh, I should back up, because this is where I got Sparky.
Miss Doop:
[unclear] Whoa.
Sparky:
I was such an enthusiastic go-getter at Astro Pitch... the... you know, you got this kid, I was driving... probably, like, fifty miles round trip each day to go work unpaid, to go stuff envelopes and get coffee and pick up lunch, and they were like "man, you're... enthusiastic like a little dog!" [laughs] "Sparky!"
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
[pants]
Miss Doop:
Uh, yeah, that's perfect, like... [laughs]

Meeting Hardy Fox

Sparky:
So... that's, that's where the name came from, because I was just such a bright-eyed go-getter. And... so we were doing this screening at this, uh... it's at this warehouse in Oakland. And they were, like, "we need to get... uh, this projector, um... Hardy Fox has it in his storage unit, can you drive up and go pick it up?" And... you know, that's just, like... [dramatically hyperventilates]
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
"What... what? What are you... what are you talking about?"
Miss Doop:
[dramatically hyperventilates]
Sparky:
And... and, um... so... you know, I'm just, like... kind of... kind of... uh, overflowing at this concept, this idea of driving up to go pick up a projector from Hardy. And it turns out he actually lived... like, five miles from where I grew up?
Miss Doop:
[laughs] Mm?
Sparky:
So it was really convenient. It was, like, "oh, I... I know exactly where that is, I can get there." And, it was... kind of funny when you think about The Residents being... kind of hiding in plain sight. And for me... with...
Miss Doop:
Mm. They're residing.
Sparky:
I have passed this man's house... hundreds of times. Hundreds of times.
Miss Doop:
Whoa.
Sparky:
And just had no clue. And it just... it's even kind of more fun that way. So we go out to lunch.
Miss Doop:
[unclear] Yeah?
Sparky:
And just completely hit it off. Just... such a... kind... genuine... intellectually smart - on the fringe...
Miss Doop:
Yeah?
Sparky:
...individual. And, he'd just... be very gentle and soft spoken, and had a way of just making you feel important. You know, I was a nobody. I was a nineteen year old college kid who just really liked the music, and he just made you feel like... such a... important person. And so we just really, really hit it off. Um... and... maybe, um... we had lunch a couple of times... uh... over the next few months. And, um... he was really into Halo. I don't know if you know Halo...
Miss Doop:
[laughs] What?! [unclear]
Sparky:
Yep. Hardy was a big gamer.
Miss Doop:
That's intense... I don't... [laughs] That's... that's a scoop. I don't think I've ever heard this. [laughs]
Sparky:
Uh... in fact, I have Hardy's Xbox One in my garage right now. [laughs] So...
Miss Doop:
I...
Sparky:
Um...
Miss Doop:
[laughing] I don't know how to react to this! [laughs]
Sparky:
You don't need to react to it! It's just...
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
It's just... what it is.
Miss Doop:
Yeah!
Sparky:
Um... he was a huge... it... it's not that he loved all games.
Miss Doop:
No, yeah.
Sparky:
What he loved about Halo was that you could play the game however you want. You could approach any encounter however you want. If you didn't have to follow what the programmers intended. The... yes, there's the intended path, but you could just walk around everything...
Miss Doop:
Mmhmm.
Sparky:
...or you could... you know, choose to engage, or not engage, or... glitch out on the map... he just loved the amount of freedom that it gave. And so we would just get... and he didn't have a lot of other people around that he could just play video games with, so...
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
He'd invite me over, and we would just... two player, play Halo a bunch. [laughing]
Miss Doop:
That's insane. That's... wow.
Sparky:
So... um... uh... we just kind of bonded over that. And then, like, that January...
Miss Doop:
Oh.
Sparky:
...'cause that was originally in, like, October, that we met.
Miss Doop:
Yeah.

The Way We Were tour

Sparky:
And that January, February, it's like... we got approached by... oh, he invited me over at night. And it's like, at night? Like, what... wha... what are we gonna do? He's like, "just come on by". So I go over, and he's like, "we've been approached... The Residents have been approached by... uh, What Is Music? festival in Australia. And I'm like, uh... [unclear] He's like, "they want The Residents to headline the festival, and our normal tour manager that we work with, Hein Fokker, it just wouldn't be... uh, it just wouldn't make sense to fly him from the Netherlands out to San Francisco, and then out to Australia. So, do you want to be the tour manager?" And I'm like, "I don't know what I'm doing."
Miss Doop:
[laughing] Ohh!
Sparky:
"I... don't know anything about this whatsoever." And he's like, "that's okay. We'll figure it out together." And I'm just like, "what?"
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
[unclear] Like... I've known you for, like, three months. And our relationship is playing Halo together and going out to lunch, and you want to just... put me in charge of this? And he's like, "yeah, yeah". So, I tried to talk myself out of the... tried to talk myself out of it a hundred times, like, "this seems too good to be true", um... but eventually I couldn't talk myself out of it anymore...
Miss Doop:
Yeah.
Sparky:
...and... went, and... you know, had an absolute blast. Um... it was... just complete and utter total shitshow, as far as the actual, um... shows were concerned, because it was non-stop technical glitches, errors. Um, some well known stories are when one of The Residents forgot, uh... their password to their computer on-stage.
Miss Doop:
[laughs]
Sparky:
And, um, could not get it... so they're meant to start the show, and they have the, uh, Ableton Live software to start the backing tracks...
Miss Doop:
Mmhmm.
Sparky:
...and stuff like that. And the computer had been shut down without their knowledge. So they're on stage, and it's shut down, so they have to reboot it, and then it comes to the... you know, in your password, and they just completely froze. Completely, like, "I don't know. I can't think right now, I'm on stage, we're supposed to be playing..." And that burst into a wild and crazy rendition of "Smelly Tongues".
Miss Doop:
Ohh.

--TRANSCRIPT INCOMPLETE (14:54-1:11:29 YET TO BE TRANSCRIBED)--

See also

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