Footage from last nights show... absolutely amazing. Out of the literally hundreds of bands Ive seen live, Sleepytime still never ceases to amaze me with their show. I cannot think of a show more memorable and amazing than Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Coming in close second is the Residents and some of Mike Patton's amazing projects. None of them are even close the the caliber of musicianship this whole band displays nonstop... Amazing vocal harmonies, Home-made instrumentation and percussions, and some of the darkest melodies and songs ever written.

----From Wikipedia----


According to their extensive liner notes for Grand Opening and Closing, their official history and repeated in interviews, the name "Sleepytime Gorilla Museum" comes from a small group of Dadaists, Futurists, and artists named the Sleepytime Gorilla Press who owned and operated what they called a "museum of the future" which was "anti-artifact, non-historical and closed."[2]

The "museum" opened on June 22, 1916 (the same date as the bands' first concert, 83 years later). The exhibit was a fire which caused wide chaos and confusion. The following day the museum was closed (hence the name of the first album). The name itself apparently comes from a poem called "Of the Future Hides the Past," written by Museum members Lala Rolo and Ikk Ygg.

Their live performances have featured puppet shows, pseudo-scientific scholarly presentations, and performances by members of the Butoh group inkBoat.

The band uses many homemade devices as instruments, such as the Viking Rowboat.[1] Dan Rathbun — who has created most of the band's idiosyncratic instruments — plays, among other custom-made instruments (though he uses a common bass guitar most of the time), a custom-stringed bass instrument referred to as the Sledgehammer Dulcimer (or, alternately, the Slide Piano Log), which uses piano strings and is possibly more than 7 feet long; it is played with two sticks: one in the left hand generally used as a fret, and another in the right hand to strike the strings.

Percussionist Michael Mellender's instruments consist of restaurant kitchen equipment, trash can lids, and other "found" metal objects, in addition to traditional percussion instruments. One of the more infamous instruments used by the band was Moe! Staiano's Popping Turtle (now residing in Brooklyn, NY[3]). It can be heard about 1:21 into the song "Sleep is Wrong". (less info)