Sun City Girls
330,003 Cross Dressers from Beyond the Rig Veda

The Sun City Girls are undoubtedly a niche group. Formed in Phoenix, Arizona around 1980 by brothers Rick and Alan Bishop (guitar and bass respectively) along with drummer Charles Gocher, like Caroliner and the more famous Residents, they have numerous works to their credit (the first two tapes are from '82 and '83), but the limited distribution (probably intentional) and the high price of the records (this double CD is valued at $75 online!) make them almost entirely unreachable.

300,003 Cross Dressers From Beyond The Rig Veda is a work structured over two undoubtedly different CDs in compositions. In fact, a second fully instrumental CD with long and extremely expanded pieces ("Ghost Ghat Trespass/ Sussmeier" lasts almost 35 minutes) corresponds to a first CD with 15 tracks more relatable to classic (perhaps I'm exaggerating) song forms.
Starting from the latter, we are introduced by "Civet's Tango," an acoustic composition of folk-blues nature (with an oriental flavor like most of the tracks) where a shrill voice of a drunken goblin babbles and croons in a disjointed and inconsistent manner. The residents-like chant of "CCC," accompanied by a dreamy arpeggio, leads us to "Apna Desh," a sixties-style rock with Mexican-like incursions (recalling the psychedelic sound of the 13th Floor Elevators) and jazzy interludes where the acid guitars dominate. We are always led across desert expanses by "Rookoobay" and "Cruel and Thin," melancholic acoustic ballads, while "Sardharma Royale" seems more like a track from the second CD, given its structure based on xylophones and primitive rhythms. Two simple piano notes accompany the voice of a delirious shaman on "Sikya Boyah," where references to the theory of darkness' four are increasingly evident.
As time goes by, the album increasingly hops between sixties rock tracks (always successful and engaging) and more mystical compositions, which give the three an aura out of time and space, undoubtedly completely disconnected from any musical trend of the 90s.
Many recordings are live, which in this case is more a good thing than a bad one, as the improvised parts further enhance the exotic flavor of the album. In some compositions ("Murderers Night"), an instrumental Tom Waits (Rain Dogs period) might be envisioned, with less tobacco scents and alcohol flavors but more aromas of spices and incense, or perhaps Thin White Rope stripped of any “song-form” ambition ("Theme From Sangkala," languid and dreamy instrumental), but these are forced and distant, blurred comparisons. The fact is, when listening to this first album, one has the feeling of having found the missing link between the Residents and Caroliner, a crazy anomaly in the American music scene living and surviving by its own light.

The second CD fits more into a cosmic-psychedelic context, with the introduction of an almost distorted sitar swirling above a slide carpet with an always oriental flavor ("Cineria Blue"). "Shi Paku" is also based on the same atmospheres, with an organ and light percussive traces enhancing the mystical sensation. Sparkling xylophones, bells, primitive noises produced by pieces of wood ("Candi Suckuh"), the album creates a small microcosm in continuous movement that culminates in "Ghost Ghat Trespass/ Sussmeier", a true world made of sounds. A distant violin whispers sad and warm words, words of a war now ended and forgotten, of an awakening never occurred, of a morning breeze. Small sound inputs announce the birth of something, the violin now sings loudly, sings agile and fast words, the percussion follows it more composedly, the guitar creates impetuous winds and more directed gusts.
The crowd cheers, the piece is live, and from here, the mood changes too. One is hurled into a free-form orgy, a sick idea of a drunken Zorn or a bull-headed captain.
Everything reaches a logical collapse, sinking into a gloomy silence interrupted by screeching scrap sounds (guitars)… from here, a sort of staggering Eastern European melody begins anew, which is destroyed in the free storm before even catching a breath. It is a massacre game, where finally this melody reappears and is again disintegrated by sudden strokes (violin). This is "Ghost Ghat Trespass/ Sussmeier." A world indeed in 35 minutes.
Immersed in a cosmic current of late '60s German school, "Vimana of the Twilight" alternates liquid and long notes with sounds from other galaxies. A sinister organ intimidates, air bubbles fluidly slip into infinite space. A mad siren gradually calms, leaving a basic darkness that suffocates; the journey is increasingly sinister and gloomy. Everything flows naturally until "Theme From The Swaying Gardens of Apocalypsia" and "Maybe I'll Kiss and Die a Fool (Finale)," where street noises of a frenetic metropolis pave the way for indefinite keyboards and percussion. It is a funeral, a slow march toward the tomb of someone or something, a faded black and white photograph, where all heads are bowed.

After this tour-de-force of almost two hours or more, one is so shocked and stunned by the myriad of sound cues from the first album (rock, blues, folk, jazz, and various amenities) and the cosmic-free digressions of the second, that one cannot comprehend the point of assigning a score to such a work. It is neither a masterpiece nor a dud; it stands on its own. Above all, it hovers with that alien and unclassifiable charm that only the four eyeballs of the past could give me, yet seen from a more popular (CD1) and at the same time abstract (CD2) perspective, one belonging to people who can indeed be called subjects, the ultimate purpose of every human being that can be called such.