We use cookies on our website to provide you with the best experience. Most of these are essential and already present.
We do require your explicit consent to save your cart and browsing history between visits. Read about cookies we use here.
Your cart and preferences will not be saved if you leave the site.

The Residents

The Residents are an American art collective and art rock band best known for their avant-garde music and multimedia works. Since their first official release, Meet the Residents (1974), they have released over 60 albums. Throughout the group's existence, the individual members have ostensibly attempted to work anonymously, preferring to have attention focused on their art. Much speculation and rumor has focused on this aspect of the group. In public, they appear silent and costumed, often wearing eyeball helmets, top hats and tails—a costume now recognized as their signature iconography.

The Residents are an American art collective and art rock band best known for their avant-garde music and multimedia works. Since their first official release, Meet the Residents (1974), they have released over 60 albums. Throughout the group's existence, the individual members have ostensibly attempted to work anonymously, preferring to have attention focused on their art. Much speculation and rumor has focused on this aspect of the group. In public, they appear silent and costumed, often wearing eyeball helmets, top hats and tails—a costume now recognized as their signature iconography.

Sam's Enchanted Evening
Sam's Enchanted Evening is a Residential version of a one man show in cabaret format. It stars Randy Rose as Sam, who shares stories and songs from his life that have the most meaning to him. The first public performance was a shorter experimental production entitled So Long Sam, and included a small string orchestra at the Berkeley Art Museum. A year later the first workshop performance took place, with the players now consisting of just Sam and a piano player. In spring of 2012 another set of …
Commercial Album
Tip! Commercial Album is an album released by art rock group the Residents in 1980. It is commonly considered a follow-up to their 1978 album Duck Stab/Buster & Glen, in that it retains the former album's pop-oriented song structures. The album contains 40 songs, each lasting exactly one minute - a deliberate allusion to Top 40 mainstream radio. The album's liner notes state that, to form a complete pop song, tracks from the album should be played three times in a row. The album features a numbe…
Eskimo
Tip! In 1979 "punk" music was all the rage. The Residents had gone though the punk stage three years earlier with the release of "Satisfaction" and were ready for anything that was not punk. They decided it was a good time to make the jump into world music, since by their own calculations it would not become popular for several more years. They scanned the map for a proper culture to exploit and, not finding one, became discouraged until seeing a large Coke sign featuring Santa Claus. Immediatel…
Not Available
Tip! This is one of the strangest and most interesting recordings in rock history, which speaks volumes coming from one of the strangest and more interesting bands in rock history. Not Available used what was referred to as "the theory of obscurity" (which called for the album to not be released until its makers literally forgot about its existence). It is said to be, questionably, the Residents' second recorded album (in 1974, only to be released in 1978 after utilizing "the theory of obscurity…
So Long Sam (1945 - 2006)
So Long Sam (1945-2006) is a two disc compilation by The Residents, containing a live recording and a collection of demos from their 2010 one-off live show of the same name (itself an early version of the one-man show Sam's Enchanted Evening, later performed by lead singer Randy Rose in Berkeley, California in 2011 and 2012). It was released by Austrian label Klanggalerie on September 19th 2022. Four songs from this performance were previously issued as a four-track EP in June 2010 through the g…
Blorp Esette Volume One
Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle. Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah R…
Cube-E Box: The History Of American Music In 3 E-Z Pieces
"In the late 1980s The Residents embarked on what many fans still consider their greatest live project. Cube-E: The History Of American Music In 3 E-Z Pieces spanned almost four years and proposed to do nothing less than its title suggested, telling the story of American popular music, from its birth around the campfires of a non-existent Old West to its death at the hands of Elvis and the British Invasion, all in three easy pieces. Performed on TV and on stage around the world between 1987 and …
I Am A Resident!
Produced with The Cryptic Corporation, and with full access to The Residents' extensive tape archive, teaming up with PledgeMusic, The Residents is releasing not just a new album but a completely new concept: I Am A Resident! After inviting their fans to create original versions of the band's songs, The Residents were blown away by the submission of 197 amazing pieces of music. Stimulated by this outpouring of creativity, the group molded this material into the ultimate mashup: editing, looping,…
The Third Reich 'N' Roll
The classic 1976 album remastered from the original tapes plus 11 unreleased recordings! Formed in the early 1970s, The Residents have been charting a unique path through the musical landscape for over 45 years. From far-out, experimental curiosities to highly conceptual, multi-album projects, the band has refused to stand still, and continues to move in several different directions at once. Produced with the involvement of The Cryptic Corporation, and with full access to the band's extensive ta…
1