A few years back I was speaking with an acquaintance of mine from Seattle who was also a friend and neighbor of the Sun City Girls in the late 90s. I asked him what the deal was. Did they really have magic powers? He told me that while he couldn’t go into details, he had seen the Sun City Girls do things that were inexplicable. Many have had their memory irrevocably altered. The reality of these accusations depends on ones admission to the belief of these rituals. They have power only if you think they do. The powers of the Sun City Girls’ music however are undeniably evident on their final and just released album, Funeral Mariachi.
On February 19th, 2007, poet and Sun City Girls percussionist Charles Gocher died at the age of 55 from complications due to cancer, ending his run as the force that propelled one of America’s longest running and prolific underground bands. Gocher was a philosopher, an inspired writer and a multifaceted musician whose talents are evidenced in hundreds of recordings, videos and journals. With Alan on bass and Richard Bishop on guitar by his side, the trio would embark on a decades long musical spiral through genre and hallucination. The band spent its formative years in the early 80s Arizona punk scene alongside the Meat Puppets and JFA. Ranging from wild improv to cocktail jazz with spoken word conspiracy theory rants, to spaghetti western soundtracks there’s little musical terrain Sun City Girls feared to tread.
Known by their audience for being world traveling mystics and occultists, the group flaunted a wildly performative and often combative stance. There were times when they stopped touring for years and years. They would disappear into the Himalayas or Niger for a few months and return with more strange instruments and Kabuki masks. They have also been known to wear Osama Bin Laden t-shirts while reading Mein Kampf on stage as another member hit golf balls into the crowd at the Bumbershoot festival. At another show they advertised that they were going to play Coltrane’s Live in Seattle record in its entirety and when the audience arrived they proceeded to play a copy of the LP on a record player on an otherwise empty stage. So, the Sun City Girls could be a pain in the ass. Ranging from the sublime to dreadful, the group always displayed a penchant for variety and the absurd, tempered with innovative playing. They were a band where almost anything could happen at any time. Yet one thing they never seemed to do was take off the masks, in a figurative sense even if only occasionally literal.
Lately, the individuals in the band have been coming out a bit more. Sir Richard Bishop has been a prolific solo artist in the last few years with some tremendous results both on record and on stage. Alan has been concentrating on the Sublime Frequencies label, issuing stunning LPs from the furthest reaches of the globe, from Egypt’s Omar Khorshid to compilations war-era Vietnamese rock and soul. Although clearly no longer a unit, nothing has really been heard about the Sun City Girls proper. Two years ago the Bishops did a tour as a tribute to Gocher, playing their catalog of anti-hits and blowing bits of Charlie’s ashes into the crowd at each show. This was their goodbye to their comrade and the music they made.
Now it’s time for the final goods, Funeral Mariachi. While still firmly shrouded on the jacket of the album the band actually seem to wear its conventions on its sleeve. The music is all the better for it. All the songs are under five minutes long, none are improvised and the studio recording is immaculate and crisp. This is a true album, not just a snapshot of a moment. Funeral Mariachi is something instantly unique in their catalog. While being a meditation on death they find the beauty that hangs on cemetery gate.
Death in many cultures is a celebration, a dance, a look into the grinning skull with a recognition of its inevitability. Stylistically Funeral Mariachi takes a cinematic approach to the concept of closing ritual, using Morricone as a musical base. “Blue West” shows this approach with its noir influenced hushes. Even when vocals are present they are mostly wordless, just “do’s” and “hums,” melodies without sentiment implied by images. They become part of the atmosphere, space among the tempered haunted brushstrokes of Gocher’s final sessions. Throughout the album the band sounds subdued but hardly restrained. Richard Bishop’s epic feedback guitar solo on “This Is My Name” is a prime example of an emotive expression through a channel normally used for aggression. Somehow amid the elements of Thai Shadow music, Bishop’s tonal poem sits perched atop Gocher’s tabla rhythms and comes together like it was meant to be.
It’s a remarkable synthesis of stylistic approaches without ever sacrificing atmosphere, which is at the heart of the album. While the band always incorporated myriad influences in their music, it was usually more song to song rather than within one composition. Here, all of the elements coalesce into a unified theme for both the individual songs and the album as a whole. “Vine Street Piano” continues along this path with cooing guest vocals from Jessika Kenney, whose presence adds a compelling spectral female counter-point to the proceedings. Her voice here sounds like mourning ephemera, a strong gauze for the midnight music to be filtered through. The album is somber in its own way but never maudlin. Something about the power of classicism rings softly, like an ode to Zeppelin’s In Through the Out Door without sounding tired.
A grandeur is felt through its production with layers of subtle surprises along the way. Suddenly there may be a faint laugh or a mood reached as if being tapped on the shoulder. This is an occult record. It’s safe to say that Gocher’s ghost has a heavy grip on the album. It’s a sunset goodbye to a powerful character in American underground music. The masks are removed and we can see the band for what they really are, a powerful group of musicians with a still startling approach to modern music after 30 years. Even for those listeners who think they have all they need from the band Funeral Mariachi stands as perhaps their finest recorded moment. As far as the magic, I’ll gladly listen to them charm snakes ‘til Gocher’s resurrection, whenever that may be.
illustration by Chris O’Neal
by STEVE LOWENTHAL on 12/7/2010 in Features, Reviews | Tags: abduction, Alan Bishop, Charles Gocher, Ennio Morricone, Funeral Mariachi, Jessika Kenney, Led Zeppelin, Richard Bishop, Sublime Frequencies, Sun City Girls