SUN CITY GIRLS’ CROWNING MOMENT

As my cousin would say, “Dude – talk about ‘arguable’!”. If you’re even a half-assed SUN CITY GIRLS fan like I am, you’ll probably be hard-pressed to come up with their “best” moment in a discography with dozens upon dozens of LPs, CDs and 45s. Me, I feel like this Phoenix-cum-Seattle trio hit their peak in the early 1990s, when their clusterfucked sound had a really rough, frantic, exploding edge, underlined by great low-fidelity records like “Valentines From Matahari” and the slightly more big-budget (ha!) “Torch Of The Mystics”. They hadn’t lost themselves fully to experimentation just yet, and they didn’t yet sound completely bored with rock music – nay, they were helping to redefine it. Slicing in elements of Arabic traditional musics, Indian ragas, surf, hardcore punk and full-on dropout drone, the Sun City Girls were one of the great bands of the day. Live, they were a total hoot. I may have written about this once before, but I saw them one time when they put on a “traditional campfire hoedown” on stage, complete with campfire and all manner of bizarre behavior. Another time they rocketed from crushing Arabic punk rock to actually arguing in faux Arabic for about five minutes.

My favorite thing they ever did was this 1992 single on Majora Records, “Let’s Just Lounge / Immortal Gods”. The A-side was originally recorded by VICTORY ACRES, one of those weirdo Phoenix bands found on early Placebo Records comps like “Amuck” and “This Is Phoenix, Not the Circle Jerks”. The B-side was by our hero EDDY DETROIT – more on him here. I’ve got a couple of other Sun City Girls rarities to throw up for ya in the near future, but here’s the one I like the best.

Play or Download SUN CITY GIRLS - "Let's Just Lounge" (A-side)
Play or Download SUN CITY GIRLS - "Immortal Gods" (B-side)