|
|
|
||
| home | table of contents |feature | record reviews | live shows | news | events |archive | record label | links | contact | ||
|
If you grew up listening to underground rock in the 1980s, you no doubt noticed the name Kid Congo Powers popping up on a number of your records. My curiosity about the enigmatic guitarist from The Cramps, The Gun Club, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds records was never fully satiated until a few days ago when Kid was kind enough to sit down and tell me his story. When I decided to start a webzine that would give underground artists an opportunity to explain their personal histories, music, and ideas, Kid was the first name on my list. I was not prepared for Kid’s generosity on the evenings of October 19 and 20, 2005. As Powers possesses an incredible memory, a great sense of humor, a rich full-bodied voice, and an innate storytelling ability, my job was a piece of cake. Instead of interviewing Kid I let him select a format for the discussion, set up a large-diaphragm condenser mic, and let him go.
Someone please stop me before this thing turns into a scandal sheet…
I regret to inform you that we must now take an intermission from the fascinating saga of Kid Congo Powers. You must wait until next week to learn about Kid’s globetrotting and recording with the Bad Seeds, The Gun Club reunion, Die Haut, Barry Adamson, Kid Congo Powers solo, Congo Norvell, Diamanda Galas, Jonathan Fire*Eater, Mark Eitzel, Make-Up, Knoxville Girls, Botanica, The Angels of Light, The Vanity Set, Abby Travis, Rob K, Julee Cruise, Little Annie, Kid and Khan, Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, and more. I could go on forever but I don’t want to spoil it for you. For now you can occupy yourself with the hours of recorded and transcribed oral history that follows.
continue
to the table of contents for Kid Congo Powers Part I
home | table of contents |feature | record reviews | live shows | links | archive | contact | mailing list
© New York Night Train , 2005
|
For
a boyish forty-five year old, Kid has participated in an astoundingly
wide expanse of subcultural and music history. In 1976 - the dawn
of the punk era, at age sixteen, when he was still went by his given
name Brian Tristan, je started a Ramones fan club. There’s
a picture of teenage Kid with Joey Ramone and a
link to a couple of his newsletters for anyone that doesn’t
believe him. He went to London in 1977 to check out how the Brits
were appropriating the new American style and came home with a punk
haircut. In 1978 he found himself in New York - taking up brief
residence with Lydia Lunch and Bradley
Field of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks during
the height of the tightly knit short-lived No Wave
movement. In addition to witnessing one of the only two shows by
Lunch and Field’s Beirut Slump, he saw The
Contortions, the Dead Boys, and
even the Cramps. Back in California sharing a house
with the seminal LA art punk band The Screamers,
Brian Tristan was on the ground floor of LA’s punk scene.
Here he also mentions the Bags, the Germs,
X, the Circle Jerks, and a few more from
that scene . 
Brian
Tristan then met Jeffrey Lee Pierce at a Pere
Ubu show in 1979. The two hit it off and Pierce immediately
insisted that they start a band together. Though Tristan explained
that he couldn’t be in the band because he didn’t play
and instrument or sing, Pierce persisted - teaching Tristan a couple
of tricks and letting him take it from there. The band that they
created, Creeping Ritual, soon took on The Bags'
rhythm section and changed their name to The Gun Club. The Circle
Jerks’ Keith Morris (also the first Black
Flag singer) traded
Pierce the name in exchange for the title track of the Circle Jerks’
first album, Group Sex. After a year of
co-writing and developing a number of songs that wound up on Fire
of Love (including the original lyrics to the one
The White Stripes cover, “For the Love of
Ivy”), and gigging exclusively at Chinese restaurants, Tristan
left The Gun Club because (for the love of Poison Ivy Rorschach)
he had just accepted an invitation to play guitar with his favorite
underground band, The Cramps. 
With
some new duds, a new hair-du, and a new tattoo of a shrunken head
(a picture of which graces these pages), The Cramps makeover was
not complete until Tristan was rechristened. Brian Tristan just
didn’t fit with names like Lux Interior,
Poison Ivy Rorschach, and Nick Knocks
(though Bryan Gregory managed). After refusing
the name that Tristan came up with (“Brian Gris Gris”
– he was a clever kid), Lux and Ivy lifted “Congo Powers”
from a Congo-themed Santeria candle that promised to contain mysterious
“Congo powers.” Tristan came up with the “Kid”
part as he thought it sounded “cool” - like the name
of a boxer or a pirate. And so Kid Congo Powers was born.
At
the height of their artistry and popularity, the Kid Congo Powers-era
Cramps (1981 – 1984) tirelessly toured the world. In addition
they recorded classics like Psychedelic Jungle,
“New Kind of Kick,” “Save It,” and Hasil
Adkins’ “She Said” (all of which later
showed up on the compilation Bad Music for Bad People),
and, live at New York’s historic Peppermint Lounge,
Smell of Female. Kid discusses his time
with these bands, their performances and recordings, and the development
of his guitar style during these years. Kid also scanned us a couple
of pages from the scrapbook he kept during his first months with
the band – the most frightening of which contains a Polaroid
from Halloween night 1981 – featuring Kid and Jeffrey Lee
in drag. Sorry Kid, but Jeffrey makes a much better girl. 
After
quitting The Cramps, Kid initiated his pattern of returning to The
Gun Club. This time half of the band didn’t show up for an
Australian tour. Kid filled in and had so much fun that he remained
in the band. In addition to the account you find here, you can listen
to Kid talk about the tour on “Australian Tour Journal”
from Rhino’s double LP Neighborhood Rhythms
(1984). That same year Kid also appeared as the guitarist on Chris
D. and the Divine Horsemen’s “Hell’s
Belle” from Time Stands Still. Along
with Patricia Morrison of the Bags, Sisters
of Mercy, the Damned, etc., and ex-Bags
drummer Terry Graham, who left and reunited with
The Gun Club at least as many times as Kid, the band created 1984’s
eclectic masterpiece The Las Vegas Story.
In addition to explaining the album’s Gershwin
and Pharaoh Sanders covers, here Kid talks about
a studio experience that included Stevie Nicks,
Julio Iglesias’ piano player, and the sons
of Andy Williams. With the success of The Las Vegas
Story, The Gun Club then toured non-stop for almost a year before
they self-destructed in Europe. 
Though
the entire band wound up living in London, Jeffrey Lee Pierce went
solo while Kid, Morrison, and pickup drummer Desperate
stuck together for a couple of projects. The first was backing the
legendary Legendary Stardust Cowboy. The second,
also that year, was a project called The Fur Bible
– for which the Beasts of Bourbon’s
charismatic crooner Tex Perkins came all the way
from Australia to join. When Perkins and the band split due to artistic
differences, Siouxsie and the Banshee’s Murray
Mitchell joined as a second guitarist and Kid stepped up
to the mic for the first time in his career. Fur Bible
recorded an EP for New Rose with Clint
Ruin (AKA Foetus, Jim Thirwell,
etc.) and toured with the Banshees. After the band fell apart, Kid
was more than happy to leave London for Berlin to join one of the
best bands in the world, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds…