Biography
A loose collective of downtown New York City musicians coalesced around the openly bisexual husband-and-wife team of vocalist Sharon Topper and guitarist Craig Flanagin. During the 1990s God Is My Co-Pilot became one of the underground music scene’s most vital presences. The band examined sexuality, radical politics, and religious awakening against a fierce sonic backdrop that drew from no-wave noise, hardcore thrash, post-funk, and avant jazz, occasionally incorporating Middle Eastern jump-rope chants and Finnish folk elements. Their output was both remarkably abundant and fiercely committed; the anthemic “We Signify” declared, “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 launched God Is My Co-Pilot in 1990 after growing distant from contemporary sounds. Embracing a strict D.I.Y. approach, Flanagin acquired his first guitar and quickly forged a self-taught improvisational style that rejected chord progressions and conventional structures. Joined by an ever-changing roster of percussionists, the pair—Topper delivering a striking vocal range that could pivot instantly from tenderness to ferocity—began playing across New York and soon became regulars at the celebrated avant-garde venue the Knitting Factory. Their debut release arrived in 1991 with the EP Four Steps Down the Road to Trouble on the band’s own Making of Americans imprint; the following year brought the 34-track full-length I Am Not This Body, an unrestrained stylistic free-for-all. Once recording began, the releases continued without pause, the sheer volume of material forming a deliberate critique of standard music-industry norms of production and consumption.
Nearly ten separate titles appeared in 1993 alone, issued in assorted formats on multiple labels: the live full-length Tight Like Fist on Knitting Factory Works, the EP When This You See Remember Me on Dark Beloved Cloud, and the cassette-only What Doctors Don’t Tell You on Shrimper. Their ongoing relationship with John Zorn’s Jewish Culture Series yielded the 1994 album Mir Shlufn Nisht, a direct rendering of traditional Hebrew and Yiddish songs; to honor the Orthodox prohibition against writing the word “God,” the group temporarily performed as G-d Is My Co-Pilot. In 1995, amid another wave of new material, they compiled earlier singles and EPs as the two-volume set The History of Music. Later highlights included Puss 02 in 1995, The Best of God Is My Co-Pilot in 1996, the 1997 collaboration Excuse Me, Don’t Squeeze Me with Melt-Banana, and the 1998 album Get Busy.
Topper and Flanagin launched God Is My Co-Pilot in 1990 after growing distant from contemporary sounds. Embracing a strict D.I.Y. approach, Flanagin acquired his first guitar and quickly forged a self-taught improvisational style that rejected chord progressions and conventional structures. Joined by an ever-changing roster of percussionists, the pair—Topper delivering a striking vocal range that could pivot instantly from tenderness to ferocity—began playing across New York and soon became regulars at the celebrated avant-garde venue the Knitting Factory. Their debut release arrived in 1991 with the EP Four Steps Down the Road to Trouble on the band’s own Making of Americans imprint; the following year brought the 34-track full-length I Am Not This Body, an unrestrained stylistic free-for-all. Once recording began, the releases continued without pause, the sheer volume of material forming a deliberate critique of standard music-industry norms of production and consumption.
Nearly ten separate titles appeared in 1993 alone, issued in assorted formats on multiple labels: the live full-length Tight Like Fist on Knitting Factory Works, the EP When This You See Remember Me on Dark Beloved Cloud, and the cassette-only What Doctors Don’t Tell You on Shrimper. Their ongoing relationship with John Zorn’s Jewish Culture Series yielded the 1994 album Mir Shlufn Nisht, a direct rendering of traditional Hebrew and Yiddish songs; to honor the Orthodox prohibition against writing the word “God,” the group temporarily performed as G-d Is My Co-Pilot. In 1995, amid another wave of new material, they compiled earlier singles and EPs as the two-volume set The History of Music. Later highlights included Puss 02 in 1995, The Best of God Is My Co-Pilot in 1996, the 1997 collaboration Excuse Me, Don’t Squeeze Me with Melt-Banana, and the 1998 album Get Busy.