special introductory paragraph!
Sun City Girls
Live...For Chilly 7"
Grotto Of Miracles
Midnight Cowboys From
Ipanema
Horse Cock Phepner
And So The Dead Tongue Sang 7"
You're Never Alone With A Cigarette 7"
Torch Of The Mystics
Three Fake Female Orgasms double-7"
Dawn Of The Devi
Napoleon And Josephine 7"
Let's Just Lounge 7"
Eye Mohini 7"
Live From Planet Boomerang
Bright Surroundings Dark
Beginnings
Valentines From Matahari
Live From C.O.N. Artists
Pelican 92
Borungku Si Derita 7"
Kaliflower
Juggernaut
Piasa...Devourer Of Men
Jacks Creek
Dante's Disneyland Inferno
330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond Rig Veda
Live From The Land Of The Rising
Box Of Chameleons
Dulce
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 1:
Cameo Demons And Their Manifestations
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 2: The Dreamy Draw
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 3: Superculto
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 4: A Bullet Through The Last Temple
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 5:
Severed Finger With A Wedding Ring
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 6: Sumatran Electric Chair
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 7: Libyan Dream
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 8: The Handsome Stranger
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 9/10: High Asia Lo-Pacific
God Is My Solar System/Superpower
Wah
Flute And Mask
Uncle Jim's True Confessions Of Homeland Security 7"
Bleach Has Feelings, Too!/To Cover Up Your Right To Live
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 11/12: Radio
Fresh Kill Of A Cape Hunting Dog/Def In Italy
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 13: 98.6 Is Death
Uncle Jim's Superstars of Greenwich Meantime
Carnival Folklore Resurrection 14: Static From The Outside Set
Live Room
Djinn Funnel
Montreal Pop
Piano Bar
Sun City Girls are three Arizonan MEN who are into world musics of all kind,
field recordings, aggression, disturbing humor, obscurity, confusion, profanity and improvisational noise jazz played on rock instruments.
That last one is the downfall of their catalog. Like Frank Zappa and Psychic TV, for some
reason they feel that every single note that they've ever played deserves to be released
- which makes for some incredibly annoying lo-fi live recordings of the band just dicking
around on stage. And this sucks the wang of the editor of Kerrang because their good
stuff is REALLY good: funny, oddball, unique, well-performed and intelligent. I've had my
fill of discussing the band in general. Let us together, you and I, move on to the
actual
albums that I own by them. To be honest, I don't even know who the editor of Kerrang
is. Does this mean that I don't pass AP Kerrang?
Most people know Sun City as a racist African land that was boycotted in the '80s by such multi-talented artists as Pat Benatar and "Little Stevie" Yankovic. But little-known to most people (or "sheeple" as I call them because they have such a conformist herd mentality)
Ooo! Or "sleeple" because they won't open their eyes to what's REALLY goin' on. Oh hang on! "Creeple" is what they are! 'Cause they're such CREEPS!
So most people (or "heaple" - because they're filled with GARBAGE!) (no wait -- "bleeple" because they're always trying to censor everything you say!)
Oh man! I didn't even think of "weeple" -- that's because they're always crying like little conformist babies!
Dude, Boyd is totally gonna get a boner when I tell him all these derogatory rhymes with "people" that I'm coming up with. He'll fancy me a regular Nietzschean Superman! But my point is two-fold. First -- Sun City is a retirement community in Arizona (the mortal enemies of my in-laws' retirement community, as a matter of fact!), and there really WAS at one point a group of old woman singers calling themselves the Sun City Girls. This brings me to the second point of my two-fold point: you know those things you make by folding up a piece of paper and writing crap on all the folds, where you hold them in your hands and flip them back and forth and have people pick one of the four choices, then you spell out their choice by flipping the thing back and forth and finally you open it to reveal something like "You're gay!" or "You're ugly!"? One time the child version of me created one and my Dad asked to see it. I showed it to him and unfortunately the answer it came up with for this fine man was "You're a four-eyed freak!" This angered him mightily, as he was nothing if not an eyeglass-wearer. This self-same expression of disgust and viciousness felt by my beloved father is exactly what your regular "Joe" is bound to feel upon buying a 1984 LP by a band called the Sun City Girls, putting it on the turntable hoping for some Andrews Sisters-style octogenarian harmonies, and running headfirst into a flaming pile of audio dog foulage. You'll hear many, many expressions of artistic ennui on the debut Sun City Girls LP, but if you're looking for a simple description with which to pigeonhole it, try ("Crazy Talking" + "Eastern Influences") x "Noise Avant Jazz" = This Album. Not only does this equation kind of make sense, but it helped me score a 1470 on the SAT. The song titles are confusing and evocative ("Caravan Of Scars," "The Burning Nerve Ending Magic Trick," "Your Bible Set Off My Smoke Alarm," "Vomiting Diamonds"), the musical equipment is generally composed of stinging guitars, electric bass and loud crisp manic drumming, and the vocalists are not... well, they're not normal. The very first vocalist is the inimitable "Uncle Jim," a sleazy accent-heavy Vegas creep who begins his narration with the vehement warning, "You fellas smoke pot? Your Cousin Jim smokes pot. He sits around the house, smokes a little pot, drinks a little beer, plays a little music. But he smokes the good stuff, fellas. Not that stuff laced with LSD, 'cause it'll drive YOU OUTTA YOUR MIND!!!!" Any other lyrics and proclamations you may find on the LP aren't a whole lot saner. As for the music, they've always brought a crazy Mideastern influence of braininess to their trashy smashy garage sound, but they've also always had a tiring penchant for just blasting out made-up improv noise. I can't even count on one hand the number of tracks on here that start off with either a groovy bass/drum jib or a wild psychedelic Indian melody and then deteriorate into nothing but smash-bash scragglefloop, unless I pull out my special "Hand With Eight Fingers." Dark arpeggiations, scrapy rhythmic noise, ugly horns, somber bass progressions, stomping high-speed cowpunk, tight odd jazz skrankling, funny mouth noises, cocktail jazz - it's all here, it's all buried under mountains of impossible-to-penetrate dark humor (as their entire career would be) and so much of it is expertly performed (example: the hypnotic acoustic guitar/toy piano duet "My Painted Tomb") that it's impossible to deny that the guys are both musically talented and smart as shit, which has always made me feel like a moron for not "GETTING" the avant-noise side of their personality. Is it possible that there IS nothing to get in those moments? That they're just there to give the band an excuse to get some aggression out? They certainly SEEM like violent, angry men on their records. And as nice as middle eastern keys and swing jazz are, they're not exactly "hardcore punk." But high-speed blasts of irritating noise ARE. So maybe there's something there. Or not. I don't pretend to understand these men, and they're probably pretty happy with that. DAMN YOU SUN CITY MEN AND YOUR SECRETIVE LIFESTYLE!
This stinks. If the SCG's goal was really to raise money for the starving nation of Chilly, they FUKKKED UP because (a) it's a terrible record and (b) it's a bootleg. Somebody with a tape recorder captured two stench-ridden concert passages from 1984 ("Purple Turtle - Xmas 1984" and "Albuquerque - June 19, 1984"), and a mere decade later prepared them for illegal commercial distribution. The results were disappointing but not surprising because by 1994 we'd all grown used to the Sun City Girls urinating in the Middle East and releasing it as 'free jazz.'
Side A begins with a nice groovy melodic bluesy riff but quickly degenerates into noisy tuneless clatter set to a "We Will Rock You" beat. The drums are louder than the guitars, the muffled sound wavers in and out, and at the end somebody bows something. How could they have performed such a lousy song in the wake of Bruce Springsteen's Born In The USA LP changing all the rules of rock and roll?
Side B starts with what appears to be piercing amplifier feedback and yowling, until upon closer inspection the 'feedback' reveals itself to be a deliberately-created noise emanating from some sort of blowy instrument. Then a sax comes in and a band member yells a story while slapping fish-like at his guitar strings. The story involves a spat with his father, who concludes "You boys are living like gypsies!" It's weird to think that such a horrible song could have appeared in the world mere months after Prince's Purple Rain raised the genre of funk-pop to breathtaking heights of artistic expression.
Blame improvisation, drugs, free expression - blame whoever you want for this record putting the "RECORD" back in "REeking CORDuroy pants," but let us never forget what George Orwell said about 1984: "It's like a human face stomping on a boot for days."
I watched Maladolescenza last night. Boy, 12-year-olds' pubic mounds sure have changed since I was a boy!
NOTE TO EBAYERS: Don't try to sell Maladolescenza on ebay. They apparently don't subscribe to the old adage that two 12-year-old girls performing softcore sex is the same thing as a Bruce Willis movie.
This LP is about half-SHLPIT down the 3/4 between killer
pre-written real-life surf/ethnic/jazz (NOT "ethnicy jazz" to parade your snazz) and made-up noise. The songs are the reason that the Sun City Girls should be a beloved
fixture in every country in America -- Ventures twang guitar mixed with dark conspiracy evil bass surrounded by a jazz-playing superstar basking in a tent in Morocco playing
a Turkish march and chanting insanely as a guy beats drums of undetermined origin in the backdrop The non-songs are the reason that they are such an untrustworthy bunch
of misanthropic jerkoffs, you want to beat the shit out of them every time they send you an Instant Message. They aren't playing straight "rock," but there are much greater
rock elements on this one than you'll find on most of their others. The guitar playing notes, bass lines that been wrotes, spoken anecdotes, improvisation quotes, drummer
steering boats, groupies sowing oats, eating grass like goats - what a bunch of scrotes! (I'm not taking votes) Their funny song titles will make you laugh so! "In a Lesbian
Meadow"? HEE HEE!!!!! And Well all the rest are pretty normal. But ETHNICALLY normal like a guy who lives in a desert would name his songs. "Kal El Lazi Kad
Ham," "Radio Morocco," "Damcar," "Ask Heem (202 456 7369)," etc. So do you think Bush knew that the terrorist attacks were going to happen? I'm getting really
suspicious about things these days. I'm starting to believe that certain shadowy figures in the government ignored threats because they knew an Arab-initiated terrorist attack
would give the U.S. the national and international support we needed to wipe out all our Middle Eastern enemies and bring the oil back where it belongs (remember Bush comes
from a big oil family, has really dirty ties to Enron and his father was a Freemason). I'm just not buying it anymore. Come on -- they found an Arabic flight manual in a car in
the airport parking lot? That's just stupid. And did you see how happy Ari Fleischer looked the day after? He could hardly contain his glee while answering
questions in a press conference (he actually did bust out in huge grins a couple of times -- and make a few jokes). Politicians are scumbags. Maybe they "know what's best for
us," but they're completely corrupt. The whole thing was just TOO perfect. Who's with me? Everybody say "I"! No no, not "ih" - it's pronounced "eye."
You'd be whistling Dixie if you tried to suggest that this was
a worthwhile release worth its taste in salt. This is a comedy joke release featuring
two
things: (A) Lo-fi cover tunes of campy schlock tunes like "Me And Mrs. Jones" and "Love
Train," performed very well but purposely sung in a screaming, off-key, childish manner
and (B) Even Loer-fi snippets of conversation that all speed up at the end to unhumorous
effect. I hate to bash and smash an album that was compiled by my "good friend" Gregg
Turkington, but I am doing just that. If he thinks that just because we're "pals," I'm
not
going to give my honest opinion about a bunch of songs that are played great but sung
and recorded so friggingly annoyingly that my stomach cringes and my eyeball does a
little somersault, he's got another think coming. Please dear god, don't anybody tell
Gregg Turkington about this review. Which reminds me -- if you don't think the singer
of Judas Priest is a sausage smoker, YOU GOT ANOTHER THING COMIN'!!! BA DUM DUM
DUM - BA DAH DAH DAH DAH BWEE! BWEE! YOU GOT ANOTHER THING
COMIN'! He's HELL BENT - HELL BENT FOR LEATHER-CLAD MEN WITH ASS
DILDOS! And until they repeal the sodomy laws, he's BREAKING THE LAW! BREAKING
THE LAW! Have you been by his house lately? He's usually ROCKIN' AFTER MIDNIGHT!
