This album is full of eclectic songs - some mellow and acoustic, most electric and super-charged - with lots of words, stops, noises, and time changes.

18 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Hard Rock, ROCK: College Rock

Details:
Skeleton Crew formed in Starkville, MS in 1987. Their first name was Calamity Jane, then Skeleton Crew, and then, sadly, Torture Orchid, which really did sort of seem like a good idea at the time. The first song they ever played together was Poison's "Talk Dirty to Me," though they eventually moved on to more artful songs like Motley Crue's "Wildside" and Slayer's cover of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vita." Their first stab at original material resulted in two instrumentals, "Prime Mover" and "Something Completely Different," with a little ditty called "U.V.A." following soon after. The band recorded the three songs previously mentioned plus four more at Miller Recording (on Highway 25, Starkville) and subsequently released the Rage EP in late winter 1990. A ridiculously coincidental encounter with a woman named Melissa who worked at local station WKOR got "U.V.A." played over and over again on local radio, which eventually led to the song's semi-mythic status throughout the southeastern U.S. and beyond. As for live performance, their first-ever gig was at Bob's in Columbus, MS in 1988 opening for a band that contained two future members of Blind Melon. Skeleton Crew eventually played all over the Southeast during 1990-1992 (opening for Better than Ezra here, Blind Melon there) and also recorded a bunch of songs on their own. After moving to Los Angeles in 1992, Skeleton Crew played some neat shows at places like Al's Bar in ultra-seedy downtown L.A. and Raji's in Hollywood (a famous picture exists of Kurt Cobain playing there). They rubbed elbows with Big Star's Jody Stephens, to no career-oriented avail, and also received a very kind rejection letter from Jello Biafra. They closed out the first stage of their time together by writing some neat new songs and recording them at Andre Champagne's studio before breaking up in November 1993. Tim and Craig went on to greater success in Go! Dog! Go!; John went solo for awhile before joining Men from Nantucket and then forming the Persians, the Tuffskinz, and Ex-Supermodel. They are delighted to be together again.

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