A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · #

MY RECORD

COLLECTION

HOME· ARTISTS· ALBUMS· COUNTRY· LABELS· GENRES· WANTS

The Residents

Before The Residents, there was Primus (in my life that is). If it wouldn't have been for Les Claypool's own unabashed love of these legendary San Franciscans, I would probably never have gone on to discover them myself at an age when I was still very impressionable. Then came the love affair. No other band has ever occupied such a huge part of my musical life than The Residents (other than maybe The Pixies). I was simply obsessed with them and I quickly became one of those fanatical collectors (and I know there are many out there!) who needed absolutely everything they would put out. I know now that The Residents play a lot with this aspect of their cult status, releasing and deleting items at a frightening pace, causing their salivating fans to "buy or die" whatever they would put out regardless of the quality and relevance of an item (who cares if there's only one extra track? It's LIMITED!)

For anyone into strange music, The Residents were a godsend. Not only was the music bizarre, but practically all aspects of the band became food for the imagination: the anonymity and the costumes, the stories behind the recordings and how they got their name, the strange characters who would sometimes join them in their crusade, their love/hate relationship with pop music, unfinished movies, you name it. Practically all their albums were concept-based and you could spend hours pondering about what it was all about (some had helpful liner notes included). Even though a lot of it was done in a humorous way, there has always been an underlying bleakness to their music making it just that much more fascinating. No one sounded like The Residents back then and although many artists have been influenced by the group throughout the years, The Residents still remain outsiders today (they barely sound like their former selves anymore!). Primus, Nurse With Wound, Caroliner and Kemialliset Ystävät are just a few artists who have taken elements of The Residents' sound and adapted them to their own music. "The most famous group you've never heard of" indeed!

So years have passed. I have collected upwards of forty albums, singles, various collections... I even had some of the rarer albums released in limited editions from Ralph America that would go out-of-stock within hours! I was living in Sweden at the time and decided that I was to move back to my hometown of Montreal. I had approximately three-hundred CDs in my collection back then and I had to send them all back to Quebec. So I carefully packed them in cardboard boxes and sent them in five different packages (without insurance - you can see where I'm going with this right?). In one of those boxes was my entire Residents collection, all the albums, all the rare stuff, everything. In the end, three of the boxes reached their final destination intact, one of them was ripped open during the trip and it showed up on my doorstep in a special plastic postal bag with many CDs scratched or broken, their jewel cases cracked or missing... and the last package... just never showed up... it was lost (or stolen?)... I filed a claim with both the post office in Canada and in Sweden, but I hadn't insured so it was pretty much a lost cause. I was shattered. And even today, looking back, it still hurts and I wonder whatever really happened to that box.

We are now in 2005 and I only recently started purchasing them back. I'll start with the ESD Remastered albums (I had the "Classic" re-issues before) and then I'll start rummaging through Gemm or eBay to find the rarer ones. Mark my words: "I will get them back, slowly but surely... I'll get'em back!"

---