In the dark confines of the Townhouse Gallery’s Rawabet Theatre, a middle-aged man, strumming his guitar, leans toward the microphone and sings a catchy song about murdering his six children.
“Six kids of mine and they're cryin' all the time/ It's three o'clock in the mornin' and they're drivin' me outta my mind,” he croons, swaying erratically on his foldout chair. “I'll take the pillow from the closet and choke them all to rest/And I’ll call the doctor in the morning and he'll blame it all on crib death.”
Song over, the man is quick to address his audience: “Of course, you don’t wanna kill your children with a pillowcase.”
Brief pause.
“Use a sledgehammer. It’s smarter and less painful.”
Say hello to Alan Bishop: solo artist, one half of The Brothers Unconnected, and one third of the legendary, categorically un-categorizable outfit the Sun City Girls–an experimental and staggeringly prolific “rock” band whose mind-boggling oeuvre (50-plus “official” releases), contains a wider variety of genres than your average record store.
Since their debut in 1979, Sun City Girls–formed by vocalist and drummer Charles Gauche, along with Richard Bishop on guitar and piano, and Richard’s brother Alan on bass–has consistently pushed the boundaries of auditory experimentation in every possible direction, even trying their hand at spoken-word albums and film scores.
The sound of Sun City Girls is impossible to accurately describe, inspired as much by Middle Eastern marketplaces, Asian rituals and Americana as it is by science-fiction, physics, and the terrifying vastness of a deep, dark universe.
Their music, at times verging on unlistenable, evokes images of cave paintings and spaceships, news footage and sacrificial rituals–in short, an entire history’s worth of disturbing imagery. The lyrics are also typically offbeat, offering wittily explicit and deeply cynical musings on everything from conspiracy theories, history, paranormal activities (mostly UFO-related), and, of course, love.
For almost 30 years, Sun City Girls existed as a force of pure, unbridled creativity, brought to an unfortunate end by the demise of founding member, vocalist and drummer, Charles Gocher, who succumbed to cancer in 2007.
Since then, the Bishops have been touring on and off as the Brothers Unconnected, performing, and occasionally releasing, material from Sun City Girls’ extensive catalogue. Despite the often chaotic nature of their previous band’s recordings, the Brothers Unconnected’s performances are usually more straight-forward affairs, often limited to a pair of acoustic guitars.
On Sunday night, audience members at Rawabet Theatre had the opportunity to experience the Brothers’ sound–albeit a more stripped-down version due to a scheduling conflict that resulted in the absence of Richard Bishop. The performance was organized by Egyptian-Algerian underground music label Nashazphone, which recently released the Sun City Girls album Djinn Funnel.
The setup at Rawabet was refreshingly simple: no laptops or synthesizers, no pedals, MPC’s or sample loopers–just one intimidatingly talented man and his guitar.
The lone Brother’s set began with the snarling and provocative “The Decoration,” which saw Bishop plucking his guitar and introducing himself to the largely unassuming audience by announcing, “You’re not qualified to interpret me.” Landing like a clenched fist, the song clearly left an impression on the audience, and by the time Bishop growled “I've been accused of working for the government/But if I did there'd only be ten or twelve of you left,” several heads were attempting to nod along to the music.
With the audience hooked, Bishop proceeded to provoke and challenge its members with a succession of gruff remarks and darkly amusing anecdotes. Ending most of his songs by stuttering to a slow stop, or clutching his chest and gasping, Bishop’s quirky charisma was as entertaining as his remarkable musical skills. (“This is a song about one of my ex-girlfriends, I think. I can’t remember,” Bishop muttered at one point before launching into a song that began with the line “There’s two coffins, one for me, one for you.”)
The one-man-show moved from strength to strength, whether in the form of the ominous “Cooking with Satan,” the angry Tourette’s rambling of “I Deal a Stick,” or particularly, the electrifying “Rodent with a View,” with its nightmarish “Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly”-style lyrics.
Bishop calmed things down for the second half of his set, the highlight of which was a trio of hauntingly beautiful songs–fragile and disjointed melodies that crept out of his guitar like spindle-limbed specters. Bishop’s mournful wailing–at times, he sang in what seemed to be a made-up language–shrouded the performance with a sense of mysticism and melancholy.
Despite the absence of his brother and, effectively, half of his act, Bishop delivered a thoroughly exhilarating performance, one that left several of his previous band’s devotees giddy with satisfaction. And to all newcomers, one thing was clear: whatever planet Sun City exists on, it’s definitely one worth checking out.
