Skeleton Crew

Skeleton Staff was a two-album task from ex-Henry Cow alternative guitarist Fred Frith and experimental Bay Region cellist and multi-instrumentalist Tom Cora. Shaped being a duo, both (sometimes augmented by Zeena Parkins on keyboards and harp) toured thoroughly with a combined mix of experimental rock and roll, sound, and folk music, also playing one concert of only Eastern Western european folk music. On stage, both music artists operated drums using their foot, while busying their hands with different stringed musical instruments, professional or homemade. Tape lower ups had been also area of the efficiency, mostly samples regarding America’s increasing armed forces world function (this is during the elevation from the Reagan period). On record — the group agreed upon to Rift Information — the visuals aren’t there, however the musical invention can be. Holed up within a wintry Switzerland for both periods, they recorded Figure out how to Chat (1984) and Nation of Window blinds (1986), the last mentioned offering Zeena Parkins and made by Henry Cow’s Tim Hodgkinson. It really is rumored that there is enough material for any third album, nonetheless it by no means materialized. (A royalty-free test album did, nevertheless, “for use within your own fine art” — the price was “just” $100). Both initial albums had been repackaged later as you CD. Cora passed away in 1998.