Bands like Sun City Girls don’t come around often. Born in the Phoenix, AZ weirdo-punk scene that birthed the Meat Puppets and JFA, Sun City Girls distinguished themselves by being the weirdest. Cheekily naming themselves after a retirement community northwest of Phoenix, they explored long-form improv, tape manipulation, and world music, with lyrics steeped in esoterica and UFOlogy. They were a musically gifted, wonderfully tweaked, consciousness-expanding delight, and in about two and a half decades of existence, the prolific band produced dozens upon dozens of full-length releases. Just between 1986 and 1989 alone, they released about two dozen cassettes, none of which are gettable except for the first, the astonishing Midnight Cowboys From Ipanema—a hodgepodge of warped classic rock covers and short original song snippets recorded on a tape deck whose batteries were dying—which was reissued on CD in 1994. Other vital SCG albums include 1990’s definitive Torch of the Mystics (did I say “definitive” when I meant “essential?” OOPS), Dante’s Disneyland Inferno, 98.6 IS DEATH, and their surprisingly accessible swan song, Funeral Mariachi.
The band ended in 2007, with the cancer death of drummer Charles Gocher. I must veer off topic for a moment to relate a Gocher story: in 1992, when the Sun City Girls were on tour with another favorite band of mine from that period, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, both bands crashed at my house after their show at Cleveland’s Euclid Tavern. My housemates and I had turned our attic into a makeshift noise lab, replete with iffy guitars, iffier amps, a couple of beat-ass horns, a reel-to-reel deck for loops, an ad-hoc scrap metal “drum kit,” and a four track cassette recorder. Gocher, who was celebrating his 40th birthday that day, if I remember correctly, was notably absent from the living room hangout that was going on until he poked his head out from the stairwell and said “Hey, I found the attic, you guys wanna play?” It was like 3:30 in the morning in a residential neighborhood, so there was NO WAY that could happen without police involvement. I truly wish it were otherwise; I’d love to be able to say I rocked with the Girls and the Fellers. But I respect and admire the shit out of a guy who, at 40, in the wee hours of the morning, in the comedown from a gig, is still raring to throw down some improv with his college-age hosts. More musicians should be like him, but they aren’t, so it’s understandable that in the wake of his loss, the remaining Sun City Girls, brothers Richard and Alan Bishop, declined to continue the band.
Richard still releases solo work under the name Sir Richard Bishop, and when Alan isn’t releasing music under the name Alvarius B, he co-owns and curates Sublime Frequencies, a boutique record label dedicated to international music, which in 2010 released music by the ‘60s/‘70s Indonesian psych band Koes Bersaudara/Koes Plus. They’re the same band, the different names reflect a lineup change: “bersaudara” means “brothers,” which they in fact were, only redubbing themselves when the drummer was replaced in the late ‘60s, to reflect that the band was no longer an all-sibling operation. The brothers Koeswoyo were purveyors of Western style music at a time when that was looked upon with extreme disfavor—the president at the time was Soekarno, who, having fought Dutch colonialism and won independence from Japanese occupation, was evidently not too keen on the British Invasion, either, and he had the band imprisoned in 1965, for playing Beatles covers. In an amusing and satisfying irony, they eventually came to be referred to as the Indonesian Beatles. Though two members have passed away, Koes Plus is still a band, and releasing two collections of their work was clearly not tribute enough for Alan Bishop, who recruited members of the Seattle ethno-prog collective Master Musicians of Bukkake (LOVE. THAT. NAME.) to form Koes Barat, a Koes Plus cover band whose Sub Pop debut will be released this weekend, on Record Store Day (grumble grumble). The album is FUCKING WONDERFUL, and I wish it were obtainable without having to elbow your way into some crate-digging space against a horde of eBay flipper scumwads, but RSD is what it is and I’m not going to get on that subject because I’ll rant. And anyway, you’d rather hear A/B comparisons of Koes Plus’ and Alan Bishop’s versions of the tunes, right? Here’s the LP opener, “Kelelewar,” after the Koes Plus song “Kelelawar,” from 1969.
Koes Plus, “Kelelawar”
Alan Bishop/Koes Barat, “Kelelewar”
Here’s a freewheeling pop-psych gem called “Mr. Time,” from Koes Plus’ 1975 LP Barat, followed, again, by Bishop’s reinterpretation.
Koes Plus, “Mr. Time”
Alan Bishop/Koes Barat, “Mr. Time”
Bonus: to impart to the uninitiated a sense of the heights to which Sun City Girls’ chaotic weirdness ascended, I can think of nothing better than CLOAVEN THEATER, a VHS rarity originally shot for cable access, but never aired.