SHOVIN' COCK IN THROUGH THE BACK DOOR! What do you mean, you heard all these
jokes five years ago?
How many of these e-mails do you get a day? I imagine it must be quite a few
as you certainly seem popular. Or at least your artists are. Anyway! I just
wanted to say;
In all honesty, I can't tell the difference between this version of Fly by
Night and the original by Rush!
"Who sucks off the Pope behind closed doors?/And spits the cum into your open sores?" "Mr. T ran jizz in her hair while Nancy had a press conference/Ted Koppel had a hard-on/Nancy sucked off Sam Donaldson instead." "We got vibrators up the ass/You can come and make a pass/Slap the monkey while you wait/Come on in and suck the bait." "My prick is 55 centimeters without the knob. The knob is 25 centimeters. Altogether, it's 75 centimeters. It's a very nice....uhh...prick." "Mr. Cocksucker! Fuckface! Cuntface!" "I watched as he pulled that old drippin' thing outta Mama with a shit-eating grin on his face/She smiled and said 'Thank you, Pa!' and all I could feel was disgrace." "Mark Prindle ROOLZ!" Nearly every one of these quotes can be found strewn throughout the Horse Cock Phepner LP by the Nun's Titty Plurals. Pointlessly obscene observations masquerading as dark humor? Perchance and perwilligers. But times have changed: Lewis Grizzard is dead and I don't feel so good myself! In Ottawa, they call music like this "You stupid Americans," but here in America, it's called simply "Very vocal-oriented." As well-rounded and worldilish musical as the SCG's can be, this album is less high-speed eastern-influenced mystique than Fugs-level rhythm-heavy folk/anarchy/noise/screaming/simplicity goodtime ridiculousness. Yes, those in search of melodic intricacies are likely to be disappointed, but anyone in search of a grotesque, goofy, fun, weird, creepy good time that NEVER lets up should apply for a job at the store called this album. But you wanna hear something really bizarre? In addition to the obvious Fugs influence (evidenced in the re-written Fugs cover "CIA Man"), I swear to God (e.g. "Up your ass, God!") that the other major influence for this project seems to be Napoleon XIV of "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaaaa!" fame! Call me an asshole, but the jauntily, schizophrenically rhythmic high-speed vocals that drive such tracks as "Saint Bernard's Observation Booth," "I Protect You From Me" and the slightly more warbly "Aristocrats of Impertinence" totally sound like "I'm Happy To Live In A Split-Level Head" and other secondary wonders of Mr. Fourteen. Don't fear that they've turned into a dumbed-down, cussed-up King Missile (Dog Fly Religion) though; it's still a very diverse record. Where else would you find Spanish mariachi, tribal sophomoric rants, cocktail jazz, cowpunk, minor-key psych-rock, eerie chanted horror movie music and a Russian man bragging about his tri-colored penis? I'll tell you where: Nearly every other Sun City Girls record!
Did you see David Letterman's BEARD last night!? Sheesh! I mean, talk about.... a.... beard.
I'm sorry. My writers are on strike, so I'm having to do this monologue off the cuff here.
Okay, let's go to a commercial.
PEPSI! HEY, IT'S PEPSI!
Okay we're back. My first guest tonight is some guy talking a dump.
Hay. I'm taking a dump. A TOXIC WASTE dump, that is!!! And I'm TAKING it to court on charges of fouling up our fragile ecosystem!
Okay, my second guest is Robin Williams.
Hope you enjoyed the show!
On the other hand, if you're here for the record review, this was the Sun City Girls' first 7-inch single, composed of two parts long tiresome free jazz and three parts short strange things. Let's talk free jazz first. "Halcyon Days Of Symmetry" is two minutes of clattery guitar noise and smashing drums with maybe two moments of accidental symmetry. "Fine Blue Bells" is three and a half minutes of speedy noodly anti-melodic racket with louder bass and guitar; they come together for a dead stop every once in a while and there's this quiet part in the middle but otherwise ehhhh. If you were to take every moment of pointless shitty improvisational 'jazz' out of the Sun City Girls' discography, put it all in a blimp and set it on fire over San Francisco, their catalog would only be about a quarter of its current size but they'd be the greatest band of all time.
Wait, what am I saying - "over San Francisco"!? What about the hippy dream, man?
The other three tracks still aren't incredibly musical, but they're at least interesting in that idiosyncratically insane Sun City Girls way. "A Wake" is a speedy monologue about conspiracy, free will and Y2K recited atop a drumbeat; "The Beaver Scream" is a bunch of hilarious nonsensical shouting over a 'blubbla-blubbla-blubbla-buh' rhythm; and "May Your Children Be Carnies" begins with a swingin' drumbeat, crappy bass chords and nice jazzy guitar strumming before shifting menacingly into a rigid march beat with dark bass overtones. The entire single is 9 minutes long and can be found on a small round piece of vinyl, or "record."
I give it a 6 and to hell with records that are any good! (*holds up right finger of middle hand*)
Two songs! Looky here, two songs! (One, Two!) Both instrumental and eastern, sucka my dongs! (One, Two!) One great pulsating rock! (One, Two!) One sucka my pulsating cock! (One, Two!) Eerie wailing echoey noise! (One, Two!) Out of tune violin squealing and bongo, boys! (One, Two!) Kinda like improv jazz performed in the middle east! (One, Two!) Cool pulse bass, even in song I like the least! (One, Two!) Another example of SCG's talent extraordinary! (One, Two!) Don't get fucked up the ass by famous transvestite Halle Barry! (One, Etc!)
This is generally considered to be their most musically accomplished and easily enjoyable release. Knowing this, it's amazing how completely UNAmerican they manage to
sound on this release. The entire CD sounds like it was made in the Middle East or in
India, out in the middle of the desert in a tent with stripes on it by three guys wearing
fezes. It's a terribly interesting way to approach songwriting, and results in some
stupendous tunes that merge an Eastern sound with Western scales, topping everything off
with neato pan flutes, whistling, deeply reverbed Hindu-style chanting (if the Hindu
chant,
understand - this has yet to be determined) and lyrics that may or may not be in an
actual
language - perhaps multilinguist George Starostin would be able to tell you that. Maybe
you should go over to his fucking site if mine is boring you so much, cocksucker piece of
pile of shit cunt. The guitar player in this band is awfully talented for an unknown
player. He smacks the dab out of an acoustic, transforming it into a Mexican western
gringo tamale and then back into a sitar-sounding drone samosa, jags a slide guitar
anthem in 7/4 time, plays heavenly Zeppelin-style beauty - all this and MORE! Well,
not really more. But a couple of the songs are bombastic in their Arabic movie grandeur.
A true expression of the artistic freedoms allowed us here in the U.S. We can play any
kind of music we like - why, the Sun City Girls sound more Afghanistani on here than they
would EVER be allowed to sound under the Taliban (which means "students," I'm told). I
don't like countries based on religion. We need to get rid of the Taliban and install a
democratic puppet government. Or if not democratic, then at least Whig. GET IT?????
AFGHAN WHIGS???? HA HA AHAHH!!!! AAHHHAHAHAH!!!! YOU THOUGHT I WAS
SERIOUSLY TALKING POLITICS FOR A SECOND!!!! HHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! FUCK
YIOU!!!!!!!! Notice that I surreptiously inserted an "I" into the expression "Fuck You"
-
This should be studied by music loser ass dorkasses just like John Lennon's classic
"Don't
you know that you can count me out - in" and Pavement's semi-classic "Nature kids -
I/They don't have no function" lyrics of self-doubt and contradiction. Because things
like
this are important and should be discussed at length. As should the question of whether
or not Metallica sold out. Look, I'm serious. Osama Bin Laden told me that there's
gonna be more trouble if Metallica doesn't go back to playing thrash like Master Of
Puppets which, in his opinion, is the greatest metal album of all time. He also told
me that Pakistan is a bunch of sellout fags that should change their name to
Alternatistan.
If memory serves me a tennis ball (FORE! Heh heh heh... a little tennis humor for you "equestrians" out there), an acquaintance named Chris Crowson who shall remain
nameless once told me that this double-7-inch (like I have in my pants) is made up of outtakes from Torch Of The Mystics. If this is true, let me stress my heartfelt
thankfulness that they were TAKEn OUT of that great album. Because this is mostly just a bunch of fucking off racket garbage shit. When it SNAGS, it SNAGS your
clothes, man, like a burr, but that only happens perhaps thrice on the whole seven-song experience. The other four are loud ad-libbed full-electric-band rave-ups that never
turn into songs. "The Reflection Of A Young Boy Eating From A Can Of Dog Food On A Shiny Red X-mas Ball" is an EXCELLENT title and piece of imagery, but the tune
backing it is just 8 minutes of flapping away at flutes and bongos and crap. Likewise with "Sun Damaged, My Ass!" Titles get no more vibrant, but the "song" is 30 seconds
of fff flike nothing. The only ones that seem pre-written (and very GOODLY so, I might add) are the Arabic acoustic "Souvenirs From Jangare," the noisy but funny "It's
Ours" and, best of all, the skrewed-to-mangled children's song that closes the record, "The Rhinemaidens Palatial Mountain Retreat." These three tunes should have made the
cut -- they would have fit in wonderfully on Torch Of The Mystics. But the other ones should have stayed on the cutting room floor -- or maybe have appeared on a
release entitled (Larry) Stortch Of The Pisstakes. In conclusion, I hope you can figure out why I only gave it a 5. I have no problem with fake female orgasms in
the real world - Lord knows without 'em I'd have no self-esteem at all! - but on record they just sound halfassed. Not like Teri Weigel -- she screams and screams like a really
irritating screaming woman with fake boobs when SHE fakes an orgasm!!!
This band plays types of world music that I'm not qualified to recognize. It may be that every solitary-butt song they record is an ingenious look at a rare Amazonian disco country/western extra-vagina. but these are instrumental electric distorted noisy songs that don't aid anyone, especially World Music victims of genocide. So fuck the Sunc Itygi R.L.S. becuase musically they claim that every place is better than America -- that's their true "message" -- but if you actually spend any TIME in any of those rare world music places, you discover that the fuckhad dictator is having everybody killed with machetes, and the people are too religious (whatever fuck they believe in) to fight back. World Music people are either (A) arrogant dullards like Peter Gabriel and Paul "Short Stuff" Simon or (b) closing their eyes to the injustice that surrounds them. The Sun City Girls are too fucked in the head to fall into the boring category, so let's approach them with important questions like, "Why are you playing ethnic music when if you actually lived in that part of the world, you would be murdered as soon as looked at?" I don't actually know that to be the case; I'm relying on propaganda from the Republican Party, but since when have they lied? After all, it was the Democrats who hated black people. I know because I read it in a book called My Teacher's a Liar and Always Masturbates With George Bush's Hand In Front Of The Class. Let's return to THE POINT (by Harry Nilsson) Hi! I'm Elizabeth McGovern. You may know me from such films as A Handmaid's Tale, Ordinary People, Smelly Pussy Fuck Sluts or Once Upon A Time In America. Unfortunately now I'm old and gross, and you'd have to be blind and gay to want to see my wrinkled slouchy pathetic figure. But more importantly, this album doesn't arouse the juices in my crotch. In fact, I HATE IT. Back to you, Asshole. Oh man, I've developed Multiple-Personality Disorder, and one of my personalities is a foul-mouthed version of Elizabeth McGovern, whom I've never even heard of. Luckily, my psychiatrist is having all of my personalities kill each other off at a motel on a rainy night in my head. EXCEPT THE LITTLE KID!!!! YOU FORGOT THE LITTLE KID!!!! Signed,
Now see this is what I'm talking about when I call this band
"weird." Not that this is the most brilliant or musical record of all time, but it is
at least
oddly interesting. This is actually just a 12-minute-long 7" single, but it has a title
so off
my dick. (No no! Not you, Claudell Washington!) Let me describe it for you: There's some staticy noise, perhaps a guy banging on
some cymbals and a guitar twanging away at nothing far off in the background. Then
begins a conversation between a store owner and a crazy man with a ridiculously
stereotyped Asian accent who apparently constantly stands outside the store scaring
customers away. The crazy guy then begins an aimless narrative about the secret cities
of
Napoleon and Josephine at the North and South Poles, which quickly degenerates into
schizophrenic meanderings about conspiracy theories and "things they don't tell you."
