October
21st marks the 35th anniversary of The Residents most unlikely
commercial success, Stars & Hank Forever!, which was issued on this
day in 1986. It was Volume II in their American Composer Series, which
began two years earlier with the release of the George & James
album. For this second volume, the composers were Hank Williams on side
one and John Philip Sousa on side two. Though the American Composer
Series was intended to span as many as 10 volumes over 16 years, the
project was abruptly abandoned after this second volume due to various
logistical difficulties. These, in part, involved rising costs for
licensing fees and the incompatibility of the project’s structure with
the emerging CD format. The American Composer Series was built around
two composers per release occupying separate sides of an LP. With CDs
usurping vinyl at the time as the dominant release format, the split
side concept didn’t work anymore.
To say the album was
commercially successful does not necessarily mean that it was critically
or artistically so, though it does have certain moments. While the
first volume, which covered works by James Brown and George Gershwin,
offered a lot of giddy interpretations for the group to indulge in,
their irreverent approach maybe didn’t serve the revered nature of Hank
Williams’ legacy. However, their toe tapping take on Kaw-Liga, which
mounted the familiar “Indian” lament atop a rhythm section lifted
straight from Michael Jackson’s hit, Billie Jean, proved to be extremely
club friendly and The Residents found themselves suddenly in the
unfamiliar position of being DJ faves in the underground clubs of the
mid 1980s. Releasing the track in an extended 12” remixed format helped
drive its popularity even more. That hit aside, however, their
versions of other Williams classics like Jambalaya may have been seen by
some as disrespectful, though personally, I find the Williams side
pretty consistently enjoyable.
The Sousa side, on the other hand,
offers up a far more challenging listening experience. The bombast of
parade and marching music makes for some pretty brittle listening and
the arrangements, with their accompanying sound effects intended to
recreate the ambiance of a live parade, leave the whole side long mix of
songs sounding jarring and alienating. A remix of this material
without the sound FX was later released separately, though I’ve not
bothered to check out that version.
The saddest aspect of this
album is the fact it contains the last recordings done with frequent
collaborator and unofficial “fifth” Resident, innovative guitar genius
Snakefinger, before his untimely and tragic passing. This fatal blow
was something of a culmination to a turbulent time for the band, which
had gone through a lot of struggle thus far in the decade. With the
Mole Trilogy faltering and failing to resolve itself into a completed
project, its accompanying live tour nearly bankrupting them and then the
American Composer Series going off the rails after only two volumes,
the loss of Snakefinger must have dealt a serious blow to the group’s
resolve. It’s no wonder they’d turn their attention to the realm of
faith and religion with their next major project, God In Three Persons.
Though this represented the end of the composer series, they would do a
collection of Elvis Presley songs a few years later in 1989 for The
King & Eye album.
