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Remy Zero Information
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'Remy Zero' was an Alabama based alternative rock band made up of Cinjun Tate (vocals, guitar), Shelby Tate (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Gregory Slay (drums), Cedric Lemoyne (bass), and Jeffery Cain (guitar).
Before recording any full length albums, Radiohead found their demo tape and invited them to be part of the US tour for The Bends. After that, they moved from Birmingham, Alabama to Los Angeles, California to record their first album. Several band mates suffered from substance abuse and homelessness after moving from Alabama.
Their first album, self-titled, drew from these experiences and unfortunately received little recognition or sales. The subsequent album Villa Elaine caused them to be praised as "the next big thing". Villa Elaine was recorded when the band was living in an apartment of the same name in Hollywood. Remy Zero's third album The Golden Hum was also received well. A 30 second clip of the song "Save Me" from The Golden Hum was used as the theme song for WB's Smallville. Remy Zero's music has also been on KRCW's Morning Becomes Ecelectic radio show. Most recently Remy Zero's song "Fair" from Villa Ellaine was used in the film Garden State.
Remy Zero broke up after making The Golden Hum and many of its members have joined new bands. Shelby and Cinjun Tate have created Spartan Fidelity, Jeffrey Cain has joined Isidore and Gregory Slay has joined Sleepwell.
Discography
* Remy Zero (January 30, 1996)
* Villa Elaine (August 25, 1998)
* The Golden Hum (September 18, 2001)
Who was Remy Zero?
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.
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