Sun City Girls - "Hatchet Rain" - (Cloaven Cassettes - 03 ) 1987

The Sun City Girls released a skip load of records and tapes from the early eighties to the present day. The main area of interest for this site are the 23 cassettes released between 1987 and 1990, on their own "Cloaven Cassettes" imprint.
Hatchet Rain being the third such release,from 1987.
The Sun City Girls sound not too dissimilar to a lounge jazz trio who've been slipped a mickey of LSD-25 and Peyote in their cocktails at the interval, and this is the resultant performance thereafter.
This happens to be my favourite Cloaven release;full of completely unhinged improvisation, and some glorious stream of consciousness guitar vandalism.The Amuck Theory in Full Bloom a la twisted Jihad, served on a platter of chopped Goat hooves. Crystallized excerpts from the revolution of guitar, bass, and drums. A very satisfying racket,with some of the best visceral unlogick guitar abuse this side of Keiji Haino.
"Let's Just Lounge" was written by Clear Bob. "Immortal Gods" was written by Eddie Detroit. Recorded between March 1983 and November 1983.

"The Sun City Girls were an American experimental rock band, formed in 1979 in Phoenix, Arizona. From 1981 the group consisted of Alan Bishop (bass guitar, vocals), his brother Richard Bishop (guitar, piano, vocals), and the late Charles Gocher (drums, vocals). Their name was inspired by Sun City, Arizona, an Arizona retirement community. Charles Gocher died after a long battle with cancer on February 19, 2007, bringing an end to the group.^[1]"
(Wikipedia)

Track Listing:

Side A:

1. Let's Just Lounge
2. Caravan of Scars
3. Black Tent
4. Emuqidanse
5. Komodo
6. TNTNT
7. Levitating Orchards
8. Gun Cum

Side B:

1. Circus Hassam
2. Immortal Gods
3. Trippin on Krupa
4. El Mirage
5. Hitman Boy
6. Don't...

DOWNLOAD some Hatchet Rain HERE!

Sun City Girls - " Cloaven Theatre 1 " (Cloaven Cassettes 14) 1987

If this was the first Sun City Girls record I heard, then it would probably have been my last. It sounds like one of those local council sponsored 'Art' events put on in their latest architecturally cutting edge theatre that the local tax payers paid for; meanwhile outside the foyer doors sits a homeless youth begging the black polo neck wearing punters for loose change.
I can cope with and even enjoy improv rock,it has its feet rooted in reality, but improv theatre is the stuff of the art establishment which wouldn't exist without arbitrarily granted subsidies. State funded pretentiousness for the swollen bourgeois masses, aka (more french words) The Nouveau Riche. Don't get me wrong, I ain't no philistine, but this belongs in some kind of degenerate art exhibition, and suppressed. Give us some Real theatre.
Musically this bizarrely seems less 'out there' than almost all of the other SCG releases, almost unadventurish, and recorded in glorious hi-fidelity, which is a crime in itself.Although,granted, some of the surreal dialogue is excellent.
Recorded live on KASR Radio (at ASU) on Oct. 1, 1986. Try to imagine sitting in your dormroom reality tunnel listening to the campus radio when all of a sudden a renegade illuminati sect hijacks the station... THIS IS IT!. But ultimately an irritating experience, but if you like the chin stroking atmosphere of avant garde theatre, then this is for you. Unfortunately I hate this record.

Side A:

1. Introduction
2. I Protect You From Me
3. I Deal a Stick
4. Professor
5. Eyeball in a Quart Jar of Snot
6. Left Side
7. Ritual
8. Voice of America

Side B:

