Sun City Girls :: The Palm Leaves of Victory / Audio Letter to Mitch Myers - Cloaven Theatre / That Old Western Sieve

Circa 1987

While the Sun City Girls intimately inhabited their home state in Tempe/Phoenix, Arizona in the late 1970s, and throughout the 1980s, they not only kept their eighteen-digit thumbs on the paranormal pulse of the sun-drenched scene that came from the “Valley of the Sun," but also ultimately challenged the liberating landscape and beyond, by circling their victims like violent vultures waiting for dinner in the early morning rays of the of the great ball of fire in the scorched sky. While lightly cooking pedestrians, ludic locals, and the infamous retirement communities below, there are still lingering theories, some thoughtful, others just plain annoying, as to how much influence the heat had on the choices and decisions made by some of the people who inhabited the landscape below. What little “music critics” who dared to touch their brand of tonal trickery, along with the pulverizing political landscape that helped shape the poetic psyche of the 1980s, Arizona, the 48th state and one of the last to achieve its statehood in early 1912, and its music scene, gave birth to a complex and delightfully deranged dystopia of art. The transcendental trio carved out a meticulous magic there that to this day still divides and carefully conquers the sophisticated spirit of one of the most unique and cosmically complex corners in sound and creative culture. Did you know the Sun City Girls photobombed the alchemical assassination of Lincoln? Look it up. You can see the silhouette of Rick’s curly hair against the blood-soaked curtain that stood proudly behind the black walnut upholstered chair, famously referred to as the “Lincoln Chair”. At the same time, Charlie’s pirate-tooth smile gleamed within the soft smoke screen, while Alan simultaneously stood over the president’s body as he leaned down to whisper in his left ear, blood quietly dripping to the floor in a puddle from the cloudy canal, “Penny for your thoughts”? Of course, this has been debunked over the years, as we all know, “Honest Abe” wasn’t so honest, and it was all part of an incredible insurance claim so he could live quietly someplace practicing the many meditations of death. Why do you think they’re just now getting rid of all the pennies?

It’s been exactly one year since the release of the first round of the “Cloaven Theatre Series” recordings on the beloved Jamestown, North Carolina-based label Three Lobed Recordings, and it's only just begun. Last summer, we saw the revolutionary release of two double LPs featuring four of the 22 Cloaven recordings: “Famous Asthma” (1986/87), “Tibetan Jazz 666” (1987/88), “Extra-Sensory Defection” (1989), and “Graverobbing in the Future” (1989), and just a year later, the feverish floodgates have reopened for another biblical batch of offerings, but this time the tonal tensions are rising, and the brain is filling up with fictional fluid that’s got to go somewhere, right? The next four cassettes to be summoned out from underneath the bones of time’s radical resting place are “The Palm Leaves of Victory” (1986/87), “Audio Letter to Mitch Myers” (1989), “Cloaven Theatre” (1986/87), not to be confused with the very first “Cloaven Theatre” cassette, and “That Old Western Sieve” (1988). An esoteric explosion of recordings, some concrete in the unique universe of the group’s live performance and reimaginings, while most remained in splendid isolation like most material similar to the Dylan-verse, this overall collection takes place from 1986-1989, give or take, and is another primordial example of the Girls’ fucked up formulas from completed chaos and bewildering beauty to just how magnificent their beliefs in themselves, and their art truly was. The first half of “The Palm Leaves of Victory” was recorded live at The Metro in Phoenix in the winter of 1986. The other half of Dens across the Sun Belt between 1986 and 1987 was originally released by the band in small quantities, just as the rest of the series was, during the reign of these relics on society. To say the Girls were a “political” band is both an understatement and a cheap interpretation of their holy magic, but when they were, they were. How could you not speak on the Reagan era, and all the horrendous things that were born from its nuclear narrative such as the AIDS crisis, the crack epidemic, and Social Conservatism/Censorship, which famously gave poetic power to the Girls to write such alchemical anthems like the album’s opener “Nancy” and, of course, the classic “CIA Man” of “Horse Cock Phepner”?

Circa 1986

“Audio Letter to Mitch Myers”, a disembodied diatribe to finish out the remainder of the LP, was recorded sometime in 1988, yes, the same year that George H.W. Bush, and would eventually push Reagan’s carcinogenic carcass out for the inaugural shit stain spot as POTUS for better or worse, is “Music to listen to as you clean up at the scene of a murder”. Simple as that. “Cloaven Theatre Volume 1-3” and “That Old Western Sieve” yes, we understand, it’s very confusing-but this isn’t Led Zeppelin or some backstabbing Britannica book series, so you’ll have to listen to its criminal contents to grasp the metaphysical message at hand. From the Arizona State University radio station KASR Radio and beyond, these ravishing relics are just as collectible as they are tonal treasures that effortlessly echo the harmonious hellscape of their time and our current descent into moronic madness here in America. Set for release at the end of this month, both releases capture that cathartic chaos that the Girls were so brilliant at, while simultaneously showing listeners both old and new how to confiscate the cosmos from the skies when we’re so undeserving of its pure beauty.

https://threelobed.bandcamp.com/album/the-palm-leaves-of-victory-audio-letter-to-mitch-meyers

https://threelobed.bandcamp.com/album/cloaven-theatre-that-old-western-sieve