Friday, December 20, 2019

The 1986 Listening Post - Sun City Girls - Grotto of Miracles

Sun City Girls - Grotto of Miracles



#207/1352
1986 Housekeeping
Sun City Girls
Grotto of Miracles
Genre: No Wave
4.25 out of 5


Highlights:
Swing of Kings
Ask Heem (202 456 7369)


My mother was left with a mortgage, a retail business and no discernible way to earn a living after my father died. She was 50. 
She got a job a year later at the local JCC and met a widower named Bob who she hooked up with. They drank Grand Marnier in the evenings and put on a pretty good show of being compatible. Until they absolutely weren’t. But, by then it was too late for ol’ Bob. She had married him and he was dependent on her and she cooked and cleaned and gave him some meaning in his meaningless life. His son committed suicide and he developed compartment syndrome while sitting by the pool on hot day drinking something, anything other than water. 
Bob’s dream was to be taken seriously by intellectuals (he wasn’t), he figured out how to join MENSA and decided he was a “doctor”. He bought a corvette and got a license plate that said, “Dr. Bob”. Again, he wasn’t a doctor. He was a self proclaimed Stock Market genius who day traded when he wasn’t a teacher. Made a lot of money and decided to retire to the desert, with his wife, my mother, in tow. 
This story is pretty jumbled because I’m saving it for the book but, they landed in a place called “Surprise” as is, “Surprise! You have to live here in Arizona!”
They bought a tract in a place called Sun City Grand. It was on a golf course. Bob was bad at that, too.
And he lost most of his money, which should have been my mothers when he died and then passed on to her children. 
Oh well. Come and go. 
Why this story?
Sun City Girls are from Sun City, Arizona and I wish I knew that when I would visit. It would have given me SOMEthing to do other than hang out in the mausoleum they called “home”. 

I seriously love this decade more and more with each passing month and the oddities that are mixed in. 
Here’s a band from Arizona that has never had much success beyond inspiring others and yet, the density of this recording is such that they were probably considered a formidable force in their musical community. 
Is it ease of recording? Access to facilities? I have no idea how albums like these come to be. But, come they do and we get to experience them. 
There’s so much here, smooth jazz, horrorscapes, psychedelia, I would heartily recommend it, if I knew how. I’m at a loss. 
Give it a spin for a few minutes, maybe it’s your cup. It’s whack. 





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