Sun City Girls Launch Rare U.S. Tour
Catherine Lewis reports:
The intensely academic, studious, improvisational jazz/psych/rock trio Sun City Girls have just embarked
on a rare U.S. spring tour. The Girls (in fact, three guys) will travel down the East Coast and into the
Midwest, interspersing nights of film screenings among their live performance dates. These film presentations
will include the band's own films, as well as footage from the Sublime Frequencies label, which is, according
to its website, "a collective of explorers dedicated to acquiring and exposing obscure sights and sounds
from modern and traditional urban and rural frontiers via film and video, field recordings, radio and short
wave transmissions, international folk and pop music, sound anomalies, and other forms of human and natural
expression not documented sufficiently through all channels of academic research, the modern recording
industry, media, or corporate foundations." In other words, they travel off the beaten path with tape
recorders and video cameras like modern-day Alan Lomaxes, capturing the crazy stuff they see and hear.
Dates:
04-12 New York, NY - Anthology Film Archives (film presentation only)
04-13 New York, NY - Coral Room (w/ No Neck Blues Band)
04-14 Philadelphia, PA - Khyber Pass (w/ Bardo Pond and Fursaxa)
04-16 Louisville, KY - University of Louisville (film presentation only)
04-17 Louisville, KY - Rudyard Kipling
05-06 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle (film presentation)
05-07 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle (w/ Neung Phak)
05-08 Madison, WI - Nottingham Co-Op (w/ Neung Phak)
05-09 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock Social Club (w/ Neung Phak)
05-21 Portland, OR - Berbati's Pan (w/ Cerberus Shoal)
05-22 Seattle, WA - Sunset Tavern (w/ Cerberus Shoal)
Sun City Girls have also recently released the latest installment in their Carnival Folklore Resurrection
series, a double-CD of their program that aired on Brian Turner's WFMU radio show in November 2002. It's
available exclusively via their website, which launched this past January as a tremendously thorough
archive of photographs, tour dates, releases, and other SCG trivia that could only come straight from the
band itself. The site has an extremely complete online store, as well, but heed the sage advice of this
seasoned, dedicated fan: If you're into these guys at all, don't visit with your credit card in hand, as
seeing the words "Add to cart!" next to some of those out-of-print titles can be far too tempting. On
the other hand, if you're rich, do whatever you're gonna do anyway. Fucker.
.: Pitchfork Review: Sun City Girls: Carnival Folklore Resurrection 7: Libyan Dream
.: Sun City Girls: http://www.suncitygirls.com
.: Sublime Frequencies: http://www.sublimefrequencies.com
.: Originally published: 14 April 2004
.: Items mentioned above on Amazon.com:
Valentines from Matahari (Sun City Girls);
Bright Surroundings Dark Beginnings (Sun City Girls).
