Surviving members of the Sun City Girls, brothers Alan and Richard Bishop, are going out on tour as an acoustic guitar duo to honor the memory of their drummer Charlie Gocher, who passed away last year after a three-year long battle against cancer. The Brothers Unconnected Tour, which begins on Sunday May 18 in Seattle, will serve as both a tribute to the late Gocher’s career and a celebration of twenty-seven years of music from the Sun City Girls.
According to the SCG website, each date will begin with the showing of forty minutes of the experimental films of Gocher. This will be followed by acoustic guitar renderings of songs drawn from the enormous catalog of SCG releases, dating back to 1982. The band’s web site announcement says, “this tour will most likely be the only time this show will be presented as such.”
The Sun City Girls formed in Phoenix, Arizona in 1982 around Gocher, the Bishop Brothers–transplants from Saginaw, Michigan–and Linda Cushma. Their early shows were associated with the punk rock scene of the time, where they shared stages with, most often, the Meat Puppets, as well as the likes of Black Flag, Flipper, Sonic Youth and Jodie Foster’s Army. But they never sounded like those bands. SCG was much more experimental and tapped into a grander, more global scheme of influences and musical appreciations.
“We were never ‘punkers’,” writes SCG bassist Alan Bishop in a recent e-mail interview. “The punk community and system of operation was where we felt comfortable associating as many of our friends were from that scene. Back then, the underground music structure was a place for outcasts, misfits, punks, freaks, and general oddities who couldn’t relate to the rest of society.”
SCG cloaked themselves in masks, head wraps and robes and peppered their song titles with references ranging from African ethnic groups to extra-terrestrials, sometimes working them into the same title, such as with what is possibly their most famous song “Space Prophet Dogon.” They used tunings and scales strange to the Western ear, rhythms that you’ve never heard on the radio, and sang in foreign and as well as made-up languages.
They traveled the world and spread seeds of their musical perspective along the way. “We were trolling for musical encounters wherever we went,” writes Bishop. “We played on the streets with people, used their guitars and would sing songs everywhere. Indonesians and Thais always have acoustic guitars lying around. All the times we played were spontaneous. On an Indonesian passenger ship, they had a lounge with a house band playing and we simply asked them if we could play a few songs and they just handed over the stage and their instruments and we did a short set.
Members of SCG have pursued numerous side-projects but one of their more compelling endeavors was the 1982 collaboration of Alan Bishop and ex-Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker, called Paris 1942. It is a deliberately low-fi collection of garage thrashers. Writes Bishop, “everyone knew each other and because Moe was there, she commanded some respect you know…obviously. But she was down to earth, real casual about it. We rehearsed at her house. She had 4 or 5 kids. It was like a big family, that group, for a while–maybe 6 months that it lasted. She left her husband and split town overnight w/ her kids so it ended because of that.”
The Sun City Girls are the genuine article and have a stunning discography by which to vet themselves. SCG has not done a great deal of touring compared with many bands that have been around as long, so, for anyone with an appreciation of musical possibilities outside of the indie rock box, do yourself an immense favor and don’t miss this opportunity.
5.18.08 - Seattle, WA - Triple Door
5.19.08 - Portland, OR - Doug Fir
5.21.08 - San Francisco, CA - Slim’s
5.23.08 - Phoenix, AZ - Modified
5.25.08 - Los Angeles, CA - Echoplex
5.27.08 - Sacramento, CA - Horse Cow Art Gallery
6.08.08 - Denver, CO - Hi-Dive
6.10.08 - Kansas City, MO - Record Bar
6.11.08 - Omaha, NE - The Waiting Room
6.12.08 - Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry
6.13.08 - Iowa City, IA - The Picador
6.14.08 - Chicago, IL - Lakeshore Theater
6.15.08 - Louisville, KY - Pour Haus
6.17.08 - Toronto, ON - St. Vladimir’s Institute Theater
6.18.08 - Montreal, QC - La Sala Rosa
6.19.08 - Cambridge, MA - The Brattle Theater
6.20.08 - Portland, ME - SPACE
6.21.08 - Philadelphia, PA - Johnny Brenda’s
6.22.08 - New York, NY - Knitting Factory
6.24.08 - Pittsburgh, PA - Andy Warhol Gallery
6.25.08 - Washington, D.C. - Black Cat
6.26.08 - Asheville, NC - Grey Eagle
6.27.08 - Atlanta, GA - The E.A.R.L.
6.28.08 - Chattanooga, TN - Barking Legs Theater
6.29.08 - Memphis, TN - Odessa
6.30.08 - New Orleans, LA - One Eyed Jack’s
7.02.08 - Austin, TX - Emo’s
7.05.08 - Tucson, AZ - Club Congress
7.06.08 - San Diego, CA - Bar Pink Elephant
7.09.08 - Santa Cruz, CA - TBA
7.10.08 - TBA
7.11.08 - TBA