1. Beelzebub Visits West Virginia
2. Right Side
3. Jonestown
4. Mirage
5. Spaceman
6. The Men in Black

DOWNLOAD some cloaven theatre HERE

Sun City Girls - "Tibetian Jazz 666" (Cloaven Cassettes 17) 1988

As someone who knows a lot of tibetian buddhists( who are largely descent chaps), and their counterparts, the dysfunctional western bourgeois buddists, looking for an answer for their meaningless existence, and mental problems/ addictions; I can recommend this C-60 as an accurate portrayal of the sound of a western buddists mind, before and after indoctrination in the 'cult' environment of the modern Buddist temple. Lost souls with lost bank accounts, buying a stairway to Nirvana.Willing to sell their children in the race to see who gets there first! I have never met such a bunch of morally bankrupt hypocrites in my sad little existence.(exhale!)
As for the music, it has obvious Jazz elements, from the awful 50's muzaky jazz trio merged with a slice of Ornette Coleman, to complete Free Jazz abandon, but with guitars and Drums.Nobody sounds like this! Arrogance is a virtue and patience is a curfew... listen to it as loud as possible and then you shall agree. Nobody has or ever will sound like this!
Side A recorded 4-9-88. First four cuts from Side B recorded Mar. 27, 1988; last two cuts recorded Jan. 16, 1987.

Side A:

1. El Mahdi

Side B:

1. A Thrones Stow
2. (sic) six sicks
3. Cocktail Jesuit
4. Duke of Alcohol
5. Dirty Old Cec
6. Imperial Handgun

DOWNLOAD some Tibetian Jazz HERE!

Sun City Girls - "God is my Solar System" (Cloaven Cassettes 01) 1987

A collection of early Sun City Girls recordings, mostly improv-diverse.... a sign of things to follow although unique in comparison to later works.On God Is My Solar System, the title track sounds a bit like listening to a recording of that same drunk jazz trio on LSD-25 with a trigger finger on the mute button. Gaping pauses separate staccato bass notes and guitar squawks before the song settles into a messy, improvisational groove.
Some of God’s material is slightly more meditative, like “Mosquito” with its buzzing, nominal drone underpinned by tabla-styled percussion, but at heart it’s all pretty art-damaged and coarsely messy. There’s a heap of novice spazz-rock (“Komodo”, “561B”), and “Invocation,” marks the first track that includes a style that would later become a hallmark; – a sing/speak narrative style – rages atypically before evolving into a skewed 'carnival barker' growling over a drunken merry-go-round melody. The chant morphs across 14 dream logic minutes, and its bloated irreverence marks the tentative, though not unsuccessful, beginnings of the SCG epic poem.

Side A:

1. Invocation
2. Glass Globe
3. Demon on the Beach
4. Suck Suntown
5. Improv Murder

Side B:

1. Sun City Girls from Ipanema
2. Mosquito
3. Three Blind Dice
4. Golden Cage
5. God is my Solar System (GIMSS)
6. Way Left North Out
7. 561B... for Alexis
8. Over the Rainbow

DOWNLOAD God as your solar system HERE!

Sun City Girls - "Fruit of the Womb" (Cloaven Cassettes 08) 1987

More noisy improv at a tangent to what is 'normal' made up stuff. Scratchy, scrapy, atonal mania, recorded in 1984–85 between the first and second Sun City Girls LP's in glorious mono. The performances on this tape are beyond superb. Near (far) Eastern (bloc) instrumentals, extended improvisation, ostracised jazz diffracted through a sound prism; scattering its light on abstracted versions of Sun City Girls 'standards', as if channelled from some demonic wormhole. Repetition is not on the agenda, as the music twists and turns in a desperate attempt to escape from your expectations; and for the most part succeeds with an unerring predictability. This is music made for explorers, and not for those who exist purely for the squishy home comforts of such absurd relics as, a beat, or a melody,or even a song? Mr and Mrs Henry Normal (or Simon Cowell) would label this music as 'self -indulgent rubbish' , but what is more self-indulgent than slouching in your 'lazy-boy' ,absorbing the latest easy-on-the-ear 'pop' purely for your entertainment. 'Thought' is a much under-rated process, and one which brings great rewards for those willing to train the brain to accept such wonderful sounds as these.

