Remy Zero
Geffen Records
Remy Zero was born Remy Boligee in Chelsea, Alabama about 1950. At around 16 he left home for Birmingham and found a job unloading trains outside the city. By 1969 he was living in a shack in a railroad worker's shantytown and had begun writing the first of hundreds of highly idiosyncratic songs. Around this time, he befriended Sam Bruno, a second-generation immigrant whose family would create a supermarket empire throughout the south.
Bruno had acquired an early model reel-to-reel tape recorder and decided to use it to record the songs of Remy Zero. Together they methodically filled almost thirty hours of tape with music, conversation, ramblings, and long periods of relative silence (in which trains, dogs, and distant voices populate an eerily vivid sound picture of his world).
By 1970, Bruno having since lost count of Remy Zero gave his recorder and two large boxes of tapes to the 12 year old Shelby Tate, whose parents were close friends with the Brunos.
Shelby was entranced by the strange recordings
and having no other tapes, played them constantly.
By 1988, he and his brother Cinjun had started a
band with their friends Cedric LeMoyne, Jeffrey
Cain, and Greg Slay. They eventually found
themselves playing exclusively the songs from the
Remy Zero tapes and decided that while free to
rearrange, reinterpret, or recreate the songs in
varying ways, they would always preserve the
essence of the originals.
When they had a chance to make a record they
adhered to this idea and even included snippets
from the original recordings. Their bewildering
music is sometimes highly expressionistic,
sometimes bare and fractured and overall
impossible to categorize.
The band and record company made numerous
attempts to locate Remy Zero and his relatives but
have so far been unsuccessful. It is hoped by using
his name, Zero will come to hear of the band and
perhaps establish contact.
last updated:
08/10/01
Similar Artists:
Radiohead, Quagmire, Styx, Elbow
Other Suggestions:
Creeper Lagoon,
Versus,
Pink Floyd,
The Flaming Lips,
Primal Scream,
Blur,
South (U.K.),
Tindersticks,
for Stars,
MK Ultra,
Six By Seven,
National Skyline,
Aspera Ad Astra,
Sigur Ros,
Clinic,
Tracer,
Interpol,
Bedroom Heroes,
The Race,
Vinyl Star,
Chaotic Past,
20 Minute Loop
