Frenesi Gates
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Am I A Resident? The subject of this article contributed to the 2018 album I Am A Resident!. |
Anthony DeRobertis (July 5th 1988 - October 31st 2025),[1] better known to Residents fans by the pseudonym Frenesi Gates, was the founder and administrator of The Residents unofficial Facebook group. His pseudonym was derived from a character from the novel Vineland by Thomas Pynchon.
DeRobertis made a number of notable (and sometimes controversial) contributions to The Residents' fan culture, having been the person chiefly responsible for the leak of a sequence of snippets of the group's unreleased early demos on the Internet around 2009.[2]
DeRobertis contributed to I Am A Resident! in 2018, submitting a cover of "Fire" and "Hitler Was A Vegetarian" which was ultimately mixed into the resulting album. He largely retired from the Residents fan community around 2019, although he made a brief return to the fandom beginning in 2024.
DeRobertis passed away on October 31st 2025 at the age of 37 in Stroudsberg, Pennsylvania, where he had lived his entire life. He is survived by his wife Gloria, his parents John and Marie, and his sisters Nicole and Michelle.[1]
Contributions to Residents fan culture
Anthony DeRobertis' earliest notable contribution to The Residents' fan culture was in 2009, when he leaked a sequence of snippets from the group's previously unheard early demo tapes Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor and The Ballad of Stuffed Trigger via the file sharing program Soulseek. DeRobertis claimed to have been sent the snippets (which are in notably higher quality than the low-quality mono versions of the demo tapes which leaked a few years later) by a "highly mysterious woman in Barcelona".[2]
The Cryptic Corporation's discovery of these leaks resulted in the closure of the Residents Lovers fan forum in 2010, and prompted then-President of The Cryptic Corporation Hardy Fox to issue a statement discouraging fans from hearing the material.[2] DeRobertis met Fox in person some years later, and admitted responsibility for the leak. DeRobertis has said that Fox hugged him and said he wasn't angry, just that he thought that the old material "wasn't very good", and sarcastically called DeRobertis a "naughty boy".[3]
DeRobertis created the unofficial Residents Facebook fan group in February 2018. The group has since become the most active discussion point for The Residents on Facebook, and arguably, the Internet as a whole, with frequent contributions from Residents associates and collaborators such as William Reinhardt, Margaret Swaton, Graeme Whifler, Nolan Cook and Richard Anderson, among several others. In the same year, DeRobertis contributed a mash-up cover version of "Fire" and "Hitler Is A Vegetarian" to the group's collaborative project I Am A Resident!, which was featured on the completed album.
DeRobertis met Homer Flynn, "Captain Doc" of The Cryptic Corporation in August 2018 at a reading and book signing of The Brick-Eaters. By the following year, DeRobertis had largely retired from The Residents' fan community following a number of public disagreements with figures related to the group, however he continued to make occasional appearances in the Facebook group and other online Residents discussion groups in the years leading up to his death on October 31st 2025 at the age of 37.[1]
See also
External links and references
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Anthony DeRobertis obituary at Legacy.com
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "...I may have been the person responsible for leaking those snippets to Soulseek in like 2009... They came to me from a highly mysterious woman in Barcelona... The leak caused H.Fox to issue a statement... and a Residents forum was closed down as a result" - Frenesi Gates, The Residents Facebook group, April 26th 2018
- ↑ "When I met him he hugged me.. he said he was not 'mad' over the leak. He just thought that old stuff "wasn't very good"... Hardy also called me a 'naughty boy'. Very sarcastically lol" - Frenesi Gates, The Residents Facebook group, 26th April 2018