The Golden Palominos were an American musical group headed by drummer, producer, arranger and composer Anton Fier, first formed in 1981. Aside from Fier, the Palominos membership has been wildly elastic, with only bassist Bill Laswell and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis appearing on every album through 1996. Their final work, 2012's A Good Country Mile features vocalist Kevn Kinney. While the Palominos' records usually featured a core set of musicians and a certain emotional continuity throughout the bulk of an album, various guest appearances resulted in stylistic changes from track to track. Fier stated that he thought of himself as a casting director, elaborating: "Each record was an experiment and some lasted for two records, never longer than that. I chalk it up to my short attention span and the fact that there were lots of people I wanted to work with and ways to explore areas of music I was interested in, and certain combos wouldn't fit with others, so one record would be this and another record would be something else." History Initial lineup The group first featured Fier, singer-guitarist Arto Lindsay, saxophonist John Zorn, bass guitarist Bill Laswell and violinist/guitarist Fred Frith. Their self-titled debut album was released on New York's Celluloid Records in 1983, and featured guest appearances by bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, percussionist David Moss, turntablist M.E. Miller and others. The album has some of the first recorded turntable scratching outside of rap music, courtesy of Laswell and M.E. Miller. M.E. Miller also used vocal splitting technique to create harmony on the song he sings. They were heavily influenced by so-called no wave music (Arto Lindsay had played in the seminal no-wave band DNA), but their music also contained elements of funk and of the improvisational jazz stylings that became Zorn's trademark. This line-up lasted only for the first record, although all of the core members apart from Zorn were guests on subsequent Palominos recordings. 1985–1989 The Palominos' next album, 1985's Visions of Excess, sounded vastly different. Of the band members that were on the first album, only Fier, Laswell and Arto Lindsay remained. Visions of Excess also marked the debut of singer Syd Straw, whose songwriting and vocals were featured prominently, as well as on the group's next album. Michael Stipe, John Lydon and Jack Bruce took turns on lead vocals, while Richard Thompson and Jody Harris were featured on lead guitar. Blast