This past month saw The Residents: Re-Viewed open at the Museum of Modern Art. It was both an exhibit and a promotional tour, featuring six new videos inspired by the same 90-second clip from the band’s River of Crime. It was less inspiring to realize that MoMA was serving the same purpose as rock clubs back when The Residents booked a tour of its videos in the early ’80s.

Hardy Fox, serving as the band’s representative from the Cryptic Corporation headquarters, has a spin to keep that from seeming nostalgic: “It’s sort of a natural progression, isn’t it? As people get older and more mature, the way their history is looked at also matures.”

That’s a nice way of saying that we’re all becoming museum pieces. To be fair, The Residents is as modern as ever. River of Crime and the new Tweedles album are demanding and ambitious. The band also recently pulled off a marketing maneuver brilliant in its simplicity.

River of Crime was originally presented as digital downloads, with the band offering blank CDs in a case with complete artwork. Simply upload the content via an access code—included in the cost of the artwork—and you have genuine product. That kind of thing could save music retail.

Fox, however, adds a note of simple perverse enjoyment. “The idea of releasing a blank CD,” he explains, “was just too fascinating for the band to pass up. Record companies think in terms of what’s safest. They’re scared to take a chance—and, realistically, rightfully so. What we’ve done also creates a lot of confusion. Some of our customers don’t understand what the blank CDs are. Record companies don’t have to deal with those people over the phone.”

That’s a sad truth leading to the other sad truth of the MoMA exhibit. You might think Residents discs are handed out at college orientation. In truth, any band that’s been around since 1972 has an aging audience.

“Absolutely,” says Fox. “There’s an audience for whom downloading is a complete mystery. They like going to the shop and flipping through the physical product. We thought this would be the happy medium. Maybe we’ll start putting blank CDs in nice packages, and then they can fill them with other people’s music, as well.”

That same audience can now buy River of Crime as a traditional release. Tweedles is just as easily found on a Warners subsidiary. In fact, The Residents are currently under contract to two separate Warners subsidiaries. That’s pretty good for a band that’s spent its career refusing to do interviews or even reveal its members’ identities.

Which leaves Fox (frequently rumored as a Resident himself) in a weird position. “Listen,” he explains, “I’ve had to turn down CNN. It’s weird because people want to know how The Residents think, and that’s not easy for me to respond to. I have to make it clear that I don’t know. People want information from the band. They don’t want to talk to me. That’s fine with me. I don’t care—but record companies do.”