Track Listing:

Side A:

1. When Will It End?
2. Blue Mamba
3. Damcar
4. When the Jewels Roll Out of Yer Eye

Side B:

1. Envy Leaves Home
2. Mystery of Death
3. Mamas Milk
4. Abydos
5. F and F
6. Nites in Tetuan
7. Trippin on Krupa
8. Rappin
9. Jokers on a Waltz

DOWNLOAD this Fruit of the Womb HERE!

Sun City Girls - "Polite Deception" (Cloaven Cassettes 09) 1987

The art of falling apart, music as applied to the Brion Gysin cut-up technique.At times the group appears to be listening to each other, this only serves to lure the listener into a dream logic trip out of their third eye, where everything that makes sense doesn't and the pop charts are full of field recordings of collapsing buildings.
side two was described by an Albanian diplomat as: "An industrial Mesopotamian Environmental piece followed by Egyptian Trance Jazz." Of course, we all know that this description is false.This is only a Polite Deception.
Side 1 recorded 1985. Side 2 recorded 1985–86. "Scam David 77" features Eddy Detroit on congas and Brian Brannon on organ.

Side A:

1. Sev Acher
2. Hitman Boy
3. Twilight
4. Eternal Investigations
5. Black Weather Shoes
6. Jellyfish
7. My Painted Tomb
8. Sun of Talisman

Side B:

1. Gulfcon 79
2. Scam David 77

DOWNLOAD this Polite Deception HERE!

Sun City Girls - "Superpower" (Cloaven Cassettes 02) 1987

An equatorial collective improvisation recorded live in 1982(at Merlins?) and informative disinformation financed by short-wave overload with text excerpts from Myron Fagen circa 1967. Superpower shows the Girls better getting the hang of never getting the hang of it. “Alien Freedom” is psychic jazz extemporization, featuring Alan Bishop and J. Akkari on dueling alto saxophones. Not complete without Eddie Detroit’s “goat calls and troubled conga play,” it’s a very enjoyable and a considerably palatable mess .

The pretzel logic of Sun City Girls un-compositional style, is something to admire in its total lack of commercial potential, and the Girls obvious lack of interest in compromising their own musical explorations in search of an......Gulp!"....audience?
Who wants an audience?...those toe tapping ,head nodding, chin stroking bunch of under achievers. You shouldn't be standing there watching someone else for your shallow entertainment; you should be getting out there and doing it yourself (DIY). Or is this a dividing line that is as necessary as the division between intelligent life(Humans?) and the rest of the animal kingdom, left to squirm in the mud for stray plankton whilest we (the Humans!) enjoy the easy livin' of the supermarket. Yes, Audiences are necessary after all, or there'd be nothing special left in this crumbling planet to want to stroke your chin at. We need audiences/consumers like we need factory fodder to do the shit jobs. You music consumers out there are nothing more than glorified shit shovellers.......and U2 love you for it.
Oh, and 'The Illuminati?' is pretty good too.

Side A:

1. Alien Freedom

Side B:

1. The Illuminati?

DOWNLOAD a superpower HERE!

Sun City Girls - "Bleach Has Feelings Too!" (Cloaven Cassettes 07) 1987

The superbly titled, "Bleach Has Feelings Too" consists of eight very different recordings about sex and religion.... or should we say SEXXXY RELIGION.
Basically, a collection of Gus Coma style audio collages, lo-fi rock drone blasts, prank phone calls to a Redneck-Taliban radio broadcast, and a hilariously buffoonish on-air radio appearance by the band as young men. The collages are pieced together and piled up very nicely indeed, even when you can tell they put no effort into it at all . "Personal Blow Job," for example, is just a Throbbing Gristle-style synth drone with electronic drums laid atop a pathetic old "aural sex" wanking record that begins with the irresistable romantic come-on, "This is Wendy, and as soon as I swallow this mouthful of cum....gulp"...etc). I personally find this stuff entertainment personified, gimmie a formless racket atop a dialogue recording of purile porn or of neo-nazi religious idiots and i am in Heaven; even though Heaven doesn't and cannot exist philosophically, and/or logically. In my happy little Nietzchian dystopia, this record would be played at least once a year for allllll eternity as my constituent sub-atomic particles drift into an empty, hopeless, oblivion.

