Skeleton Crew

Skeleton Crew arose from a partnership between Fred Frith, the alternative guitarist who had previously worked with Henry Cow, and Tom Cora, an experimental cellist and multi-instrumentalist based in the Bay Area. Although the pair began strictly as a duo and later received occasional support from Zeena Parkins on keyboards and harp, they traveled widely, mixing experimental rock, noise, and folk approaches, and once devoted an entire concert solely to Eastern European folk pieces. In performance both players triggered drums with their feet while their hands moved across assorted stringed instruments, either factory-made or homemade, and incorporated tape cut-ups drawn chiefly from material addressing America’s growing military presence abroad during the height of the Reagan years. After signing with Rift Records, they worked in wintry Switzerland to complete Learn to Talk in 1984 and Country of Blinds in 1986, the second of which included Zeena Parkins and was produced by Henry Cow’s Tim Hodgkinson. Enough unreleased material reportedly existed for a third album that never appeared, although a royalty-free sample collection intended “for use in your own art work” at a price of “only” $100 did surface. The two original albums were subsequently combined on a single CD. Tom Cora died in 1998.