SUN CITY GIRLS FOR THE UNINITIATED

By MATTHEW CARON

Recurring themes that emerged over the next two decades included a fondness for lengthy improvisation, Beat-like poetry, and cryptic wordplay traversing a dubious terrain of conspiracy, UFOs, cults, murder, ritual, mysticism, and exotica. At the same time a high level of technical mastery was always on display. They were as liable to whisper into their audience’s ear as yell into it or even jab something foreign into the canal.

Starting with 1984’s Sun City Girls LP, a formal discography began that now stretches across over 50 full-length releases, discounting their maddeningly prolific work as solo performers. And lest you think this mountain of recordings emerged from one desert locale, it bears mention that the Girls traveled far and frequently, trekking to the farthest and most remote spots on the globe long before Lonely Planet guides were invented. From their extensive travels came field recordings, tapes of third-world radio, and the increasing presence of unfamiliar and exotic instruments often employed in techniques far different from their manufacturers’ intentions. New territory was literally crossed with each performance and recording. Much of the music and video accumulated on these explorations has collected in anthologies and films released by the Sublime Frequencies label, which Alan Bishop helped to establish in collaboration with fellow travelers and music collectors.

The group’s output formally ended in 2007 with the passing of Charles Gocher. While no new Sun City Girls recordings can be made, there remains a vast reserve of unreleased material that the Bishop brothers have threatened to release as time permits. So we haven’t yet seen the end of the Sun City Girls, and it’s doubtful that a terminus will ever be reached unless the brothers and their archives were to spontaneously combust. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen!

In case it isn’t obvious, any attempt to neatly summarize the career of this outfit is a sad folly. Your only hope at grasping the short hairs of understanding would be to have a listen. For this very purpose I’ve compiled a brief collection of Sun City Girls music. It doesn’t represent a greatest hits collection by any stretch of the imagination, but is merely the tip of a vast, excellent, musical iceberg.

Click here to listen (Right-click to download. You know this.)
“The Shining Path” from Torch Of The Mystics
“Soft Fragile Eggshell Minds” from Dante’s Disneyland Inferno
“Nites of Malta” from Djinn Funnel
“Midnight at the Oasis” from Midnight Cowboys From Ipanema
“Punishment In Peshawar” from Piano Bar
“Death in Yellowknife” from Box of Chameleons
“Mr. Lonely Viola” from Mister Lonely