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The American Composers Series

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The American Composers Series (alternately The American Composer Series or American Composer's Series) was a project undertaken by The Residents beginning with the release of George & James in 1984, and ending with the release of Stars & Hank Forever in 1986.

The series was originally conceived to contain ten releases, featuring a total of twenty composers, to be released over a period of sixteen years, ending after the turn of the century in 2001. However, only two albums (with a further three related singles) were completed and released before the series was abandoned in 1986.

History

Concept

Residents graphic created with the Apple II for George & James, 1984

After the disastrous Mole Show tour almost brought the group to the point of breaking up entirely in 1983, The Residents decided that they needed a different sort of project to work on, outside of the Mole Trilogy concept, so they decided to take the idea of "music about music" to its logical extreme with a ambitious, long-term project called The American Composer Series (later referred to with the plural, as The American Composers Series).

The series was to be made up of explorations of the music of various American composers, one to each side of each album. The idea was to break down the mythologies surrounding the celebrated composers and to get straight to the ideas in the music - somewhat akin to imposing the Theory of Obscurity on famous musicians.

The Residents thus set themselves the goal of creating ten albums, each covering two composers (one per side of the album), to be released over a period of sixteen years, beginning in 1984 and ending after the end of the century (and millennium) in the year 2001.[1]

Releases and abandonment

George & James, 1984

The first album, George & James, covered George Gershwin and James Brown. The Residents followed this with John Philip Sousa and Hank Williams, Sr. on Stars & Hank Forever.

Stars & Hank Forever!, 1986

The new CD technology was starting to catch on and with everyone buying up the CD rights to music, The Residents could no longer afford to play in this seller's market - especially with Ralph Records' financial troubles. The group also felt that CDs were unsuited to the whole project, since one of the composers would naturally have to come before the other on the disc, giving a false impression of priority.

Despite the termination of the project in 1986, the concept of the series would inform the group's work throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s in the form of the Cube-E tour and The King & Eye album, among others.

Unfinished installments

There have been varying reports as to what would have been the third album in The American Composers Series. An album titled The Trouble With Harrys (which would have featured the music of Harry Partch and Harry Nilsson) has been suggested,[2] but this does not appear to have been recorded before The Residents abandoned the series.

The group had started work on a planned album featuring Sun Ra paired with Ray Charles, titled Ray 'n Ra,[3][Note 1] with at least four tracks for this project having been partially recorded.[2] A cover of Charles' "Hit The Road Jack" was released as a single in 1987, although The Residents later claimed this was apparently not intended for inclusion on the proposed album.[2]

A fifth entry titled Bob & The Blob (featuring the works of Bob Dylan paired with Barry White), was also proposed, but does not appear to have been recorded; however White is referenced in the track "Daydream In Space" (which also features a cover of Sun Ra's "Space is the Place"), which was later released on the UWEB outtakes compilation Daydream B-Liver.

Other artists The Residents planned to feature in the series included Stephen Foster, Captain Beefheart, Charles Ives, Smokey Robinson, Bob Dylan,[1] Stevie Wonder, Scott Joplin, Brian Wilson, Moondog, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Mingus, Willie Dixon and Allen Toussaint.[2]

A supposed outtake from the American Composers Series sessions, "That'll Be the Day (Baby Baby)", was released in July 2023 as a limited edition 7" single included with copies of the book A Sight For Sore Eyes, Vol. 2.

Interactive media

An "interactive book" edition of George & James was released by Euro Ralph in 1994; essentially a CD reissue of the original album, this edition included bonus 3.5" floppy disks which featured a (somewhat) interactive slideshow with a unique essay on the album, designed to be viewed and read while listening to the CD. George & James was the second and final Residents album to be issued in the "interactive book" format, following The Third Reich 'n Roll.

The Residents briefly considered reviving the American Composers Series in the CD-ROM format in the mid-1990s, however no releases eventuated.[4]

pREServed CD set

The pREServed three CD set American Composer's Series 1982-1987, released June 2025

An American Composers Series CD box set was intended for release in the group's expansive pREServed series of reissues in 2019 as The American Composers Box, at an unknown time after the release of the Mole Box in April. This release was delayed, however, as there were additional materials they wanted to include in the set which they had not yet been able to locate in the archives.

The set was further delayed, due to rights issues over one element of the planned set. The set, now reduced to three discs and retitled American Composer's Series (1982-1987), was later announced to have been finalized in March 2025, and was finally released in June 2025.

The series

Abandoned installments

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 The plan to pair the music of Sun Ra with that of Ray Charles under the album title Ray 'n Ra is mentioned in at least two sources, however the liner notes of the 2023 single "That'll Be the Day (Baby Baby)" claim that the work of Sun Ra was instead to be paired with the music of Buddy Holly under the title Sons of the South: Buddy and Sonny. Although a demo version of Holly's "That'll Be the Day" was recorded at the time, the liner notes of the 2025 pREServed collection American Composer's Series 1982-1987 describe "a certain hesitance" to assign the song to a specific American Composers Series project.
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Homer Flynn, The Residents Show - WAVE special, 1985
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Jim Knipfel, "Indulging Themselves In The Great American Culture: The Residents In The Mid-Eighties", American Composer's Series 1982-1987 liner notes, 2025
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Jim Knipfel and Brian Poole, et al., Faceless Forever - A Residents Encyclopaedia, 2022, pg. 19
  4. ↑ Hardy Fox, HotWired chat appearance, June 20th 1995
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "That'll Be the Day (Baby Baby)" liner notes, 2023
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