Skeleton Crew was an American experimental rock and jazz group from 1982 to 1986, comprising core members Fred Frith and Tom Cora, with Zeena Parkins joining later.

[2] In her 1990 book, Sonic Transports: New Frontiers in Our Music, Nicole V. Gagné called the group "one of the hottest and imaginative rock acts I've ever heard.

[5][6] But before their first performance, Maher and Schellenbaum both suffered collapsed lungs within two weeks of each other, leaving Frith and Cora with the choice of continuing on their own or abandoning the project.

[5] Gagné wrote that to make their live performances more challenging, Skeleton Crew played their roughly 50-minute sets with very few breaks, running most of their songs into one another.

[3] Even when things occasionally went wrong for the duo, equipment malfunctions, missed cues, falling out-of-step with each other, Gagné said the audiences still enthusiastically spurred the band on.

[4] Newhouse left after the tour, but its success gave Frith and Cora the confidence to continue as a duo, and they performed over one hundred concerts in Europe, North America and Japan over the next eighteen months.

Tapes also featured throughout the album: Ronald Reagan saying "We're still free in America", cut-ups of Sousa's "Washington Post" and TV ad clips.

As a trio, they made their second studio album The Country of Blinds in 1986 (again in Switzerland and produced by ex-Henry Cow member Tim Hodgkinson).