by JOHNSON CUMMINS

As of today, June 3, the Suoni Per Il Popolo festival of music and art is underway at Casa del Popolo and la Sala Rossa, and runs for most of the month. The festival's program is best described as eclectic, and as such, no one band could sum the whole festival better than the legendary Sun City Girls. With a heavy concentration on free music, Sun City Girls further challenge listeners by excluding no musical form and seeking inspiration from the unexpected. The Mirror talked to guitarist Alan Bishop over the phone from their compound in Seattle.

Mirror: In the early days of the band in Tempe, Arizona, you played on a lot of hardcore bills with bands like JFA and Black Flag. Did you ever get really adverse reactions to playing free music and wearing costumes in front of punk rockers?

Alan Bishop: We got a lot of violent responses that really haven't been duplicated since. We were trying to take the music to another dimension and that would create confrontational events. We were playing non-rhythmic and freestyle music and that was just enough to encourage a violent reaction from the audience. We would get things thrown at us and have to kick people off of the stage. We knew then that we were going to do whatever we wanted, regardless of how people were going to react. We took that with us, even until today.

M: Tell me about the famous "Sun City Girls play John Coltrane's Live In Seattle" show

AB: Charlie Gocher [SCG drummer] researched the place in Seattle where John Coltrane did the session for the making of that record and it ended up it was turned into an Indian restaurant. He asked the current owners if we could do a show there and the people agreed to it. In further research, by talking to the original engineer, we found out that Coltrane and the other musicians were tripping on acid for that show. So the place was packed and we appeared on stage holding our instuments. Before we hit a note we put the instruments down and went over to a record player and put on side 1 of the actual John Coltrane record, flipped it over to side 2 and then said goodnight. I didn't think it was deceiving - we just did exactly what we advertised.

Cruise control

M: Didn't you once hijack a stage on a cruise ship in Indonesia?

AB: Yeah, the front row was the Indonesian military intelligence. The house band was kind enough to lend us their instruments. We played two nights there. We were nothing short of celebrities on that and people were all over us for the rest of the trip.

M: What can we expect at the upcoming Montreal show?

AB: Well, that's hard to say because it is always subject to change. We are plotting some things out, but people should expect a challenging hour and a half with two completely different sets. We don't like to repeat ourselves from show to show too much.

M: Has the theatre aspect of the band always been important?

AB: We incorporate non-musical ideas and always have, but it's not something we rely on 100 per cent. Sometimes we'll use it and other times we'll just play music. It's really just one of our weapons we can use to express what we want to express - part of our whole artillery.

M: You've said that the band can be put into a trance-like state during your sets.

AB: We do become very involved in what we do on stage. Sometimes we'll get in a trance state, individually and sometimes collectively. The audience has been known to be touched by things due to the music and mood in the room. We just let ourselves go and we trust enough in the music that it translates into other realms that we are not familiar with - you just have to trust it.

At la Sala Rossa on Friday, June 4 (with Sam Shalabi and Will Eizlini) and Saturday, June 5 (with Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty), 8pm, $18

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