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The Residents' record collection

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The record room, pictured ca

The Sycamore Street record room, pictured ca. 1973-1974; part of The Residents' record collection can be seen in shelves at the upper right of the picture

In the 1970s The Residents frequently shopped for records at thrift stores,[1] as well as major retailers such as Tower Records in Sacramento, California, where they often purchased "literally armloads" of albums and singles (mostly promotional copies) at bargain basement prices. This allowed them to quickly build a substantial communal collection of 12" and 7" records by the time they moved out of their Sycamore Street studio and communal living space in June 1976.[2] By the early 1980s, the collection had grown to encompass around two thousand albums.[1]

At Sycamore Street, the record collection was categorized by genre and kept in shelves on the wall of an upstairs room, referred to variously as the TV or record room. As of 1973, around half of the collection consisted of rock albums, with the entire bottom shelf containing "jazz albums, classical music, movie soundtracks... a lot of foreign albums... particularly Chinese music... rhythm and blues music... electronics albums and avant-garde... representative of everything".[3] The collection is known to have contained "a bunch of Sun Ra" and "a lot of Morricone records", as well as rock artists such as Led Zeppelin and Blue Öyster Cult.[1]

The Sycamore Street record room also contained a stereo system with tape deck and turntable, feeding a system of speakers running throughout the top floor of the building. The speaker system was controllable by a series switches, allowing a Resident to select which room the music was fed into. The room also contained a jukebox, kept across the room from the 45rpm collection, which contained over one hundred of the group's favorite 7" singles (including their own Santa Dog EP). Adorning the jukebox was a life-size stuffed toy collie, which the group picked up around 1971.[3]

Members of the group are known to have compiled reel-to-reel tapes for friends featuring hand-picked selections from their record collection,[4] and spent untold hours rifling through the collection, researching their favorite composers when producing their own music. The collection was moved to the group's second studio and office space on Grove Street in June 1976, though none of the members of the group lived in the new building.[2] At Grove Street, the record collection was kept in the building's upper level, which was used primarily for storage.[1]

List of records owned by The Residents[]

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12" albums[]

7" singles and EPs[]

  • The Bulldogs - "John, Paul, George and Ringo" / "What Do I See?" (1964)[4]
  • Herb Dodson - "A Disk Jockey's Christmas Eve" / "What Is A Disk Jockey?" (1963)[4]
  • Marshall Efron - Neutrino News Network EP (1972)[4]

Jukebox[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ The layout of the American LP, Meet The Beatles, was parodied by Porno Graphics to create the cover art for The Residents' debut album Meet The Residents in 1974; "All I've Got to Do", "All My Loving" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" were sampled in "Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life" in 1977.
  2. ↑ "Yellow Submarine" and "Love You To" were sampled in The Residents' "Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life" in 1977.
  3. ↑ "A Day in the Life" was sampled in The Residents' "Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life" in 1977; the group also performed "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" with the London Sinfonietta at a live tribute concert in 2007.
  4. ↑ "The End" and "Her Majesty" were sampled in The Residents' "Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life" in 1977.
  5. ↑ The Beatles' Third Christmas Record was sampled in The Residents' "Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life" in 1977; this fan club release was unavailable in America until the release of the promotional Christmas Album in 1970.
  6. ↑ The Residents covered the album (in concentrated form) for George & James in 1984; edited crowd noises on the 2019 live album In Between Dreams Live were intended as a homage to the crowd noise on Live at the Apollo.
  7. ↑ "Der Twist Beginnt" was sampled in The Residents' "Swastikas on Parade" in 1976.
  8. ↑ "Hunters of Heaven" was sampled in The Residents' "Lightning" in 1972.
  9. ↑ "God" was sampled in The Residents' "Beyond The Valley Of A Day In The Life" in 1977.
  10. ↑ Amadeo Roldán's "Ritmica no.5 (Tiempo de son)" was sampled in The Residents' "Explosion" in 1972.
  11. ↑ The Residents are known to have listened "intently" to Morricone's soundtrack music as late as 1981 in researching their own projects; "Magic and Ecstasy" was particularly inspirational, being covered by The Residents with Snakefinger in 1979, and inspiring their own composition "The Sleeper" around the same time.
  12. ↑ The cover art of Residents, Uninc.'s 1971 demo tape B.S. was designed to mirror the cover art of Randy Newman Live; The Residents also planned to include a version of "Lonely At The Top" in their unfinished feature film Vileness Fats.
  13. ↑ "Peter Gunn" was sampled in The Residents' "Fire" in 1972.
  14. ↑ "One Boy" and "Kids" were sampled on The Pre-Residents' demo tape Rusty Coathangers for the Doctor in 1970.

See also[]

External links and references[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "They weren't really record collectors. They would go to thrift shops and buy records, and they liked, you know... Sun Ra and Led Zeppelin, so... upstairs there were like... about two thousand albums, and it was all... you know, people would say "really, it would be that?"... there would be Blue Öyster Cult or something... but you know, there was a bunch of Sun Ra too... there was always, you know... Morricone, a lot of Morricone records..." Tom Timony (interviewed by Nate Goyer), "Ep 137: Ralph Records with Tom Timony", The Vinyl Guide, September 10th 2018
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Ian Shirley, Never Known Questions: Five Decades of The Residents, 2015
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Hardy Fox, "The Ralph Records Guided Tour", 1974
  4. ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 William Reinhardt, "Residents Novelty Hits", The Residents unofficial Facebook group, May 22nd 2019
  5. ↑ Homer Flynn (interviewed by Nate Goyer), "Ep 401: Homer Flynn pREServes The Residents", The Vinyl Guide, June 19th 2023
  6. ↑ Hardy Fox, "Ask Hardy shit", Hacienda Bridge no. 19, July 1st 2017
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