04.05.08
Charles Gocher Tribute Article by Alan Bishop at Perfect Sound Forever
The new April/May 2008 edition of the online music zine Perfect Sound Forever includes an article by Alan Bishop about Charles Gocher, his adoptive soul brother and co-conspirator in Sun City Girls who died of cancer in February, 2007.
“Invisible Tempos of the Vanishing Assassin” was written over the course of a month-long journey through Indonesia that Alan took last August. It takes the form of a kind of memorial diary, in which Alan tells old stories, describes Charlie’s creative process, rants, and generally undertakes the impossible task of sketching who Charlie was.
It’s a great piece. Here’s a taste:
Gocher used to carry around an ant colony in his pants pocket in the form of a salt shaker filled with dirt, sugar, and a large collection of red ants burrowing within. He once brought a lawnmower to a SCG show and during the set, fired it up and ran it over several large trash bags filled with confetti. Afterwards, the confetti was stomped into the beer-soaked concrete floor and it took the manager the entire next day to remove it all with a scraper. At house parties in Arizona, he would hold court in the kitchens, playing oven rack concerts into the night or scat sing and dance till dawn. On tour in 1990, we visited the grave of Edgar Allen Poe in Baltimore and Charlie traded some new flowers he picked himself for the ones already on the grave. He later convinced a whole room of people at a late-night party to smoke those dried flowers from a pipe, claiming they had special powers from the spirit of Poe. There wasn’t a soul in the room who refused to smoke them. Regardless of how absurd or impractical he could be, people trusted him and listened to him, hanging on every word. And on the other side of the world, there he was as an aloof be-bop version of Peter Pan in a village in Sumatra 18 years ago playing a wooden flute leading a pack of 50 children all over town with the good citizens watching nervously along the way in disbelief as if an alien had landed from beyond and was taking their children away….
But this is all anecdotal. His greatest moments are reserved for those who could perceive them for their full-effect, as he was light years ahead of most of you and your shallow, socially-engineered points of reference, sorry.
…What’s a full-grown Bengal Tiger got to say to a roomful of crickets? I wouldn’t park a Rolls Royce next to an AMC Pacer. Gocher would have put the Bengal Tiger in the Rolls Royce and rammed it through the window of your fucking living room.
As the Sumatra anecdote above implies, Charlie really did have a way with kids, and kids dug him. At various parties and gatherings I attended over the years, he could almost always be found hanging out with the kids. They’d spend hours talking and laughing, pretty much in their own meta-party. For a while, he and the early-teen daughter of one scene perennial even formed their own band and gigged out a few times. She fronted, they created the music together, and it was both great stuff and inspiring to see.
How children respond to a person is, I maintain, a true barometer of that person’s character. Despite all of Charlie’s dark edges and interests, fanged black humor, and inner demons he was — deep down — a gentle and playful man with a huge heart. The kids always seemed to spot this a mile away and loved him for it. They’d bring out the best in each other.
I wasn’t especially close with Charlie (few were), and so I was spared seeing him at his darkest and worst. But every time I think of Charlie, I hear his laugh — mucousy from smoking so damn much, and because it came from deep down within him.
Be sure to catch Alan and Rick Bishop’s Brothers Unconnected: A Tribute to Charles Gocher & Sun City Girls, coming soon to a US or Canadian city near you. Visit SunCityGirls.com for latest tour info.
