Sir Richard Bishop and His Freak of Araby Ensemble
July 1st 2009 @ the Crocodile Cafe, Seattle

On a balmy, early summer evening, legendary guitarist Sir Richard Bishop and his Freak of Araby Ensemble landed in Seattle to play one of the few remaining dates of his latest US tour.  Though Bishop is a hometown hero, you couldn’t really call him “local”;  Bishop is a lifelong wanderer. In the past two years, he’s dragged his battered acoustic all over Europe opening for Earth, completed a solo tour of Italy and performed with a dance troupe in France.  Earlier this year, he even produced his first film, “God Damn Religion“.  He still finds time to record and, recently released his sixth solo album Freak of Araby [Drag City].  When he drops the ‘Sir’ from his name, Bishop‘s day job involves dealing antique occult books and international travel; spending much of his time in India and Southeast Asia. Somehow, in the midst of all of this, he must take the time to write new songs, practice with his Ensemble or, for fuck’s sake, relax.  It’s the productive guys like him who make me feel bad for sitting around watching Netflix on my computer for three hours every Saturday morning.

Here’s a quick rundown about the life of Rick Bishop.  Up until 2007, he’d spent his entire adult life terrorizing the world as a member of enigmatic art-punkers Sun City Girls.  The Girls, made up of Rick, his brother Alan and their friend Charles Gocher, sprung from the Phoenix punk scene in the early Eighties.   They would open for hardcore acts like JFA and Black Flag, often to the disdain of the audience. SCG‘s bad rep preceeded them and their live shows were often confrontational affairs, with the band hassling the crowd with lengthy improvised noise excursions, wingnut ramblings and the odd Grateful Dead cover.  They eventually began releasing music on their Cloaven Cassette series, sending cryptic transmissions out to the die-hards who were already emerging from the scene. Read the rest of this entry →