The Minus 5

For the album of the same name, see The Minus 5 (album).

The Minus 5
The Minus 5 (left to right: Ramberg, Buck, Rieflin, McCaughey) perform at the Georgia Theatre in Athens, Georgia on April 1, 2006
Background information
Also known as	The Bison-Flavored Minus 5, The Minus Tad
Origin	United States
Years active	1993–present
Labels	Yep Roc
Associated acts	Mark Eitzel, Robyn Hitchcock, R.E.M., Tuatara, Wilco, Young Fresh Fellows
Website	www.minus5.com
Members
Peter Buck Scott McCaughey John Ramberg Bill Rieflin
Past members
See List of Minus 5 members

The Minus 5 is an American rock band, headed by musician Scott McCaughey and featuring R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck.

Band history

Formed in 1993, McCaughey designed the Minus 5 as a pop collective, with each record the group put out featuring a new lineup. Throughout these releases, he worked the most frequently with R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, who was featured on the group's eponymous debut EP, which was only released through They Might Be Giants' mail-order record club, Hello CD of the Month Club in 1994.

Their full-length debut album Old Liquidator was released in 1995, and the Minus 5's lineup consisted of McCaughey, Buck, and Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of The Posies. After releasing Old Liquidator on East Side Digital, the group reconvened in late 1996 to record their Hollywood Records debut, The Lonesome Death of Buck McCoy, released the following spring. Also in 1996, McCaughey's 1989 solo album My Chartreuse Opinion was reissued by Hollywood as a Minus 5 album.

In 1999, the group accepted an invitation to participate in a tribute album to Moby Grape co-founder Skip Spence, who was terminally ill with cancer, for the purpose of raising funds to assist with medical expenses.^[1]

In 2001, the Minus Five and the Young Fresh Fellows, another McCaughey project, released a split double album, Let the War Against Music Begin/Because We Hate You; the "Let the War Against Music Begin" half was the Minus 5 submission.

After a change of guard at Hollywood Records, the Minus 5 found themselves releasing music via independent channels, with the Return to Sender label releasing a collection of outtakes from Let the War Against Music Begin called I Don't Know Who I Am before McCaughey signed the band to the Yep Roc label for his collaboration with Wilco, Down With Wilco. Yep Roc later issued an EP dominated by Down With Wilco outtakes, At the Organ, and reissued In Rock, a collection of tunes McCaughey recorded in a single day in 2000.

In 2002, the band contributed a track, "Girl I Never Met" to Rami Jaffee, Pete Yorn, and Marc Dauer's Trampoline Records release: Trampoline Records Volume I.

The band's seventh album, self-titled (but known as The Gun Album), was released early 2006, and features, along the regular line-up, guest appearances by Wilco, Kelly Hogan and The Decemberists' singer/songwriter Colin Meloy, among others.

Buck and McCaughey went on to play in The Baseball Project together in 2008.

The Minus 5 appeared on John Wesley Harding's 2009 release, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead and released Killingsworth later that year.

Discography

• Hello EP (CD) - Hello CD of the Month Club - 1994
• Old Liquidator (CD) - East Side Digital - 1995
• The Emperor of the Bathroom (CD) - East Side Digital - 1995
• The Lonesome Death of Buck McCoy - Hollywood Records - 1997
• My Chartreuse Opinion (CD) - Hollywood Records - 1989/1997
• More Oar: A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album -Birdman Records - 1999 ^[2]
• Let the War Against Music Begin (CD) - Mammoth Records - 2001
• I Don't Know Who I Am (Let the War Against Music Begin, Vol. 2) (CD) - Return to Sender - 2003
• Down with Wilco (CD) - Yep Roc - 2003
• In Rock (CD) - Yep Roc - 2004
• At the Organ (CD) - Yep Roc - 2004
• The Minus 5 (CD) - Yep Roc - 2006
• Sad Hasselhoff [EP] (Vinyl limited 1000 copies) - Yep Roc - 2008
• Killingsworth (CD) - Yep Roc - 2009
• Butcher Covered (CD) (Limited Edition covers compilation - only available at shows) - Book Records - 2009

References

1. ^ See More Oar: A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album.
2. ^ Being a compilation of cover versions of the songs from the solo album by Moby Grape co-founder Skip Spence, Oar, originally released by Columbia Records in 1969. Minus 5 performs their thirteen minute version of Spence's "Doodle".

External links

• Official site.
• Fan site.
• Scott McCaughey interview, 2006.