The store owner is more concerned about the fact that his business is failing, so finally
he
tells the Asian what he really thinks of him and storms back into his store. Then a neat
organ line comes in for a couple of minutes and the record ends. Oh hell, I'm sorry - I
was thinking of the new Janet Jackson single; Napoleon and Josephine is a
kickass rap metal song that combines the brutal assault of Linkin Park with the thought-
provoking lyricism of Korn.
Two Songs Plumbing! Ohhhhhhhhh. It's for you. This is the closest that the Sun City Girls have ever come to playing generic indie rock. This is not lounge music - it's bass/guitar interplay indie rock Superchunk style, but recorded really shittily in such a way that you can't hear the drums at all. You need drums in indie rock; otherwise it's "lo-fi." Or "fo-li." Or "hi-lo." Or "K-Mart." Or "no-go." Or III DON"T NEED TO KNOW WHEN PEOPLE ARE DRUNK. I don't. People think, "Oh, he writes about when he's drunk so he must give a shit when I'm drunk.." I don't. I don't at ALL. It's like telling me when you're burying the gun of skin. I don't CARE. When I write it, it's a diary entry that you can read or ignore. A general comment. When you PERSONALLY EMAIL ME about it, I find it disturbing and unnecessary. I don't want to know that you're an alcoholic. I don't think it's "cool." If I mention too often that I'm drunk when reviewing, it's because this is my BLOG. BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG. I vomited. Not really. I'm too much of a man. But you see my point. Don't buy this single, for crying out loud. It's a damn practice tape of just indie-rock stupidity. Two songs. One is a guy guitar soloing over a simplistic up-and-down bass line; the other is a bass and electric guitar counterpointing each other in an obvious way. Don't make the same mistake that so many others have made!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The songs are fairly catchy though, to be honest. If they were on an album, that would be different. As it is, they're poorly recorded practice tapes of indie rock instrumentals that don't go anywhere. Isn't it infuriating? Don't you hate yourself for liking this band? You SHOULD. I do. Because they don't give a shit if you waste your money on some total piece of crap. Why? Why do they do that? Nobody has ever ventured to answer this question for me. NOBODY.
Great stuff! Wow! I dug that acoustic song with that really neat Turkish vocal! And check that out! Wow! What a great Marrakeshian rock dance song! Damn atitty!
That's one of the greatest tunes I've ever heard them do! If the REST of this record is as incredible as the first four minutes, we're in for a WILD ride!!!! Oh. It's
over? Well, THAT was hardly worth the nothing at all I paid for it! Say, did you ever notice that ball sweat smells like a pussy? I don't have any theories on why this
might be but I think it might be the most important discovery of our time. It renders women obsolete! While we're on the subject, you GOTTA go out and buy the MSR
Madness CDs The Makers Of Smooth Music, The Human Breakdown Of Absurdity and I'm Just The Other Woman. I have no plans to review them
because they're compilations of different "artists" but my Good God are they hilarious. They're made up of "song-poems" from the 60s and 70s ("Send us your lyrics and
$100 and we'll set them to music!"). You gotta hear this stuff -- moronic, sexist, racist, and performed so BIZARRELY. Just wait til you hear this minister-sounding guy cry
out for mercy, "WHEN A WHITE GIRL MARRIES A NEGRO....." Do it! Buy them now! They're fantastic!!!! I'm not joking!!!!
But then again, you're right. They dick around way too much sometimes.
Okay I just had an important meeting with Glenn Frey, and he informed me that somebody's gonna hurt someone before the night is through. Unfortunately, he went on to declare that this night -- metaphorically or literally, I've yet to wholly fathom -- is gonna last forever. "Last all," concluded Mr. Frey ominously, "Last all summer long." I seized upon this statement, chortily retorting, "Summer? You know what comes out in the summer -- the Sun! And the City! And also Girls!" It didn't take long for Frey to catch the duplicity of my suggestion, and before you know it, we were in the same boat together -- he and I, me and Frey. Together. But little did I know that my nightmare had just begun. First of all, as Glenn Frey would be the first to point out, this double-album is 96 minutes long. Granted, that's one minute for every teardrop that ? and the Mysterians brought to our attention that long warm weekend in '65, but I don't judge albums by tears, no more than I judge used book quality by tears. And maybe that ultimately separates me bodily and emotionally from those around me, but you know what? I'm in an office by myself right now, so there's a lot of other things that separate me from those around me as well - for example, I'm not as black as that stapler over there, nor do I have a bunch of little holes in me like this computer speaker. Unlike that magazine, I don't have the words "FINANCIAL ADVISOR" printed upon my cover, and - at least last time I checked - I'm not 5'11 with light brown hair like that mirror. I'm a human being, and my skin is RIPE! Getting back to the subject, Glenn Frey gives this album 5 stars out of 10. He points out that it's a bunch of live recordings -- some with rock instruments, others with piano, weird wild wooly world percussion, xylophone, horns and/or saxophone. However, as is all too often the case with King Crimson, they spend too much improvising rather than fucking getting it together and stop showing off. Some of the improvisations have clear moods and bases for discovery (the Indian/Moroccan/Foreigner "Camel Mucus" sounds quite detectivey, for example, and who but fools could deny the rambling modal Krautrock bass-and-backbeat of the 26-minute "Where Eyes Fly Low"?), but you'd have to be a much more OUT music fan than me to sit through the random avant sputterings of rackety made-up tracks like "Tobacco Non-Plus Ultra," "You Could Be Making History And We're Already Forgetting You" and the side-long headache "Just Say No To Why." The finest moments to music fans who like things pre-planned so that anything can't happen would be an excellent live run-through of "Space Prophet Dogon," a hilarious noisy horn loop called "Music Of The Great Southwest," a truly 'CATCHY' guitar melody with the even 'CATCHIER' title "Amazon One" (Get it? "Catchy"? "Amazon One"?) and the hep groovy piano groove "Tap Tap Graveyard" (at least until it devolves into the recording of a pile of shit for the last six minutes). Also, it's almost all instrumental. Fuckin' Bill Bruford! Here's an interesting story. I was switching subway trains one fine morning just weeks ago when what did I hear on the platform but a Moroccan-looking musical group performing the hit Sun City Girls recording "The Shining Path"! I was so shocked (especially since I'd always thought "The Shining Path" was an SCG original) that I couldn't help but hum along to its dark, wily moods and movements. Immediately afterward, they performed Dante's Disneyland Inferno in its entirety and gave Margaret Thatcher a hand job on her penis. So you see, everything turned out fine with me and Glenn Frey. He continued churning out hit after hit after hit after hit well into the second decade of the 21st century, and I of course went on to star in the television series Benson: White Version. Things are looking up and they've never been better!!! (*knocks wood*) (*wood unexpectedly topples backwards, slashing across face and torturously removing both eyes*)
Now THIS is more like me! What have we here? It is 3
lengthy extravaganza songs with uproarious titles along the lines of "The Venerable Song
(The Meaning Of Which Is No Longer Known)," "Omani Red Light," "The Multiple
Hallucinations Of An Assassin" and hundreds and thousands of other things. The songs
are of slightly higher fidelity than that last atrocious pile of dog crap coating the
roof of my
mouth and the mood is dark, foreboding and evil, as if the entire CD was recorded by a
group of sacrificial cultists making their way through a twisting, pitch black labyrinth
deep
beneath the Middle Eastern earth. You'll find more most likely meaningless chanting,
neat
Plink Foydish drums and wicked, simple little bass lines (I'm thinking specifically of
"Careful With That Axe, Eugene" with its tickity-tick cymbals and eerie atmosphere).
Since there are only three tracks, please allow one to go into detail about them:
"Assassin" has a slow build into an AWESOME orchestral viola mood trance thing - the
sort of thing you'd hear from a Godspeed You Black Emperor -, "Omani" features really
nice noodly lead guitar work and some strange blowy exotic instrument sounding thingy
and "Venerable". well, "Venerable" brings the grade down to a 7. The bass line is
perfectly nice but it drags on and on for more than 20 minutes with NOTHING interesting
added to it. It reminds me of trying to sit through Metal Machine Music - the
tedium, the struggle to stay awake, the surrender to sleep's sweet slumber, the naked
cheerleaders, the nocturnal emission, the laughter, the waking up to realize I'm in a
room
full of people. The humiliation. The pulling down my panties and taking a leak all
over everybody.
Well, whooooop-de-doo (exasperatedly) - it's a bunch of lo-fi
recordings of the Sun City Girls making crap up as they go (twirls first finger around in
a
circle mockingly). Sometimes a sort of pattern (or "melody") will creep up out of the
aimless noise - sometimes not. Four of the eleven songs could almost be called "actual
songs" and GOOD ones! (the spyish Eastern-tinged "On The Sign," the skrankly loud guitar
rock of "Caravan of Scars," the wonderfully rhythmic lead guitar excursion "Caveat
Emptor" and especially the Ventures-like "Sev Acher," which clearly IS a pre-written
song)
- the other seven, no way in Hell. Essentially the rest of the CD sounds like three
young
guys who've never played together before getting together to "jam." It doesn't sound
like
any of the players are listening to each other even the slightest bit, you can't hear the
drums half the time, the bassist isn't doing ANYTHING and the guitarist, even if he DOES
hit on a delightful riff, quickly gives it up just to make a bunch of boring noise. And
pretty
much the only vocals are seemingly meaningless chanting. This is the kind of crap that
the Sun City Girls do too much of - maybe I'm the fool for not being into poorly recorded
chaos, but if that's the case, then I'm the sexiest fool in Dickville. I don't really
live in
Dickville. Oh hell, I didn't think you'd actually check the Dickville phone directory.
Okay, I live in Dickville. But I'm saving up to move. Oh hell, I didn't think you'd
actually check my savings account.
Well well. Isn't it appropriate that the Sun "Ripping You Off
With Thrown-Together-On-The-Spot Horseshit For The Past 25 Years" City
"Here's Another Double-Album Of Us Just Fucking Around; Thank You For
The $45" Girls played a 1992 set at a club called C.O.N.
Artists?!? Then isn't it even MORE appropriate that they played a
bunch of noisy worthless crayola and put it out on an album that you'll
never find anywhere for less than a hundred billion dollars? Yes, the
Sun City Girls may be 'artists,' but this is a 'C.O.N.,' pure and
simple! And by 'C.O.N.' I of course mean Chronicle of Narnia,
which explains Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle's guest appearance on
viola.
The great thing about music is that, unlike such other entertainment
options as movies or waterboarding, one can experience it while
simultaneously enjoying a second activity (example: driving a car,
reading a book, having a sex). As such, I was able to listen to this
entire CD twice without wanting to blow my brains out for wasting a full
70 minutes of life. If the Sun City Girls were from Idaho, I'd call
this album a Tater T.O.T., with 'T.O.T.' standing for 'Ton Of
Tunelessness.' Okay, enough with the hilarious acronyms.
This flat muddy bootleg-quality recording finds the Sun City Girls
dedicating an entire half-hour of its 35-minute set to directionless
improvisation. Every once in a while they find a nice groove, but then
immediately (and inscrutably) abandon it for more dull noisemaking.
It's possible that this was a visually interesting set; maybe they were
wearing neat costumes. But on a poorly-recorded LP, it just seems
brutally unnecessary.
Here, let's pretend I'm Ralph Gleason writing liner notes for the
album:
"This music is bad and it hits me like an electric eel. . . Electric
music is the music of this culture and in breaking wind (not breaking
ground) with previously assumed forms a terrible kind of music is
emerging. The whole discography is like that. The half-assed forms are
inadequate. Not the half-assed verities but the half-assed structures.
It's not more beautiful. In fact, it's much LESS beautiful. A new
ugly."