Recorded 1983–84 at the corner of Powell and Market, San Francisco, CA.

Side A:

1. Don't
2. Fog Hotel
3. Personal Blow Job
4. Billy Put That Bomb Away!

Side B:

1. Laundry Room Satanist
2. Local 98 Rock
3. A homosexual Revelation
4. Last Outpost

DOWNLOAD some emotional Bleach HERE!

Sun City Girls - "Famous Asthma" (Cloaven Cassettes 13) 1987

Another C-60 from the secure unit of improvised music.1987 was a prolific year for one of the most prolific groups this side of Narnia.
More variations of the SCG's patented Amuck theory,with lashings of Zen agriculture, and Astral ejaculation. Here we have the distinctive spontaneity of extra terrestrial fundamentalism.This music moves forward at ninety degrees.
Recorded live in studios or trailers 90-100% improvised circa 1985–87.

Side A:

1. A Fast Stich Towards Oblivian
2. Turned at the Bake
3. Cad Walleder
4. Voice of Leaves

Side B:

1. Tone of Bark
2. Water Lilly
3. Shown of Dark

DOWNLOAD some Famous Asthma HERE!

Sun City Girls - "To Cover Up Your Right To Live" (Cloaven Cassettes 04) 1987

A C-60 of typically unhinged cover songs, that systematically de-construct the Rock'n Pop myth, and stuff the smoking shards into an old shoe box to be dismissively tossed into the dark recesses of the understairs cubby hole that you were frightened of as an affection starved infant. This is what progressive music is all about is it not? The version of the horrifically awful pomp stompers Led Zep's tragick classick, 'Rock and Roll', is an accurate rendition of what this atrocious drivle actually sounds like to those not hypnotised by the Nazi rally that is/was rock music.
"Summertime Blues", in its John Lydon on a cocktail of Benylin and Night Nurse, in place of the'Wizz', brilliance; actually manages to equal the majesty of the version by The Flying Lizards, and that is some praise.
"Rock is for Arse-lickers" (G. P-orridge 1977)
All vocals by Ted Koppel. Recorded 1983–85.

Side A :

1. Rock and Roll
2. Waiting for my man
3. Headhunter
4. Summertime Blues
5. Psychedelic Shack
6. TNTNT

Side B :

1. Dark Eyes
2. Spanish Caravan
3. Back Stabbers
4. Paris 1942
5. Wild World of Animals
6. Caravan
7. It Never Rains in California

DOWNLOAD your right to live HERE!

Sun City Girls - "The Fresh Kill Of A Cape Hunting Dog" (Cloaven Cassettes 12) 1987

"We ain't gonna play sun citehhhhhhhh yeaaaaaayeahhaahhhhhh!" , so sang Little Steven and his 'right-on' rock chums sometime in the eighties, after having a problem with the mighty Queen playing the rich white man's playground in Apartheid era South Africa.
I have 2 problems with this noble political awareness single: - 1/ Queen could do anything they wanted in my eyes, as I've always admired their effrontery to good taste.This is a fine example of what art is,and should always strive to being.
and 2/, Yes we are gonna play Sun City, as in The Sun City Girls because they are brilliant, like Queen, challenging the listener to question his very existence, physically and mentally.
"The Fresh Kill of a Cape Hunting Dog" is a great sampler of the Sun City Girls colourful spectrum, from cut-ups to ambient genocide to Wagnerian trash to tropical hallucinations. This "music" was captured from a moving truck in a Sierra Vista on a cloudy day.Enjoy?!

Track Listing:

Side A:

1. Amphitheatre of Pause
2. Avoid the Hyenas
3. Carri-On
4. I Told You So
5. Entrail-Littered Savannah

Side B:

1. Diet-Blue Morbid Attraction Soda
2. Ya Raitni
3. Ajax Flood Lamp
4. Casa Loma
5. Poppies
6. Nile Hilton Burning
7. Dolores
8. Atomic Jackals

DOWNLOAD some Fresh Kill HERE!