What can you tell me about the band the Gorillaz?

Answer 1

Gorillaz are a virtual band, composed of four fictional animated band members: 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel.

2D (born in Crawley, United Kingdom) - vocals, keyboards
Noodle (born in Osaka, Japan) - guitar, occasional main and backing vocals
Russel Hobbs (born in New York, New York) - drums, percussion
Murdoc Niccals (born June 6, 1966 in Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom) - bass

The band was created by Damon Albarn from the Britpop band Blur, and Jamie Hewlett, the co-creator of the comic book Tank Girl. Their style is broadly 'alternative', but with an unusually large number of other influences.

The band's first album, 2001's Gorillaz, sold over 3 million copies and earned them an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the Most Successful Virtual Band. Their second studio album, Demon Days, was released in 2005 and included the hit singles "Feel Good Inc.", "DARE", "Dirty Harry" and "Kids With Guns / El Mañana." Demon Days went Double Platinum in the U.S., Triple Platinum in the U.K., and earned 5 Grammy award nominations for 2005

Here's their fictional story
The story of Gorillaz begins in 1997. Stu-Pot was a mentally deficient keyboard enthusiast and star employee at Uncle Norm's Organ Emporium. Satanist hoodlum Murdoc Niccals decided to ramraid Uncle Norm's Organ Emporium to procure synthesizer equipment in order to establish a "chart topping" musical group. However, Murdoc ended up driving his Vauxhall Astra through the building and directly into Stu-Pot, permanently damaging ("fracturing") Stu-Pot's left eye and putting him into a catatonic state. Murdoc was sentenced to "30,000 hours of community service, plus 10 hours every week of caring for the vegetabilised Stu-Pot". Not long after, Murdoc again injured Stu-Pot in a car accident in Nottingham's Tesco parking lot when attempting a 360°, which permanently damaged Stu-Pot's right eye, but revived him from his coma. Murdoc then recruited the newly recovered (albeit still mentally defective) Stu-Pot as the keyboardist and vocalist for his group, re-dubbing him 2D for the matching pair of dents in his head from the accidents.

Murdoc then found a drummer for the group in a SoHo rap record store: African-American expatriate Russel Hobbs. Russel was a middle-class New York native and was deeply troubled as a youth. He was expelled from an expensive private school for suffering from demonic possession. The trauma of said possession resulted in a four year coma from which Russel was roused only by an elaborately executed exorcism. After his recovery, Russel began attending Brooklyn High School, where he quickly cultivated friendships with a group of rappers, DJs, and street musicians. He has said that "hip-hop saved [his] soul."

This was a short-lived respite, however, as all of Russel's newfound friends were suddenly gunned-down one night in a drive-by shooting. Russel, the sole survivor, became the unwilling receptacle for the spirits of all of his slain compatriots, most notable of whom was the rhyme dropping blue phantom, Del. With their latent possession of his body, Russel gained incredible musical prowess in percussion, rap, and hip-hop as well as a disturbing side-effect: his eyes glowed an eerie white. With this new and violent turn of events, Russel's family shipped him off to England in hopes of helping him recover from his traumas quietly -- not realizing they'd put him directly into the path of Murdoc's aspirations to superstardom, and the excesses that came along with it.

At that point, all the fledgling group needed was a guitarist. Like so many British bands before them, the trio placed an advertisement in NME. The very day the ad ran, a FedEx freight container from Japan was delivered to their doorstep and out jumped a mysterious amnesiac 10-year-old wielding a Gibson Les Paul. The tiny girl made an incomprehensible introduction in Japanese and tore into a "riff to end all riffs" which ended with an impressive karate kick to the air. She then spoke a single word in English to the stunned boys, which became her moniker: "Noodle". In the later part of 1998, the Gorillaz played their first show at the Camden Brownhouse which ended prematurely due to a riot during their song "Punk". EMI A&R man Whiffy Smiffy discharged several rounds from shotgun to disperse the crowd enough to make his way to the stage and quickly signed them to the label. Ten months later they had recorded their self-titled debut LP.

In the winter of 1999 Murdoc acquired the property of Kong Studios, a sprawling haunted studio with a rather shady history, situated atop a hill in the midst of a run-down cemetery and landfill in Districtshire, Essex. The Gorillaz lived and recorded in Kong Studios up until their 2002 11-month tour of North America. At the end of July of that year, the Gorillaz took a six month break in L.A.. There they attempted to get a movie project off the ground. Meanwhile, that Halloween, Kong Studios had been shut down tight in its owner's absence by local law enforcement after an unknown man was seen running, naked and in hysterics, in the marshes near the studio. The police proceeded to keep the area secured while they investigated the strange paranormal events surrounding Kong. The Gorillaz spent the interim period working on their movie, while living in a large rented home in the Hollywood Hills.

Alas, the film was not meant to be, due in part to extensive over-partying, in-fighting, and disagreements with producers, directors, and a notable incident of Murdoc getting himself banned from the Playboy Mansion for stealing ashtrays. Understandably, at this point the Gorillaz went on a year and half hiatus, each of the members going their separate ways to find themselves. Murdoc headed to Mexico to booze it up in Tijuana brothels, getting himself arrested for passing bad cheques in the process. He enjoyed little company in his Mexican jail cell aside from his raven, Cortez, and two Mexican mobsters who would later help break him out. 2D went back home to work for his father at his carnival, re-establish his grip on reality, and come to terms with his newfound pop icon status with the ladies.

