Talk:Doctor Dark
Quote Corner
"There is a project that they have been thinking about for three decades now: a modern opera called 'Doctor Dark', about two American teenagers who decided to commit suicide in 1985 after taking drugs together and going to Judas Priest concert. One succeeded; the other lived another year with a half-blown head. When The Residents once came across the horrifying images of an interview with that boy, they immediately knew: 'We have to do something with this.' Currently, they are talking to people at the San Francisco Conservatory, who seem very committed to this project. So it looks like 'Doctor Dark' will finally take shape.”
- Homer Flynn, Humo.be, December 27th 2021 (Translated from Dutch)
"They have just created about an hour’s worth of demo material, backing tracks, for what they hope will be a very modern theater piece. And you know, they’ve been in conversations with a guy who is a young, ambitious classical composer and conductor. And they just sent these tracks to him, to let him digest them. And these tracks, along with four pages of the plot points of what they see as the story of this. And it’s all based on a trial, I think back in the 80s, where two teenagers with far too much drugs and alcohol attempted suicide. And their parents then took Judas Priest and whoever their record label was, to court. The parents taking no responsibility for their kids on themselves, but of course, it had to be this horrible, negative heavy metal music. And they took them to court. And this was the late 80s, early 90s, something like that, and it got quite a bit of attention at the time.
Well, there was a filmmaker who went to see the trial and shot a documentary based on it, and he discovered that one of the two teenagers had only partially succeeded at blowing his head off, and he survived, and the filmmaker found him and actually shot interview footage with him. And, you know, seeing this interview footage is like a train wreck that you can’t take your eyes off of. And The Residents saw this and became extremely fascinated by it, and have been interested in doing a piece based on this ever since. And so, that’s what this is. The working title for it is Dr. Dark. And it’s something that, the material that’s been done so far will almost undoubtably form the basis for their next album, and hopefully will be this kind of modern theatre piece/opera somewhere two or three years from now.
I think the documentary is called Dream Deceivers, and I think it’s available on YouTube."
-Homer Flynn, The Los Angeles Beat, June 9th, 2022
"The Residents are currently working on a new album based on Dr Kevorkian which they hope will become a modern opera"
-Homer Flynn, Stereo Embers Magazine, March 25th, 2023
"Right now, they are working on their own original stuff and have a brand-new album that is almost finished. It’s called ‘Doctor Dark’ and it’s kind of a combination of more symphonic stuff on one hand and then kind of more heavy metal kind of stuff on the other. Edwin Outwater is gonna be arranging and having some of his students play some of the more orchestral parts of it. [...] I’m very interested in AI art and I have used it and utilized it. I mean, it is very controversial from my point of view. I really see it as a tool. What I’ve been doing with it recently is I’ve been using it to create all the packaging for ‘Doctor Dark,’ the new album. The album primarily has three characters in it and so I’ve been trying to create visual representations of these characters with AI art and I’ve been pretty successful with it.
-Homer Flynn, It's Psychedelic Bay Magazine, February 22nd, 2024