God Is My Co-Pilot

God Is My Co-Pilot (often abbreviated as GodCo) is a queercore band from New York City formed in 1991. The two primary members for most of its existence were openly bisexual married couple, vocalist Sharon Topper and guitarist Craig Flanagin. The last recordings with Topper were made in 1998, though they continued to perform together. There were no new GodCo recordings released until twenty years later, when in 2018 Flanagin released a demo tape on Bandcamp with a new line-up consisting of himself, Normandy Sherwood (of the National Theater of the United States of America) on vocals & electronics, and Jason Blackkat on bass. Topper chose not to participate, but gave the project her blessing. All of their material has been released on independent record labels or self-released. Former members of God Is My Co-Pilot include saxophonist Andy Haas, avant-garde pianist Anthony Coleman, Fly on high-end bass, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, Gen Ken Montgomery, Jim Sauter, Kenny Wollesen, Margaret Fiedler McGinnis, Marion Coutts, and Siobhan Duffy, and many more. Guest musicians such as John Zorn and Jad Fair frequently joined them. Their independent record label The Making Of Americans (named after the novel of the same name by Gertrude Stein) released works by Fair, Cat Power, Dairy Queen Empire, and The Scissor Girls among others. The band's lyrics frequently address sexuality and gender. The band states, in their song, "We Signify, "...We're co-opting rock, the language of sexism, to address gender identity on its own terms of complexity...." They occasionally sing in languages other than English: some of their output has been in French, Yiddish, German, Finnish and Turkish and other languages. Their sound has been described as experimental, noise rock, hardcore punk and avant jazz. Stay Free zine said of the music, "We hear a new sound, 'free punk' we'll call it."