Now let's pretend I'm Jackie Gleason: "To the moon, this album!" Now
let's pretend I'm Paul Gleason: "Don't mess with the bull, young man;
you'll get the horns (and this album sucks)." Now let's pretend I'm not
exhausted, lonely and depressed. :7(
"Black Tent" starts with a catchy 4-note bass line, wiggly-twiddly
guitaring and dubba-dubba drums, then devolves into a murky mess all
buried under guitar racket. "Instruments Of Torture" starts with a riff
of three descending high bass notes, and you can guess how long that
lasts. "Nephthys" is a lovely moody bass piece with soft drumming and
guest viola by Brian Hageman (The Thinking Fellers Union Local 282)
until it begins interpolating colossal amounts of dicking around.
Finally, "Nites Of Malta" is THANK GOD an actual song, built around
three mystical Eastern notes and filled with dark intrigue, nervous
tension and foreign (or fake) lyrics. THIS is why they were a
great band - NOT because of the improv shit! Fucking improv
SHIT! What is this - Jazzville, USM?
You might expect me to clarify that by 'USM' I of course mean 'The
United States of Mammarica,' followed by a reference to 'The land of the
free and the jugs of the hooter,' but I'm not in the hilarious acronym
business anymore. So no dice, U.N.C.L.E. Scuba.
I'm glad Charles Gocher isn't around to read this review. He deserves
better than this closed-minded drivel.
Oh hell, did I say "drivel"? I of course meant "dribble." I should
have caught that error.
Oh hell, did I say "should have"? I of course meant "should of."
Some time ago, an abrasive fellow on a message board started 'going off'
about how The Beatles are no longer relevant and today's youth should
listen to modern music that's more relevant to them, and that got me to
thinking, which was kind of exciting and novel. Do you view music as
'current events'? I view it as 'timeless art' myself, and predict that
you do as well. If such were not the case, you'd throw away and replace
all your CDs every six months! The only way I can see the term
'relevance' applying to music is in the case of artists who specifically
sing about current goings-on. For example, the Dead Kennedys'
anti-Reagan songs are probably less relevant today than they were when
originally released. But most bands sing about pretty common, universal
experiences and emotions - falling in love, feeling misunderstood,
etc.
Furthermore, most people listen to music for the musical aspect
of it; otherwise they'd listen to men reciting poetry. Can music
- that is, a collection of sounds - ever be considered "irrelevant"?
Production styles can become dated and fad-based subgenres may come and
go (hair metal for example doesn't seem particularly topical anymore),
but the core tenets of melody, hooks and riffs are always going to
remain. Is The Mars Volta more relevant to my everyday experience than,
say, The Turtles, simply because they exist during my life? And if so,
does this imply that my life is pretentious, boring, and way too long
with an annoying vocalist? Similarly, is Paul McCartney's 2007
Memory Almost Full CD more relevant to young people than The
Beatles' popular 1966 Revolver LP, even though the latter is
considered one of the greatest albums ever recorded and the former is
literally just a cup of coffee with some songs in it? Come on people,
relevance schmelevance. And that's why none of the bands reviewed on my
site were formed after 1936.
I apparently forgot to bring my Pelican 92 notes with me to work
today, so I'm going to have to write this review from memory.
Pelican 92 is any of several very large water birds with a
distinctive pouch under the beak belonging to the bird family
Pelecanidae. Along with the darters, cormorants, wait a minute THIS
ISN'T RIGH
Pelican 92 is a selection of recordings from the Sun City Girls'
1992 tour with the Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 -- the very tour on
which I saw them!!!! Thankfully, the disc compilator picked mostly
actual songs from their various performances rather than the
numbing thwickity stupor that (possibly) made up most of their shows.
Middle Eastern scorchers, Bollywood ditties, Eddy Detroit covers -
you'll find them all here. Indeed, popular tracks from Sun City
Girls, Grotto Of Miracles, Horse Cock Phepner and Torch Of The
Mystics are all revisited for musty audiences in dingy clubs. The
only weakness of the disc is that some of the tracks were clearly
intended as live performance pieces, and don't work at all in
bootleg-quality audio form. The worst offender is "House Of The
Charging Dog," which by all accounts was a hilarious stage piece wherein
a 'half-man/half-dog' would run out into the audience any time it heard
somebody speak, knocking over chairs, tables and people in the process.
On this disc, it's simply one guy talking about a dog and another guy
growling, as if he were a dog. That's not comedy. You want comedy,
Dane Cook is the man you're after. That guy is HILARIOUS. Have you
heard his joke about the guy who pulls up into his driveway to turn
around? You have now.
There is much, much more to say about this release, but it's all on a
piece of paper in my apartment. Nevertheless, take
it from me: this is one of the pretty goodest albums I've heard all
year.
At least it's longer than 4 minutes! This single features three tracks whose titles features words that I betcha are made up and whose elements seem to recall acoustic Spanish
mariachi music with India-style vocals. An odd mix? I wouldn't know, not knowing much about world music (aside from gamelan! Rock and roll, Jesus Lizard-style
gamelan!). Maybe these are just covers of three popular folk songs that they sing in Spanish Bombay. As it were, the guitarists play fast and eager and you picture them with
sombreros and big ol' mustaches. But then the vocals start up and it's like you're listening to some guy named Sanjay! Come on now! Come on now! We got no wheels to
race! Come on now! Come on now! Police are everyplace! Actually that's true. It's St. Patricks Day celebration beer night Saturday and there's lots of coppers out on
the street. And by "coppers," I mean huge Irish thugs with big copper pipes ready to bash normal people the fuck over the head with them, the alcoholic potato famine
pricks. I'M LOOKIN' AT YOU, BONO!!!!
Ahhh the SCGs are BACK with another good album. STUDIO album mostly (praise Jah) and it
even sounds like they're trying! It's all loosey and such, but very diverse in its
presentation and delivery. For just one minor example, "X+Y=Fuck You" is a cool
polyrhythmic thing with neat indescribable (because I forgot what they sounded like) noises
and one of the Sun City Mens rapping about what is probably nonsense until it ends with the
wickedass line "You know there will never be a critic who will ever be qualified to critique
this." He's right that I can't critique his words. I can't tell what point, if any, he's
trying to make with his stream-of-consciousnessish ranting and raving. But I love the
sounds and drums! For just another very teensy example of the album's diversity and
interestingness, "Dead Chick In The River" is a great rock (ROCK!?!?) instrumental with the
bassist pounding away at chords and bending quivery notes while the guest lead guitarist
Jesse wails away on a surf/spy tangent - probably the most NORMAL Sun City Girls song ever!
Nextofly one terribly microsporic analysis of infinite smallness would be "And So The Dead
Tongue Sang," which is full of tribal drumming and a catchy call-and-response nonsense chant
and weird blowy instruments, probably ocarinas or funnily-shaped clay flutes or somesuch.
Look, they do what they want and they seem somewhat enchanted by world music. But they
don't do it Peter Gabriel serious boring style. They do it fucked up on heroin and LSD
style. VIOLENTLY upturning your cushy little rorck and rorll world with drones, chants and
pounding, all seething with misanthropic sly humor and anger. But that's just one example.
I mean, I could go on and talk about "Archaeoptryx In The Slammer," which features more odd
instruments and the Surawong Pop Minstrels doing nilly nally things which one would assume
are somehow related to Bangkok music. But Rather Than Giving Examples, Let Me Explain Why
The Album Only Gets A Seven. the main problem is track SIX, entittied "The Venerable
Uncle Tompa." My problem is that it's essentially a 16-minute drone. It breaks into the
old "Venerable Song" for a few minutes, but it's mostly a drag that just kicks your ears in
the testicles for a quarter-hour, Testicle Ear. Also, the set closer "I Knew A Jew Named
Frankenstein" is kind of a half-assed, though funny, generic rock song with a goofy "scary"
voice like that guy used to do on SCTV. Joe Flaherty. He looks Jewish. He dressed like
Dracula though, not Frankenstein. Did Eugene Levy ever play Frankenstein? Eugene Levy is
a genius. Remember the guy he played in Vacation? "You mean you didn't want
the..uh....metallic pea?" Heh heh. Good stuff. "I mean, the Family Truckster is a hell
of a car, beats the hell out of the sportswagon but HEY! We wanna make you happy!" I love
Eugene Levy. I wish he would get more roles in Hollywood. His part in American Pie
was good too, and the wimpy guy he played in Best Of Show and the unfunny dentist in
Waiting For Guffman. This is primo stuff! Wasn't he also in Splash? Oh
hell, did I say "Eugene Levy"? I of course meant "You - Chase, Chevy."
This is supposedly the alleged soundtrack to a motion picture named Juggernaut, but I've checked the All-Movie Guide hundreds of times in rapid successible and the only Juggernauts that show up were filmed in 1936 and 1974 and seem to have no input from Charles Gocher at all. So unless it's a private art film or a hilarious XXX comedy about an overwhelming, advancing force of women with huge juggs that crush or seem to crush everything in their path, I'm going to call BULLS HIT on the "soundtrack" nonsense and declare this another arty made-up album of crap that gets old really quickly. Though it starts promisingly with a couple of exploratory dionysian (?) rock jams, this "Dark Star"-style hippie lysergic mind expansion pretty quickly gives way to simple organ/keyboard mood pieces, out-of-tune stringed thingamastrummers and clangy rhythmic clankity-clunking. It all sounds like it would be perfectly good background music for a movie or heated love affair, but it's a drag to sit and try to listen to, mostly because all of the tracks (which are pretty clearly improvisational) drag on for far too long. Collectors of paraphernalia will enjoy the fucklights out of the Pink Floyd "Echoes" reference at the end of "Expendable City" though. I did -- and I'm not even a collector of paraphernalia! At best, I'm a collector of ephemera, curios, Beanie Babies and echoalia. Here's my wife imitating this album: "Tappity Tappity Tap Tap Tap! Tappity Tappity Tap Tap Tap!" And she's RIGHT! Too much tappin', not enough crappin', that's my motto! Yes, this album needs more feces.
More like "Percussion...Devourer Of Anything Interesting" if you ask the piece of paper I just wrote that hilarious play-on-words on! I wrote it down because it was so funny, I didn't want to forget it!!! This is another supposed movie soundtrack -- interestingly, in just twenty-five minutes, Domino's is going to be here with a "Pizza...Devoured By Me." But let's get to the point. All of these songs are fairly short, so you're not likely to get AS bored as you got while listening to Juggernaust, you there reading this who owns one but not the other. A few of the parts remind me of Pink Floyd's More, and they use all kinds of neato unrecognizable foreigner instruments to create another rousing lot of Sick World Music, but too many of the songs are just rhythm rhythm rhythm. Melody plays second banana to the drumming noises. Oh sure, they locate lots of interesting tones, reverbs, noises and stringed instrument pluckings, and the more interesting songs conjure up a startling variety of discombobulating environments ("Thunderbird" with its reverbed banjo, "Hatching (Folklore Of The Nest)" with its sparkly-sparkles and weird blowy noises, "At The Base Of The Mountain Of Noise" with its weird chanting behind a low eerie bass drone, "The Flying Leather Jackets Of Parajito" with its crazy instruments blasting morbidly out of tune and time together, "Perhaps One Woman In The Dark" with its gong and shaky noises, "Dolores" with its dancey beat, corny Casio keyboard tones and bass chords, "A Lovely Demon Danced Upon" with its insane chanting and percussion ending in a spine-shuddering climactic scream) -- but essentially you're listening to 20 non-songs here. If you've never been into music for the "music" of it, you'll be "All About" this collection of oral audities. Otherwise, much like a long-forgotten Cheap Trick song, you're "Up The Creek!" Why do they do what they do? The Middle Eastern drum beating, the nonsensical chanting, the clanking and clinking? Do they fancy themselves from a foreign land? Are they "acid users"? Or do they just despise and want to alienate all the college radio hipsters who got into them because of only slightly challenging independent music on Torch Of The Mystics? Or perhaps they're into music as a "spontaneous creation" of the three of them together, and don't mind sitting through 5 minutes of mediocrity if it leads to 30 seconds of genius. At very least, the Sun City Girls are brilliant. Even if they choose not to showcase that fact all the time, they're incredibly smart, bizarre men.
