Details are scant at this point, but Charles Gocher, the longtime drummer and would-be comedian of the Sun City Girls—one of America’s most unapologetically adventurous and restless rock bands—died this week at the age of 54. According to the band’s Web site, the cause of death was cancer, which he battled for the last three years. Gocher had kept his illness private. Considering how tight-knit the group was—with brothers Richard and Allen Bishop—it’s hard to imagine how it could realistically continue without his participation. Few other bands pushed the improvisational impulse in rock music as hard as the SCG, whose sound made great use of styles from folk music of the Far East. Details of a memorial are to be announced soon.