God Is My Co-Pilot Information

God is My Co-Pilot is a band from New York City that consists of Craig Flanagin and Sharon Topper along with a vast multitude of other musicians.

General Info

Describing the music of the band God Is My Co-Pilot isn't always easy, becasue it does not readily fit into the more common genres people tend to relate to. However, various people on the net have said this about the music of Godco:

• Those at The Knitting Factory, where Godco is a regular, say:
  The sound God is My Co-Pilot makes is a high-energy blast of enthusiasm, a precision noise machine built of parts cannibalized from hardcore thrash, jump-rope rhymes, avant jazz, Javanese Kroncong(pop), "no wave", Finnish folk music, and a thousand less likely sources. Their favorite topics for lyrics are: gender identity, queer sex, religious experience, and the information that's lost in translation. It is Sharon Topper's stage presence (inviting not unyielding) and her singing (sweet, smiling, and savage by turns) that hold the songs together and bring them to life.
• Queer Music Explosion says:
  With God-Co, you either love 'em or hate 'em, and I love 'em. Noisy skronk, with guitar, sax, and whatever else, topped by Sharon's endearing/annoying girl growl. The lyrics tend to be playfully sexual...
• phlegm8907@aol.com says:
  brilliant NY dada-jazz-punk-klezmer-noise band with queer-positive lyrics and sometimes semi-pornographic packaging...
• The 'zine Stay Free says:
  ..with NYC's God Is My Co-Pilot ... 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. ... 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.
• Howard Beal's KFJC new album review (November 1, 1995) states:
  God is My Co-Pilot play with gender and sexuality along martial lines, forever propelled by a bevy of percussion-minded hands; even Craig Flanagin's terse guitar is attacked as if it were a drum head. The odd clarinet and banjo can be heard among the clattering. Sharon Topper's vocals alternate between the poignant and the bilious; the shout and the whisper. A very different band that needs to be heard. Again.

The People Involved:

Besides Craig Flanagin and Sharon Topper, a complete list of who has contributed to God is My Co-Pilot is probably impossible to create, but here are the ones I could find links to on the web:

• Anthony Coleman
• Jad Fair
• Andy Haas
• Fred Lonberg-Holm
• Chan Marshall
• Ann Rupel
• Elliot Sharp
• John Zorn

The other musicians that have performed on the various releases are listed in that release's discography section.

P.O. Box 490
Cooper Station
NYC, 10276

or by e-mailing godco@earthlink.net

Date created: 18 January 1997
Last modified: 20 January 1999
Copywrong 1997, Allan Hise
Maintained by: Allan Hise hise@io.com