After so many miles and years of celebrating the music and culture of faraway ethnic lands, The Sun City Girls set their sights on the U.S.A. in a BIG way on Jack's Creek. A big, rednecky, insane and hilarious way, that is! Apparently some sort of concept album focusing on the three stupidest, drunkenest residents of Southern Appalachia, Jacks Creek as a piece of music is built NOT from country-western (Thank the Lord's GOD), but from dark piano hooks, harmonicas, out-of-tune acoustic stringed instruments (banjos, acoustic guitars and who knows what else) and lots of fake Southern accents spouting hobo nonsense that's often so witty you can hear the band members trying to stifle their laughter (the best example is probably "Useless Stillborn," which finds the goofballs nostalgically discussing their friend Tal's jukebox "with those two Sidney Poitier songs on it" before somehow weaving the conversation over to the Marshall Tucker Band, a crude Brigham Young joke, a meal that tasted like liver guts and shit but tasted good after a glass of grapefruit juice.... and a completely pointless guest appearance by "Mabel"). Even the most urban tracks in the world -- say, the dark jazz meanderings of "Pork Floozle" -- are buried beneath Hee Haw style guffawment. Who the hell starts up a dark jazz tune by shouting, "Hey Clem! How's Pappy?"??? And am I a goof here (just to free-associate from track to track) or is "Fact The Business" a Doors parody? That sure SOUNDS like they're making fun of Jim Morrison when they keep shouting, "YEEEAAAAAAYYYYYY-AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!" I might totally be just extrapolating my own intentions into their brains, however. What I want to stress again is that, aside from a couple of brief moments, this is NOT country-western music. It's split between dark, twisted piano melodies, one completely fucked-up organ hook, a few old-timey-style banjo numbers with harmonicas, an incredibly disturbing "conspiracy theory" narrative by an insane man and what I guess are two fellow patients? (Or doctors? Or are all three of them just hobos?) and a surprisingly inspired recording called "Jazz Of The Civil War" which in all truthfulness DOES sound exactly like a Confederate army outfit marching band playing the closest thing to free jazz that they could envision in the 1860s. I honestly only know maybe three people who like the Sun City Girls so I don't really know which are their more popular records and which are hated, but I'm TOLD that a lot of people considered Horse Cock Phepner to be too much of a novelty record. Now, I LOVE that album, but I CAN understand that point of view because it's mostly a vocal and lyrical thing that makes it work for me; musically, it's a little scant. Jacks Creek on the other hand -- although it DOES inspire just as much uneasy laughter as Horse Cock -- features MUCH more memorable music. I might in fact violently disagree with somebody who tried to write this one off as a mere novelty record. It's a superlative effort by one of the most gifted and least consistent bands in the Universe. While we're on the topic of America, I find it depressing to state that I no longer have any faith that any U.S. government will EVER be at all honest or moral. I realize I'm one of the last people in the world to figure this out, but apparently our executive branch has been made up of lying, corrupt, powermad monsters for most of the history of the presidency. I learned this from a really good book called Lies My Teacher Told Me. BUY IT TODAY! But apparently, the entire purpose of our government is to ensure that the U.S. is a trajillion times richer than any other country and that those 5% of U.S. citizens who wield complete power over the rest of us CONTINUE to wield complete power over the rest of us. It is nine months until the next election, and George W. Bush is OBSESSED with making sure that he is re-elected. Why? Doesn't he have a job to do? Why is it that, 3/4s of the way through his job, it's okay for him to stop giving a shit and devote all his time and OUR money to trashing Kerry and claiming that he's made the U.S. safer after completely FAILING to protect us from the worst terrorist attack in the history of the nation? He is a man who is far, far, FAR more concerned with the power of himself and his business interests than he is in serving the country in any way. I suppose every president has been the same -- Kennedy was a racist piece of shit, for example, but you don't hear much about that, do you? No, of course you don't. Because that corrupt, lying asshole was our "Golden Boy." And Carter gave his unspoken blessing to about a trajillion genocidal world leaders. Most politicians are very, very bad people. The absolute bottom of the moral sewer, right alongside the decision makers at multinational corporations. How these people look themselves in the mirror every morning is no secret to me -- it's because they're sociopaths. If you don't give two shits about whether another person feels pain, why would you care if you're the one who causes it? And another thing that somebody pointed out to me once -- people always like to talk about all the freedom we have here in the U.S. But that's putting the cart before the horse. Before there were governments, people were born with EVERY freedom. To do ANYTHING they wanted. All that governments do is TAKE THOSE RIGHTS AWAY, and divvy out whatever piddly little rights they WANT you to have. So yes, we have more rights in the U.S. than people have in a lot of places, but that's only because governments are filled with self-satisfied fucking assholes who think they know what's best for you and me. How about this? Have a big lawbook full of laws that protect the weak from the strong. But stop adding in BULLSHIT laws -- like why the fuck are marijuana and prostitutes illegal? I don't use either, but who exactly do those "vices" supposedly HURT?! And why are we STILL relying so much on foreign oil? It's all economic -- it's all multinationals wanting to maintain their standing. In fact, according to this book, most wars and/or CIA operations in other countries are the result of a multinational corporation complaining to the president about how their business in an important world region is at risk because of some dictator's anti-U.S. sentiment or intentions of controlling his OWN resources or what-have-you. See, the thing is -- I don't have any answers at all, because I don't know enough about these issues to come up with answers. But then I'm not running for office and making uninformed decisions in MY BEST INTEREST with no regard for the rest of the people in the world, which is exactly what a good 90% of the Bush administration is doing right now. They're all wealthy former heads of corporations -- the U.S. is NOT SUPPOSED to be run like a corporation! A government whose actions are controlled by corporations is a FASCIST government. That's one of the definitions of fascism. That's what we have. I guess I'm gonna vote for Kerry just because I hate Bush's people so much, but I bet you five dollars he's not gonna be any better. He USED to have morals (he used to be an anti-war demonstrator!!!!), but now he's a politician so.... Well, we'll see, I guess (hopefully). I do apologize for being so "slow on the uptake" in realizing that the very nature of government is one of realpolitik and self-preservation (as opposed to giving a shit whether or not you're doing anything good for anybody at all), but where was I supposed to hear the truth from? School? The news? HA! In fact, HEE! No no no -- HO!
There are two things that I cannot tell you at this time:
(1) exactly how much I love this album (because
it
constantly pleases the heck out of me) and (2) what this love says about me (because the
album is creepy, pretentious, nonsensical, violent and incredibly long). But there's
one thing I CAN tell you: how to bake a petunia. First you pull the petunia out of the
ground. Secondly you place the petunia into a baking pan, generally with aluminum foil
on it because you don't want your petunia sticking to the pan. Then you cover it with
Crisco and and place in the oven at 450 degrees for 35 minutes. When it looks crisp and
brown, salt it lightly and serve. I guarantee that your party will be the talk of the
town! This is a double-CD - almost 2 hours and 20 minutes worth of the Sun City Girls
piling on layer after layer of thematic murder, sacrifice, hellfire, backstabbing,
suicide and
horror horror horror - but. in a FUNNY way! Or at least in such an insane, confusing way
that it's really hard to differentiate between the nonsense portions and the stories that
actually make sense. It's a very lyric- and dialogue-focused record, with the music
taking
a slight back seat for a change. Said music shifts and shimmies between all manner of
groovy cocktail jazz, adlib piano noodlings, country/western rough and tumble, sing-songy
children's melodies (one even sung by a child!), beatnik bongo-driven percussion, scary
noises, spaz rock, waltzes, walking bass, spooky haunted house organ and many other
things designed to keep you on guard. As I said, the songs revel in sickness - just for
a
few examples: "Bitter Cold Countryside" is a traditional-sounding folk ballad about
countryfolk that murder and tear their victims limb from limb, "Ruby On The Ferris Wheel"
is a slight variation on "Nick Nack Paddy Wack" sung by a traveling carnival that is just
as
likely to EAT its guests as entertain them and "Fourteen" is a dialogue between a creepy
old man and a little boy (fourteen? Sounds more like SIX to me!) in which the old man
hands the boy a gun and tells him he can take anything he wants from the local store.
The
piece itself is pretty funny (the "little boy" plays it for humor), but the ending is as
frighteningly-performed as anything else on the record. Let me stress here - you most
likely will not be "scared" by this record, per se. There's too much humor in it for
that.
But it's very, VERY dark humor. Try to listen to the discs alone late at night. If
you're
lucky, the perversity of the twisted music and lurid subject matter will deliver dark,
sick
images to your everyday businessman psyche. And there's gonna be a HEARTACHE TONIGHT!!!!!! Say -
Did I mention that The Eagles are the worst band in the history of the world? Please note:
Billy Joel does not count as a "band."
Talented? Assholes! Well-versed? Dick arounders! Worldly and bizarre? Boring and childish! CD 1 of
this 2-CD set? CD TWO of this 2-cd set!
That's where life begins. With the mature understanding that when the Sun City Girls sit down and write
songs, they churn out geographically confused oddities played with the greatest of dexterity, passion and
anger. But when they DON'T sit down and write songs, they PRESS "RECORD" ANYWAY!!!!! Why THE
FUCK would anybody want to listen to ANY BAND (even the Electric Light Orchestra) just fucking around,
not playing music? It is SO aggravating! But let me continue. Hold your questions until the end,
members of the press. Especially Adam from the New York Times - that guy's a major league asshole.
Which reminds me -- is it just me or is George W. Bush extremely corrupt and kind of an arrogant
prick? Disc one has a whole bunch of fully-developed weirdo anthems of varied origin and styling (ex:
"Civet's Tango" features an untuned acoustic guitar, banging and a guy squealing in an old Appalachian
lady voice, "CCC" features an odd moaning melody and spooky acoustic guitar/piano combo, "Apna Desh"
sounds like an Indian-born garage rock band playing in Mexico, "Rookoobay" sounds like a straight-up
hair-down Spanish ballad and "Cruel And Thin" is so minor-chordy and regular, it could've been a Peter &
Gordon song! -- aside from the possibly-made-up-language lyrics). But disc 2 doesn't, see! Disc 2 is a
bunch of dickering! Some of it's creepy and eerie and sickening dickering, but not the 35-minute
Shit-A-Thon called "Ghost Ghat Tresspass/Sussmeier"! Nope! That's simply 35 minutes of violin, electric
guitar and drums pouring an industrial-sized barrel full of liquid poop off of a warehouse dock into your
ear! Speaking of liquid poop, I met Hillary Clinton today, for like one second. She looks much older in
person than she does on TV. Kinda like Monica Lewinsky, who looks much fatter with your dick up her
ass than she looks when I'm hiding my eyes and vomiting all over myself. As for the Sun City Girls, as
always I support their kooky vision (""Sikya Boyah" is ONE repeated piano chord, a guy wailing
incomprehensively and some dude bangin' bongo thingies) and their brilliant song stylings ("Theme From
'Sangkala'," man it's just a GOOD song! So is "Insect Dilemma!" Just paranoid, off..... great!), but want to
throw a drink in their collective face for subjecting me to the pointless, endless tappity-flappy drivel of disc
two (aside from the last few numbers, which are okay, though still obviously UNwritten). Not to be crude
or anything, but my arm itches.
