Sun City Girls

- by Steve Leggett
An eclectic mix of every musical style one can think of -- demented surf, Indian and Asian improvisation, free-form noise, fractured folk, you name it -- with doses of kabuki theater, shadow puppetry, and maverick guerilla stagecraft thrown in, the avant-everything Sun City Girls are a fiercely independent and experimental trio whose only credo seems to be to continually stretch boundaries while remaining amazingly inclusive, a process that has led to a dizzying array of vinyl, cassette, and CD releases in the past 20 years. Forming in Phoenix, AZ, Sun City Girls first performed under that name in 1981, and after morphing into the short-lived Paris 1942 (with former Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker), the group emerged as a trio with brothers Alan Bishop and Richard Bishop and percussionist Charles Gocher in 1982. SCG released their first album, Sun City Girls, in 1984 on Placebo Records, going on to release nearly 30 official albums since then, along with countless limited-edition vinyl, cassette, and CD-R projects, making the group's discography almost impossible to completely . Throughout its history SCG has remained a challenging, unpredictable, and eclectic musical unit, operating outside the commercially driven aspirations of the mainstream recording industry, and the group has become somewhat of a beacon to independent musicians and artists everywhere. Relocating to Seattle in the early '90s, Sun City Girls established their own label, Abduction Records, as well as an archival imprint, Sublime Frequencies.
They ceased to function as a band when Charles Gocher passed away in 2007, though the Bishop Brothers have remained active--separately and together--issuing recordings under their own and different names.
- translated by phoulx
你能想到的所有音樂風(fēng)格的揉合，狂躁沖浪、印度和亞洲即興、自由噪音、破碎民搖——隨便你怎么稱呼它。加上歌舞伎表演、皮影戲以及游擊隊(duì)的舞臺(tái)風(fēng)格，這支先鋒的 Sun City Girls 明顯是一個(gè)極其獨(dú)立而實(shí)驗(yàn)的三人組合，他們唯一的信條大概就是不斷地?cái)U(kuò)大他們的音樂邊界，同時(shí)不可思議地包容一切——最終帶給我們的是令人眼花繚亂的一系列黑膠、磁帶和 CD。
Sun City Girls 成立于亞利桑那州的鳳凰城，1981 年第一次演出。在短暫更名為「Paris 1942」（加入 Velvet Underground 前鼓手 Maureen Tucker）之后，他們?cè)?1982 年重新成為三人組合——兩兄弟 Alan Bishop、Richard Bishop 和打擊樂手 Charles Gocher。他們的第一張同名專輯由 Placebo Records 發(fā)布于 1984 年，之后不斷發(fā)布了近三十張專輯，另外還有不計(jì)其數(shù)的限量版黑膠、磁帶和 CD-R，使得集齊他們的所有唱片近乎不可能。
由始至終，SCG 保持了一種富有挑戰(zhàn)性的、不可預(yù)測(cè)的、兼收并蓄的音樂團(tuán)體，遠(yuǎn)離主流唱片界的商業(yè)氣息，也在某種程度上成為了各地獨(dú)立音樂人和藝術(shù)家的燈塔。九十年代早期，他們搬到西雅圖，并成立了自己的唱片公司（Abduction Records）和 Sublime Frequencies（一個(gè)限量發(fā)行田野錄音、民族音樂和影像的廠牌，材料主要來自東南亞、北非、西非和中東地區(qū)）。
成員 Charles Gocher 在 2007 年去世之后，樂隊(duì)停止了活動(dòng)，而 Bishop 兩兄弟仍然以他們自己的名義保持創(chuàng)作。