"God Is My Co-Pilot" has been added to your list of bookmarked artists
close
God Is My Co-Pilot
Biography
A loosely-formed aggregation of downtown New York City players built around the openly-bisexual husband-and-wife duo of vocalist Sharon Topper and guitarist Craig Flanagin, God Is My Co-Pilot emerged as one of the most crucial voices in the underground music community of the 1990s. Exploring themes ranging from sexuality to radical politics to religious enlightenment over a martial squall channelling the spirits of no-wave noise, hardcore thrash, post-funk and avant jazz -- along with the occasional touch of Middle Eastern jump-rope chants and Finnish folk music -- the group was both astonishingly prolific and breathlessly passionate; as stated in their anthemic "We Signify," "We're co-opting rock, the language of sexism, to address gender identity on its own terms of complexity. We're here to instruct, not to distract. We won't take your attention without giving some back."

Topper and Flanagin founded God Is My Co-Pilot in 1990 after finding themselves increasingly alienated from modern music; in true D.I.Y. spirit, Flanagin bought his first guitar and soon developed a self-taught improvisational technique denying the very existence of chord progressions or other accepted patterns.