Remember when I was a kid and my Dad told me to say "Sun Shine City" over and over as fast as I
could? And then we both laughed uproarious at how I ended up saying "Sun Sine Shitty"? I think that's
why this band is called the Sun City Girls. SHUN THESE SHITTY GIRLS!!!! I hope slopes, slants, nips
and japs like this shit, because me and Japanese people sure don't. Unlike many record reviewers, I take
notes during the listening experience so that I can share my thoughts with the readers afterwards. So, if I
may, let me just share with you a few of my notes from the most recent Live From The Land Of The
Rising CD playing in my home: Crime Scene Clean: "Bongo, dumb mouth noises, shaky
noisemaker, bell at end" Emuqidanse: "Electric guitar racket, bass, drums - made-up crap" Night Of
Spilled Brains: "Guitar dicking, bass, drums" Atomic Jackal: "Starts as good bass line song, then turns
into noise crap" IMOK Anti Gravity: "Rock instruments dicking around - awful" AWOL Flyers:
"Awful" Maggot-Dripping Mouth: "Awful" An End Ground Down: "Hideous" Overall Conclusion:
"Hideous made-up crap." This "music" is so unmusical, it comes really close to making Metal
Machine Music sound like a 60-minute-long CATCHY irritating noise. It's just on-the-spot splanking
around not-really-playing-stuff garbage. The entire CD features exactly one honestly really good song (and
maybe three others that have their moments): This one good song is entitled "Apothecary Deluxe." It is a
foreboding 3-note piano trill mixed with an odd bass picking noise, steady drum beat and scary
chant/yelling. And that's fine! You can tell it's made up on the spot but it actually CONNECTS. It actually
HAS SUBSTANCE. The rest of the CD essentially sounds like three guys who can't play their instruments
sitting in three different buildings while a CIA satellite records everything they play, combines them onto
one tape and releases it for profit. And by "profit," I of course mean "loss." Surely these guys must
have actual jobs?! Or are they "poseurs"? "Chickenshit Conformists" like their parents? Just a bunch of
spoiled little trust fund babies like I wish I was? I'm so disappointed. I thought they were infallible until
this came out. I thought they were the greatest, most consistent band of all time until I heard this CD.
This changed everything - my world was shaken to its core. How could I ever trust anybody again,
especially law enforcement officials and the Bible?
You'd better have a pocket full of quarters and an icebox full
of patience if you expect to enjoy THIS shenanigan. This is a TRIPLE-CD compiling
previously unreleased live material from the years 1970 through 1996. "1970?" you ask?
How could this be, you wonder inside? They're prank phone calls made by the band
members when they were kids. They're not very FUNNY, but they're certainly rude! As for
the other 125 tracks, there's a whole lot of improv avant-garde jazz, featuring not only
the
rock instruments but a surprising amount of brass too - apparently these guys play REAL
instruments in addition to all their weird middle eastern shitruments. Elsewhere, you'll
find maybe "ten" actual songs with lyrics and singing and such. Why did I put "ten" in
quotation marks? I don't like this one bit. This just reeks of anthrax. Did I mention
that I actually LIKE a lot of Anthrax's stuff? That Joey Belladonna guy was just
atrocious
though. Unless you LIKE shit on your dick, of course! Aside from the avant garde jazz,
there `s some eastern drone, chanting, lots of loud pounding percussion, a tiny bit of
rock,
a few disturbing as HELL spoken word pieces (including one where the narrator tries to
contain his laughter while telling a story about infecting a little girl with yellow
fever to a
bunch of people who can't stop cracking up about it - the punchline: "There's one cure
for
yellow fever - and it's DEATH!"), a punk song (?!?!?!?), some talking through horns, some
lush drones, some channel surfing, some nice piano - basically, it's a bunch of shit that
they made up on the spot. Sometimes they really come together with amazing moments
of synchronization so perfect and gamelanny you want to touch your tooter in front of the
computer. Other times, they just make a repulsive racket. In short, don't expect
anything
at all and you won't be discombobulated. There are lots of pieces of crap on here, but
every piece of crap is really really short, so by the time you get sick of it, seven or
eight
other short pieces of crap will have already passed you by. Mmmm, all this talk about
pieces of crap is making me hungry.
Apparently some sort of movie soundtrack I guess, or at
least it sounds like one. The production is HI-FI for a change and the instrumental
pieces
fluctuate, ebb and flow like a tide of weird noises, with little bits of piano shells
smacking
you in the leg and swarms of killer dronefish humming into your mind. The work is filled
with trepidation and worry as a suspense film might be - some bits are mostly fragments
of noise crashing against one another - or separated between wide open spaces of time -
but - slices of spaghetti western guitar, somber classical piano and clarinet jazz also
weave in and out of the framework as airplane glue to hold the splintering framework
together. Interestingly, I know a big black dog named Dolce.
A lo-fi recording of a 1997 Sun City Girls concert. I've seen
the band live before and they cut quite a scene for themselves. Insanity rages through
their eyes and violent body movements. So even when they're playing made-up garbage
and not trying at all, it's still a great show. But I wouldn't want to go if I was
blind. This is
awful. It's just a bunch of percussion and dumb mouth voices, with tiny moments of
boring piano and blowy instrument toodle-di-doodles. Aside from the neatly-rhythmed
"Legendary Fingerprint Recognition," I can't believe they released this shit like a pair
of
loose sphincters onto the shoulders of their adoring fans. I paid MONEY for this can of
Vienna Shit Sausages! Couldn't they have at least been honest and entitled it "Brunswick
Shit Stew"? Talk about Shit Spam! I feel like I'm pouring a whole bowl of Shit Manwich
Meat into my ear and squishing it around while drinking a glass of Nestle Shit Quik.
Perhaps later I'll enjoy a nice SteakShitUmm and Breyer's Shit Cream. And then I'll get
up early to eat some Microwave Shitcakes, A Sausage & Shit Biscuit and a bowl of Waffle-
Shit-O's Cereal. Interestingly, I know a small white dog named Carnival Folklore
Resurrection I: Cameo Demons And Their Manifestations. Which reminds me of a
hilarious story - this morning my fianc‚e woman whore heard some guy at the dog run
shouting "Come on, Nigger!" and "Let's go, Dick!" at his dog over and over again.
Finally,
her ears opened enough for her to realize that it was actually a man with a slight speech
impediment whose dog was named "Digger." I'm not making this up! If I'd made it up, it
would have included the word "Twat"! Which reminds me - one time I was knee-deep in
some juicy 7-year-old twat and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah burntsienna: hue of the nations.
METAL FANS, ENTER HERE!!!! On this one, the world's most assholish band (no, not 'N Sync - I'm speaking personality-wise, not radius-of-forcefully-widened-anus-wise; your literalism is creating communicative challenges) gives you piano, brush drums, and tapping on some sort of metal implements -- I'm not sure if it's some kind of foreign instrument or just a bunch of different pieces of metal. Or both! There's also the occasional saxophone bleat or harmonica blow. They start off with an actual piano melody that's really beautiful, peaceful and carrying-of-the-warmth-of-eternal-life, but by track three, they're just banging on drums and pieces of metal for the next 40 minutes. It's a complete ripoff, but the first two songs are really great. And METAL FANS - THEY SOUND JUST LIKE THE SCORPIONS!!!! Or, more specifically, their speaking voices sound just like the Scorpions. Not exactly, of course. But if you were to put both bands in a room to have a conversation, you'd be able to tell by the sounds their throats made that they were all of the species homo sapien. FAGS!!!!
HEY JACK WHAT'S ALL THE SPICEY JAZZ CATS WHOA WHOA WHOA! And I can SAY shit like that, Mac, so don't gimme no flack, Kack where the drugs, bugs and sugs got my joint to the point with MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! And you wanna know WHY I can talk like that? Making no sense? Wasting space with capital letters and exclamation points??!!!!!! Because, JACK, I'm a GONZO JOURNALIST. I Do ThInGs My OwN wAy!!?????????!!!!!!!!!!! So dig my muthafuckin rapPAPAPAPAP as I down some more bennies with a nitric acid chaser and tell you about what's worth THE PRICE OF ADMISSION for this CD. These Sun City Girls baby they was drivin' down the street baby and I'm TYPIN THIS IN THE BACKSEAT OF A '57 CHEVY ON AN OLD TYPEWRITER WITH NAKED CHICKS COVERED IN COCAINE ALL AROUND ME AND I'M FLYIN' BY THE BACKSEAT OF ELVIS' MOTORBIKE THROUGH THE FIRE OF EXISTENCE, ON FOUR PENCE OF LSD, MESCALINE ON MY EYEBALL AND PARANOIA AT THE (wheel) WHEEL. Cuz I'm a GONZO journalist, bab-uh!!!! BAB-UH!!!! Look, now I'm gonna draw a picture of my penis - G======================================================) That's how things fly down here in Margaritaville flying with four sheets to not just the wind, but the rain, the earth and most of all the FIRE of ROCK N ROLL -- Jim Morrison's corpse riding shotgun as I set a flower on the floorboard and put the PETAL to the METAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Sunc Ityg Irls - and I can call them that because i'm a GGGGGgggggGGGGONZO JOURNEY MEMBER!!!!! MY NAME IS GREGG ROLIE AND I HAVE THIS GREAT HANDLEBAR MUSTACHE! Nobody writes like I do. I'm the ashtray to society's fourth doobie roach. I'm the last of the white Spearchuckers. The final Christian KIKE. The holiest Godfucking pussy-pounding JUICEBIRD in FUCKS, OKLAHOMA --- and you wanna know WHY? BECAUSE I'M A GONZO JOURNALIST! GON is the point! GON is the creativity! GON is anything even close to interesting writing! GoNgOnGoNgOnGoNgOnzo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And best of all -- you can enjoy writing just like this in EVERY FANZINE IN AMERICA!!!!! But enough of my sharp biting satire. This CD is yet another waste of time. Just a bunch of awful noise - drums, bass, electric guitars, maracas - just made-up-on-the-spot CRAP. Some nice repeated guitar noodles in "Elvis On A Shoestring," a bit of nice banjo interplay in "Camp Sulawesi," great drumpile of rhythms in "Echo By Association," but even these three semi-GOOD songs drag on for far, FAR too long. Which leaves maybe three honestly fully enjoyable tracks -- "Ruins Of An Old Casino" you might actually call a twitchy psychotic little neck-pushing guitar blast, "Now Playing" is a HILARIOUS blast of pointless noise (and short!) and "DJEMA EL FNA, USA" sounds like a band of floppy dimwitted 5-year-olds banging haphazardly on drums while guffawing and shouting "HEY! HEY! HEY!" over and over again. But they can get away with this stuff and you wanna know why? Because they're UNDERGROUND MUSICIANS!!!!! THEY'RE RIDING ON JERRY LEE LEWIS' BONG ALL THE WAY THROUGH PCP COUNTY, POPULATION: VEIN. FOUR GREASED UP WHORES PILE OUT OF A NEON CESSPOLE DIVE OF A DRUNKWHOLE AND SAY, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAh fluppitydorp."
So dig this, Jack: I'm a kid, right. Just a little kid. Recording this and that off of the FM radio. Your "Train
In Vain" by The Clash (which I thought, at the time, was the Bay City Rollers!!!). Your "Ages Of You" by
R.E.M. (at the time, they played it a LOT - like it was a hit!). Your "Emotion In Motion" by Ric Ocasek,
famous Bad Religion album producer. Your "Take Me Home Tonight," the beginning of a massive string of
hits for Eddie Money that continues to this very day. When what should happen one day but I happened
across a "college" radio station, where they play weird stuff. And this crazy collage thing was playing - I
hit the "record" button and let the craziness fly by -- so many noises, cuts, loops, odd voices, weird
snippets of old-style singing. I was always extremely curious to find out who had recorded the song, but
unfortunately the only part I remembered for years and years was a black woman saying, "Oh my god! It's
sugar!" And you can't exactly go on the Internet, type in "Oh my god! It's sugar!" and expect your solution
to come out waltzing out at you like so many matildas. Especially in 1983 or whenever the hell this was.
So imagine, if you can, how I must have felt when, at age 28, I was handed this CD by the Sun City Girls,
placed it in my stereo deck, turned up the volume and heard a bunch of free jazz. The disc has some
moments of beauty, but not as many of those as there are moments of crap. They're playing piano, horns
and drums - sax, brush drums, you know jazziness type stuff. But, as usual, they haven't actually written
any music. So they're just Ornette Colemaning for 40 minutes, with, as I said, a few accidental moments
of clarity, clickingness and beauty. EXCEPTING (and this takes us back to the aural collage I mentioned
in the first paragraph) two great great great songs that work and should be on here -- an acoustic,
billygoats gruff-vocaled half-tune entitled "In The Bosom Of Uncle" and a fantastic Butthole Surfers-style
song called "Old Nancy Wardrobe In The Dance Closet" that whips along on a great driving fast beat,
insistent piano note and two bleating horns. So if you have any idea what that aural collage might have
been, let me know.
