Straight Not (Outpunk)
Whereas bomb-throwing class-struggle might have once been advocated with a simple three-chords way back when, the name of the game in the eclectic 90's amongst yer punk-visionary types seems to be the dissolution of prefab gender roles and Anglo cultural hegemony. Which is precisely what those three chords of yesteryear more often that not reinforced.
So with NYC's God Is My Co-Pilot's two latest CD's, one recorded live last summer, the other released on the queer San Francisco label Outpunk, we hear a new sound, "free punk" we'll call it, sexual politics and spontaneous, almost completely unrestricted compositions. Sounds like rhetoric too heavy to rock? It's sloppy and silly enough to be fun, what with Sharon Topper, who sings mostly and her friendly way of bringing us into the mess confessing her crushes and remembering games of childhood.
GodCo have participated in Radical New Jewish Culture Festivals and sing Scottish and Gaelic (or is it Hawaiian?) traditional hymns using saxophones, bagpipes, guitars, didjeridoo, samplers, bass, cello and drums. Plenty of drums. And after five-plus CDs (most with over 30 songs under two minutes) and many seven-inches, GodCo's brilliantly unwieldy genderfucking skronk con-fusion is certainly the shit in the post-Lounge Lizard "fake jazz"/no wave scene and if they can keep up this avalanche of tunage they might even make it on Conan O'Brien. And that's the pinnacle of new wave. (Franz Kunst)