Russel disappeared into the States to literally and figuratively exorcise his personal demons, regrettably including the ghost of Del, leaving Russel a mentally and spiritually exhausted wandering shadow of the man he once was. After shambling around Los Angeles for some time, Russel was taken in by Ike Turner and helped to recover, and while living in Turner's basement Russel recorded his own solo album which was shelved due to strange supernatural activity inherent in the music itself, which Russel described as something of a "cosmic disruption".

Noodle travelled to Japan, in a fruitful attempt to uncover the secrets of her own past which included not only the revelation that she was a test subject in a secret government super soldier project, but that she also speaks fluent English. Armed with her newfound knowledge and iron resolve, Noodle was the first to return to Kong Studios. There she went to task battling the zombie and monster-infested darkness of the building, set up the "Search For A Star" contest, and began the process of pulling the band back together to record their new album, Demon Days.

Live shows
From 1 November–5 November 2005, there was a Gorillaz "festival", billed as Demon Days Live with collaborators from Demon Days (Neneh Cherry, Bootie Brown, De La Soul, Ike Turner, Roots Manuva, Martina Topley-Bird and Shaun Ryder all appeared live; for other collaborators such as Dennis Hopper and Ibrahim Ferrer, recordings were used) and Damon Albarn performing songs from the album live on those five nights at the Manchester Opera House. The visual element of the evenings was provided by Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett and displayed on screens on the stage, and the artists performed in front of the screens, with Damon Albarn in silhouette form for most of the concert (unlike previous concerts, where the musicians were behind the screens, with only silhouettes visible). The event was filmed by an EMI film crew for a DVD release, Demon Days Live, in late March 2006. It was later announced that an American version of the event will take place from 2 April–6 April 2006 at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, which sold out in under an hour of release, though new tickets have been released ever since.

For the band's live performances at the 2005/2006 award shows, a different visual effects technique was used to project the virtual band onto the stage: Similar to the Pepper's ghost trick, 3D animations of the band are projected on transparent film placed on stage, it creates a feeling that the band members are actually present on the stage. The first such performance by the band was made on 3 November 2005, the third night of the Demon Days Live festival, when the band simultaneously appeared at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon, Portugal and performed their song "Feel Good, Inc.". However, there was a slight problem concerning the projections. The music on all of these occasions was rather low in volume, which Hewlett and Albarn revealed to be a flaw with the Pepper's ghost technique: if the music was too loud, the screens reflecting the band on stage would vibrate, making their images blurry. This happened with the mash-up performance with Madonna's "Hung Up".


Gorillaz & Madonna at the 2006 Grammy AwardsAt the 2006 Grammy Awards, held on February 8, 2006, Gorillaz performed used the same technique to open the show, sharing the stage with Madonna. Their performance was a mash-up of the songs "Feel Good Inc." and "Hung Up".

A week later, on 15 February 2006, Gorillaz performed their song "Dirty Harry" at the 2006 Brit Awards, with Bootie Brown and the Children's Choir San Fernandez. This concert had giant versions of the animations on large screens, with Bootie Brown and the Children's Choir San Fenandez to either side of the screens. A similar, but not completely identical, version of this performance was shown on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and the video was projected at the 2006 Designer Of The Year Award exhibiton for which Hewlett was nominated for and later won

Answer 2

It's not really a band. It's Damon Albarn from Blur. He writes songs and gets other artists to contribute. Whoever the person is that said the songs were "computer generated" and that nobody wrote them is an idiot. Damon wrote them and played guitar on them, and hired other musicians for other instruments. On the first CD, he got Dan the Automator to come up with the beats, and on "Demon Days" he got DJ Dangermouse (from Gnarls Barkley and DangerDoom, and also the guy who made the infamous "Grey Album") to do the beats. On the first CD he had Del Tha Funky Homosapien (Ice Cube's cousin) to rap on a couple of tracks. On "Demon Days" he got a wider variety of hip hop artists to contribute including De La Soul (Feel Good, Inc.), MF Doom (the "Doom" in DangerDoom), and Roots Manuva, as well as some others.

There CDs have animated films that go along with them. The cartoons show fictitious band members doing weird stuff. Their concerts consist of elaborate lights and lasors and holograms of the cartoon band. They are kind of like a cooler, hipper updated version of Green Jelly. They are pretty much a novelty band, but they are a cool novelty band.

Answer 3

They're a musical cartoon band that consist of Murdoc the guitarist,2D the vocalist, Noodle and Rusel the drummer.The Gorillaz have 2 hit albums one in 2001 their self titled album Clint Eastwood 2nd album 2005 Demon Days.The best downloaded song of 05 Was Feel Good Inc with De La Soul.Their song was in the Ipod commercials.you recognize their beats through tv and on radio and on electronics.

Answer 4

Eh, I thought one of their songs was catchy but that's about it. Can't remember the name, but I do recall the video consisting of a building floating in the sky.

Answer 5

Their songs are completely computer generated. No one plays any instruments. That notwithstanding, they are trying to put on a concert in 2007 (last i heard)

Answer 6

they're animated, for starters.
2D is the singer, murdoc plays the bass, russel is the drummer, and noodle does guitar. they supposedly hail from england, except for noodle who mailed herself to them in a box from china. and russel has the ability to channel the souls of dead rappers through his body. murdoc is a self-proclaimed satanist and 2D is named such because he has two dents in each side of his head.

Answer 7

A lot