FANTASTIC comeback! This is ONCE as good as that last
one I reviewed! Recorded March 18, 2000 at the Rainbow in Seattle, this disc finds the
Girls in a rock instrument mood, jamming on a guitar, bass and drums in classic power
trio mode in the finest tradition of Rush. Cream and the Rolling Stones once you realize
that Ron Wood doesn't contribute much. A few of these are actual full-breed songs - the
jazzy lurch "I Wanna Go To The Moon," the wicked cool but overlengthy "Chameleon
2000" and vaguely "Helen Waite" - but too much of it is just more ad libbed dickery. To
the point where I can't even imagine the BAND enjoying themselves, unless their entire
goal as a live band is just to play crappy non-music all night. Maybe the intelligentsia
at
the show pretended to like it, I don't know. The best part on the album certainly isn't
the
songs - it's this one really short part where the band talks to the audience and you can
tell
that they're really funny and most likely completely misanthropic. And that's just the
GOOD news! The bad news is that there are several other titles in this "Carnival
Folklore"
series.
I wrote an incredible review of this album earlier this evening while under the influence of spirits, but looking
through my sent file just now, I realized that I accidentally erased the majority of it before emailing it to the
Webmaster. So now I have to write the stupid thing again. Which is probably good, because if memory
serves, the original review involved me typing up all my written notes with my eyes closed, realizing I had
had my hands on the wrong place on the keyboard, then retyping them and finally just flopping my fingers
up and down on the keys over and over with no rhyme or reason. With, as usual, a bit of 9th grade
philosophy the likes of which always seem incredibly profound to me when rotten stinking filthy plastered
with alcoholics - which ALWAYS give me headaches now. Is that bad? Does that mean I have a tumor or
something? I can NEVER drink now without getting a terrible headache afterwards. I know that the entire
AMA is a big fan of my site, so if any of you could help me out with this, it would be more appreciated than
a Bronson Pinchot guest appearance. This CD is very atmospheric, with each track flowing into the
next and tons of recorded ambient sound effects that make you feel like you're right there on location in the
middle east with the Sun City Girls -- chicks laughing, beachy sound effects, seal noises, the
clister-cluster of an outdoor marketplace, disgusting locust-like noises, crickets, birds, what sounds like
an Indian airport, all kinds of stuff. Interesting as this travelogue-on-disc might be, the songs are even
better. There's some folk, a bit of groovy bachelor pad jazz, some organ drone, lots of percussssssion
goodnplenties as always, exotic horns, and even a wicked smoove Krautrock style number! This is a
good place to get a gist of the entire world of the Sun City Girls' instrumentation, marred only by a few
more-than-lengthy NONsongs like the unlistenable nine-minute "Gardens Green With Broken Chests."
They really do come up with some great song titles though, don't they? My favorite title on here is "Nyne
De Gris Sang," an exotic novelty song whose title when sung sounds suspiciously like "Nine Degrees
Song." So FINALLY! Proof that not all of the Carnival Folklore Resurrection CDs have to
necessarily suck balls out loud in the middle of the State of the Union Address.
I like this band's drummer. I know I haven't dwelt on him much, but he has a really crisp, tight playing
style that sounds extra-good. As for this here CD, it's mostly composed of half-written rock
instrumentals. Not a whole lot in the way of vocals aside from some goofy "yee-haw"s in the atrocious
"Instantaneous Decisions" (which, honestly, sounds like how the band composes their work most of the
time) and some fakey joke darkness in "Opium Den" (which, honestly, sounds like where I pick up my
12-year-old Asian prostitutes most of the time). The others include lots of decent guitar leads and solos, a
bit of surf-spy -- very much in the GUITAR PLAYING vein, but nearly as unmusical as you might expect.
And why? Well why come is that the guitarist in this band is actually a really talented player -- you just
can't tell because he chooses to fuck around so often. He doesn't do that quite as much on here, sticking
instead to normal keys like you might hear in normal songs by normal songwriter/guitarists like Neil
Young, Angus Young, Youth Brigade, Sonic Youth, Youth Of Today, Crucial Youth and Dick
Cheney. Hit singles include the FULLY COMPOSED easterny "The Vinegar Stroke," the marching solo
"Carl The Barber," great riffituder "Sangkala Suite" and the 15-minute-long moody rock excursion title
track. They also do a fun energetic cover of the Ramones' "Journey To The Center Of The Mind," the
original version of which can be found on Acid Eaters along with such other great original
Ramones compositions as "Substitute," "The Shape Of Things To Come" and "Hey Hey We're The
Monkees."
The best CFR yet! The SCG really did AOK on AOL with this CFR CDR! (at least it's a CDR in the APT of
MDP!). This is like a shortened minor rendition/reprise of Dante's Disneyville Education Hour, with
insane, violent vocals, brutal, murderous lyrics and homocidal backwater piano/sax "rumpapump"
instrumentation (like Nick Cave's "The Carny" gone even sicker in the Appalachias). John F. Dead
Kennedy makes several appearances in the lyrics, as does John Wilkes Booth. There's also a nice song
about killing a girl and bleaching her skull. These people aren't your friends! These people are NO man's
friends! Beware at your own pentecost! The music is always interesting, and the lyrics and vocals will
probably drive your loved ones a long, long way out of your house. I like 'em when they're nutso
beginnago! And, though this isn't anywhere near as musically diversified as Disney's
Danteland Adventure, it has all the charm and wit of that family in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
II starring Dennis Hopper. Speaking of Dennis Hopper, rumor has it that Boyd Rice beat the shit
out of Lisa Suckdog back in the day. Is that true? That's what I read in The History Of Boyd Rice,
Emotional Retard by Mark Prindle. Hee hee. "Boyd Rice and Lisa Suckdog." What am I, living in
1992? YES. TIME HAS STOPPED FOR ME AND I WILL BE A COLLEGE FRESHMAN INTO THOSE
WICKED FERAL HOUSE BOOKS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. And when I die, I hope Karen
Greenlee gives me a handy. See, that's the thing - I really do LOVE all those Feral House books. So it
would disappoint me to find out that Adam Parfrey's beliefs are as hateful and juvenile as Boyd Rice's. But
they probably are, sad to say. Why else would he play in a band with him? The thing is -- none of these
people, by definition, are EVIL. As far as I know, they haven't killed anybody (although if it's true that Boyd
beat up Lisa Suckdog, well that wasn't very nice). But their beliefs are so....STUPID. Short-sighted and
stupid. How can you believe in fascism and side with the oppressor when, under actual fascism, you will
almost undoubtedly be the one on the lowest rung? Not to paraphrase Mr. Jello Binarkers (1981), but do
you really think a stupidass industrial noise guy and an "edgy" book publisher "with an edge!" are really
going to be among the elite when a bunch of nutjob Christians turn the U.S. into a fascist police state?
(and they WILL be Christians - by sheer numbers, not to mention persistence and strength of belief, they
automatically have it sealed). Sorry, emotionally stunted pricks -- exchange penpal notes with Charles
Manson and read Peter Sotos' Pure all you want (Peter Sotos - THERE'S a piece of human shit, by
all indications), but I don't really know how to end that sentence. Who are today's assholes, btw? I
haven't exactly been keeping up on things. Hence my complaining about individuals that nobody in the
world has given a shit about in the past decade. Do people hate Jack Kemp? I could totally go off on
that guy, once I did some research.
Hey everyone! Allow me to introduce myself; My name is Frank Jickle and I'll be taking over the Mark Prindle Record Review Guide effective immediately. Apparently
Mark has had some kind of emotional breakdown (probably because of all that hard rock he listens to!) and I have been brought in on a temp-to-perm basis as a replacement
music critic. But don't you worry - Frank Jickle won't steer you wrong! I was hoping that my first assignment would be one of my favorites like Eric Clapton or Stevie
Ray Vaughan, but apparently Mark had a few "alternative" CDs he wanted me to take a listen to first. And I gotta tell you - talk about "out there!" If you thought Dave
Matthews was weird, just wait until you hear these guys! I went into this double-CD expecting some tasty blues licks and soulful female vocals - what I got was a far
cry! The psychedelic vase pictured on the cover is worth the price of admission, but the music itself is some of the most eccentric and quirky experimental neo-psychedelic
folk-rock ever recorded. Picture a cross between early Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead at their wildest and you kind of get the picture. It's almost as if the band isn't even
trying to hit big -- the music grooves along on some pretty hot modal jazz-inflected vamps, but with bizarre wordless vocals topping the piano, bass, violin, guitar
accompaniment. Mr. Prindle tells me that this is actually one of the most coherent Sun City Girls releases, but I find this extremely hard to believe considering that most of the
songs don't even have choruses or middle-eights, let alone the kind of guitar pyrotechnics that you may be used to. Is this a novelty act? My guess is that it must be, since
they appear to be from Arizona, yet sound like those Monks that were so popular a few years back! Are these even guitars? They sound like stringed instruments, but not
any that I've ever heard from Ibanez or Fender! My best guess is that they are run through a new effects processor to give them a rustic Old World feel, not unlike the early
work of Jethro Tull -- I recently read that Tom Scholz was putting the finishing touches on the next installment of his killer Rockman pedal series, so I wouldn't be surprised if
that is what the SCGs are fooling around with on this release. But I haven't even gotten to the part that's going to blow your mind. In some strange musical underground,
maybe disc one does count as music - there ARE at least clear melodies present (though they never reach the sophistication of today's finest bands, like Live and U2).
But disc two doesn't even go that far! The entire disc is comprised of something that the band has termed a "field recording," meaning that it was recorded out in the fields of
Asia over a nine-year period. This disc is completely full of sound effects -- crickets, dogs fighting, Asian children shouting "Whatsup whatsup whatsup?" in hilarious
imitation of their favorite American rap artists, strange underdeveloped native "music," cockfights -- boy, and you thought Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) held a monopoly on
sound effects! Think again! Although it's rare that I am given the chance to hear such a rich and varied release as this, demonstrating remarkable stylistic growth and
musical diversity, constantly experimenting with different sounds, textures and genres, occasionally the band can be maddeningly inconsistent because of this eclecticism. But
their experiments frequently succeed; no other contemporary artist can blend so many diverse styles into a cohesive whole, except possibly Prince, a Minneapolis
African-American urban artist with such hits under his belt as "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Get Crazy." The band is unquestionably gifted. They successfully recreate the
sound and feeling of countless groups from the past, revive the swirling, guitar-heavy sounds of late '60s psychedelia and infuse it with George Harrison's Indian mysticism and
spirituality, but are also definitely the smoothest and most pop-oriented of their rebellious crowd. There are plenty of more heralded singer-songwriters, but few have
produuced more good work or have done so for longer than the Sun City Girls. Although they were initially grouped in with the legions of pop/metal bands that dominated the
American heavy metal scene of the '80s, the Sun City Girls were one of the most distinctive bands of that era, constructing a progressive form of heavy metal that drew equally
from the guitar pyrotechnics of post-Van Halen metal and '70s art-rock, most notably Pink Floyd and Queen. They may or may not be "the kings of rock 'n' roll," but of all
the major rock and roll acts of the '00s, they are certainly the most f
Pish, Mark. Judas Priest is an amazing fucking band, and you know it. Even if
Rob Halford does play for the pink team.
The second time I saw this band was the Rainbow show in Seattle, May 2001. The first set of that night was documented in all its glory on CFR 5. After the second set they did "Mrs. Jones" for their encore and I was pretty impressed. Then I heard this and it all made sense. One of their more willfully difficult releases, which is saying something. Still, I've read at least one review in favor of it. A five seems good. This is actually a reissue of one of the many cassette releases from the 80's.
First off, question. (feel free to put this in your site, in fact no! DO! I
insist. It'll make it look all the funnier and LORD KNOWS YOUR SCG PAGE
NEEDS IT! No offence or anything nor any constructive criticism intended!
It's just not one of my faves - you seems to hit your balls more on the
bands you don't like {assuming you like the girls! I mean jesus you wouldn't
go to the trouble of listening to ALL OF THESE FUCKING SCG ALBUMS if you
didn't! And reviewing them! Where the long since dead and gone Charles
Gocher must've pissed you off into tears, at least he can roll in his grave
with laughter at you reviewing each and every bum release they put out!}
i.e. Pearl Jam and Weezer! That shit was hilarious! I mean, I should hope
you don't like PJ, I mean, what, come on Prindle, I know you were my age in
the 90's and all? But look at me! I'm not hearing any of that "The Arcade
Fire" or whatever bull! And I think you know just how alike you and I are.
