Midnight Cowboys from Ipanema

AMG Review of Midnight Cowboys from Ipanema

Greg Prato
All Music Guide

Back in 1986, the Sun City Girls were a young band who recorded one of their jam sessions. They persuaded the good folks at Amarillo to release it as an album titled Midnight Cowboys From Ipanema (Amarillo head/Zip Code Rapists member Gregg Turkington is rumored to have been a member, since he helped compile it), and it turns out to be a quite funny yet innocent album. There's plenty of odd between-song banter (lots of inside jokes, whose meanings have probably been forgotten over time), and covers galore -- the Girls' versions of Rush's "Fly By Night" and Golden Earring's "Radar Love" show that the young band was full of attitude, yet short on instrumental virtuosity. Still, the album contains a definite sense of youthful innocence that's easy to relate to.