Also, did you actually read this? or are you just ANOTHER dickhead who's
going to mindless copy and paste my shit to the proverbial recycle bin AKA
your WEBSITE! Actually no, I shouldn't say that, I know how much you love
these comments as I see them all the time posted in bulletin form on myspac!
Very good, so I'll know it's not all going to waste! Well it probably is cos
yanno...the SCG page sucks...again! Sorry! Do that Pantera page you
promised! YEAH! NOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM! I'm cutting back on the modesty cos
this is relevant to your interests. Your shitty SCG page getting some more
hits. When they google "Toxxi" your page will come up. And if only you knew
how much that and "Zobe17" are googled! I'm doing you a favour here! And
these people are gonna come, read some passé reviews with some FUCKING
KILLER comments and then assume the rest of the site is like this! LITTLE DO
THEY KNOW! It isn't! IT PICKS UP! And you review obscure bands nobody knows!
Like Helios Creed and Bad Brains and they'll think "Well Soulseek's broke,
may as well give amazon a spin and COMMIT MY PENNY TO THE MIDDLE MAN.
Besides, republican-guilt is far greater than the guilt of not actually
seeing the band play live. I would go on about the industry and just how
little I know - nor care about it! I mean let's get honest here, you can't
possibly own all these SCG releases or you'd be DEAD, I know the kind of
people who hunt these albums and YOU'RE NOT ONE OF THEM - anyway enough
talking, I'm going to go read your bad Brains page later cos I didn't
realise you had one and heard hal;f an album and got so pissed off that it
went from decent hardcore to get-on-my-titties reggae in the time it
probably takes you to give Pink a second chance! Yes, I'm being ironic with
that one and showing my loyalty as a reader, I know you'd never give her one
cos you're a sly ol' COW like that - ha! See? I did it again! Cos I know you
like the Cows! See, you may have read that bit where I go "YOU'RE NOT ONE OF
THEM!" and thought "Bullshit internet tough guy! YOu don't know me for
jack!" but see Prindle, I know you better than you know yourself, I know the
last time you ordered a bigmac and didn't complain about the quality, I know
where you g-spot is, I'm also in posession of all of Henry the dog's
brothers and sisters, I'm yet to obtain his three parents. Yes! There were
three! Did you know? The mother died through childbirth and so a second
bitch came in and weened the others. Again! I catch you out as I know you
review the band Ween! Anyway, I want you live in fear and be wary when you
next order a dominoes pizza, as I will always be watching/collecting your
dogs blood line.)
This is why I keep coming back to this website...I'm probably (scratch that...definitely) the only person in Keokuk, Iowa that owns this album. If
you're into geography, W.C. Fields, or The Simpsons, you know all about this small Iowa town. If you fancy yourself a fan of "alternative" music,
you know nothing about this album. And that's a shame. This band is about as faceless as the Residents and about ten times more proficient on
their instruments (The Rez enlisted Snakefinger to do the majority of their guitarwork). I know nothing about the band other than a friend in Seattle
(I know you've heard about that town) supposedly ran into a member of the S.C.G. a couple of years ago and stated the band acted and looked
like "gypsies." Even if his observation is way off the mark, it does provide a good category for their brand of music. The album jumps around
from country to country and it does so without leaving you feeling jetlagged. Call it Gypsy music, un-American, Middle-Eastern, whatever...I call it
one of the best albums of 1990 and I'd give it at least a "10" if this were my website. Goddamn you, Mark Prindle...I've got this site bookmarked
now.
Keokuk is also mentioned in that rousing "Music Man" number elucidating
several of the numerous reasons that we provincial city punks claiming
to hail from Gary, Indiana ought to give Iowa a try.
So I really should add comments to all of these. But I'll start here.
I recently realized that the SCG hold the distinction of being the band
I have seen more than once separated by the longest time span - 1984 to
2001. SEVENTEEN FUCKING YEARS! What a band. Mark and I disagree
somewhat (but not completely) on the improv issue, but I'm totally
willing to give Dante's the 10 even though it was apparently reviled by
a lot of SCG fans. However, I really feel like this record then
deserves another listen and a solid 9. Beautiful, out there, and
scary. "Flower" and "Space Prophet Dogon" kick my ass every time, and
the whole LP is quite catchy and memorable in all its jaw-dropping
weirdness. Their best effort in this vein, altho "High Asia" rocks
also. I saw the Thinking Fellers cover the lead track on this LP and
it was quite somethin'. Still widely available, so what are ya waiting
for?
OK, there's one other great tune on here. "Plasters Cupids Falling From The Ceiling" (another great title) whips up a helluva harmonious racket that sounds like the intro to a song being taken by the hair and stretched out for six-plus minutes. Not quite improv, but poised on the edge, it does actually have repeated melodies and themes. Hey, if the Stooges can do a drawn-out ending for "LA Blues", then I'll take these guys trying an intro any day. My vote is a seven.
The Worst Movie Of All Time
Yoiu runned Identity for me, you fcum sucker !
ok so dawn of the devi isnt the best cd ever, however tracks 1 and two fucking floor the shit out of me and the rest still interests me
Another one that people pretty much hated, for obvious reasons. Even so, this manages to be a worthwhile little corner of their universe, in the same orbit as "Gurnam" from the Jacks' Creek LP and maybe some of "Horse Cock Phepner". Like the Firesign Theater on really, really evil drugs and a headful of conspiracy theory. Seven might be high for some folks but not me.
I always thought 2 day old arm pits smelled like pussy. That, and tuna
subs with oil and vinegar. I know you like Ween a lot, but it so very
much burns my ass that there are nine thousand comments on that page of
people foaming at the mouth on how "different" and "original" and
"outsider" they are while a band that makes Ween seem as boring and
predictable as John Ashcroft's social life, THIS BAND OF SUN CITY GIRLS
RIGHT HERE, has no damn comments!!! 9,000 to 0! ARGH! Love your site and
your writing Mark, but sorry, that whole Ween thing seems like a bunch
of Dungeons & Dragons kids who just smoked pot for the second time.
Let's just talk lyrical imagery and cleverness, for example. "God Ween
Satan" and "Chocolate and Cheese" versus "You're Never Alone With A
Cigarette" or "330,003 Cross Dressers From Beyond Rig Veda". I mean,
Jesus! That's a savage beating. Sorry, I'm being a crank. Certainly
better people listen to Ween than Linkin Park, but if the "weirdest"
record someone owns is Ween, they should please try not to make any
grand pronouncements on how they're the "weirdest", "wildest", "most
outlandish" band in the universe. The Sun City Girls fuckin' FRY them.
Glad to oblige with further comments. Mark doesn't note (although it is implied) that the B-side is a track from the Grotto Of Miracles LP ("Kal El Lazi Kad Ham"). It's kinda long, so the total here is more like 10 minutes. Given Grotto's total non-availability, this is a nice thing, although the track isn't the strongest, and the four minutes of side one are indeed a high point for the band. An eight sounds good.
another great one. i, for one, enjoy the band's noodling. it is atmospheric
and intense, and you can tell that they know what they're doing - and they're
liking it. put this record on and lay down on a couch and trip out for a
while. you can smell the incense and the spices and the desert wind as they
come through the speakers.
I fucking LOVE the Venerable Song! It reminds me of the Ramayana Monkey Chant from Bali. Hell yeah! Who cares if it's long? The drums are recorded so well! POUND! POUNDPOUND! POUND! CHACHACHAwaaaahhh (repeat bass line here). These rock kids and their attention spans... a nine! A nine! Reissued by Majora and widely available right now, a good place to start. God, I wish they would reissue "Live From Planet Boomerang" also, so I could hear it without spending $65.00 on eBay.
My least favorite of the Majora releases as well... nothing seems to stick here. I'd still give it a seven for sheer aggressive uniqueness.
The title track on here nearly brought me to tears when I finally heard it. I missed this one the first time around and it took me ten years to find a copy. There's also a DOUBLE 7" version of this release with three more tracks that I've never heard, feel free to email me for trades. The best of their Majora singles, a nine for sure.
Yeah, "Tompa" was a letdown at the time. Historically, it makes a nice alternate version to the "Venerable Song", but this record is still incredibly worthwhile because the rest of it is so so good. All the other songs mentioned above are superb, especially "I Knew A Jew Named Frankenstein" and "X+Y=FUCK YOU". Unfortunately, this is another collector's item. I'd still have to give it an eight or nine.
Oops ... I've got the video of Juggernaut ... definitely exists.
Unreleased, but it exists.
funny, philosophical, endlessly inspirational. and with a wicked smile. this is absolutely one of my favorite albums. and i would like to raise a question: if charles gocher jr. does what he says he will on the song "charles gocher sr," do you think the sound produced will be harmonious or discordant?
As I mentioned above, lots of SCG fans absolutely hated this record. I have no idea why, it is easily one of their best simply because even the filler is so fucked up and weird and excellent sounding (which is due in large part to their "fourth member", engineer Scott Colburn, who is all over this record and counts it as one of his faves). An even more demonic and less topical revisitation of many of the motifs used on the all time classic Horse Cock Phepner LP (another ten candidate). Still available (for another few months maybe here in late 2003) as a limited-to-700 triple LP reissue on the Locust label.
I'd like to immediately step up here and go to bat for "Ghost Ghat Trespass", an absolutely fucking stunning 16-minute raga-type piece featuring secret weapon Eyvind Kang on virtuoso violin, this is one of my favorite SCG instrumental pieces. I don't know if "Sussmeier" is included as the same track on the CD (it's not on my LP reissue, they each get one side) but that one is indeed pretty much an endurance test. I'd lobby for an eight. And the first disc features some absolute classics as well - "Rookoobay" is totally spine-chilling and memorable. Too bad this just turned into another piece of collector-scum fodder now that the Locust reissue is gone.
Better than a two (I think that grade was just out of frustration at this point), but definitely not more than a five or so. Lots of instrumental improv. One of the less compelling releases.
Pretty uneven, but that's kind of the point here. Tons of 80's-style sprawling glory archive material. I listened to this and wrote little comments on all the songs in an attempt to sort out the more unusual moments. Lots of the tunes ended up with "gtr/bs/drms" written next to them, and their trademark instrumental blowups do dominate the disc. The weirder bits are well worth sorting through, though, and the whole thing functions as kind of an SCG primer or dictionary. Worth getting, and still around for pretty cheap on eBay.
Over the past 6 months, I've illegally and legally acquired almost everything the Sun City Girls has ever done through soulseek and various blogs. I can safely say that this 128-track (!) collection is their best work. It has every element you'd ever want in this band and very few of the elements you don't want. If I had to reccomend one other album though, it'd either be 330,000 Crossdressers (which is just a bit too long overall but it has their best songs on it) and Horse Cock Phepner. Both "10" candidates. Mark, are you familiar with their side projects at all? The Alvarius B stuff is great, but the Sir Richard Bishop stuff just brings a tear to my eye. Just beautiful. I mean, I love John Fahey and stuff, so if he isn't your thing you may not get into this stuff... but yeah.. oddly, the Sun City girls side projects seem to actually be very, very musical at all times... Also, Mark, if you go the main SCG site, go to the links section, they have a link to these reviews and they call you "grumpy". Haha. Also, FINALLY, I'm covering "Blue Mamba" with my band soon for a split release. Whoo-hee.
Third in the soundtrack series after the Juggernaut and Piasa LPs of some years earlier, some people have alleged to me that these movies don't actually exist. Regardless, I really dig the records, this one in particular. More excellence from Eyvind Kang on violin and a varied atmosphere. At LEAST an eight, this is one of their high points, still available (maybe, barely), and well worth tracking down.
Definitely another good one, with its own individual vibe. JFK conspiracy run wild. Did you hear they cracked that case? You can read about it on Salon.com. It was this old Sicilian mob guy who felt like the Kennedys had double crossed him.