NEW YORK NIGHT TRAIN: KID CONGO POWERS GUEST APPEARANCES ON RECORD

Miscellaneous Guest Appearances, Side Projects, and Collaborations

THE BUTCHER SHOP
Hard For You 12” EP (1988)
Black Eye 1988

Featuring Tex Perkins and Spencer Jones of The Beasts of Bourbon, The Butcher Shop recorded their first EP with Kid on guitar when he was in Australia with the Bad Seeds in 1988. While this isn’t the best work of any of the above, it’s super-loose and heavy and the guitar work is some of the wildest of Kid’s recording career. Good luck finding a copy.

BARRY ADAMSON
Moss Side Story
Mute 1989

Moss Side Story is my favorite solo album of Magazine/Bad Seeds bassist Barry Adamson's prolific and distinguished solo career. On this very cinematic noir-ish post-modern masterpiece, Adamson is joined not only by Kid Congo Powers, but also Diamanda Galas, Rowland Howard, Mick Harvey, Anita Lane, The Fall’s Marcia Schofield, and a number of other post-punk notables. Kid doesn’t play guitar but sings on two of the more beautiful gospel style numbers that stand in stark contrast to the action-packed epics that populate this record’s grooves. In return, Adamson played bass on Kid Congo Powers’ first solo recording, the In the Heat of the Night EP. Someday someone should make a an action flick to go along with this soundtrack - which beats the pants off of anything Danny Elfman ever penned – and I like Danny Elfman.

JONATHAN FIRE*EATER
Wolf Songs for Lambs
Dreamworks 1997

Kid Congo Powers doesn’t remember what he did on this album but sources say that he played percussion. Jonathan Fire*Eater was a helluvah band - and this was the final and most deliberate of their compelling recordings.

SPEEDBALL BABY
I'm Gonna Stomp Mr. Henry Lee
Sympathy for the Record Industry 1998

While Kid apparently doesn’t play on this quaint EP by one of New York’s much-missed bands, he somehow found his stylish self on the cover. Maybe he just doesn’t remember playing on it?

So Jim Sclavunos, the eternal sideman, stepped out from behind his drums and pots and pans and what-have-you to discover that he had a poetic bent and an uncanny ability to write well-rounded compositions, orchestrate rich arrangements, and, who’d’ve guessed?... Sing. He probably knew it all along but kept it as his own dirty little secret – a drummer becoming a singer – maybe he was just trying to bum everyone else out - he exists to be perverse. If every skinbeater did that, we’d all have to play techno. He was probably sitting behind Lydia Lunch or Thurston Moore or whoever twenty-five years ago quietly plotting the whole thing. Actually, anyone who’s met this man knows he’s got it in ‘im. So he worked on this thing forever and got a bunch of my favorite musicians on it - Thomas Wydler, Pete Shore, Christopher Pravdica, Larry Mullins, etc. – including his old bandmates from Congo Norvell. And he employed them as ingredients in these big beautiful meticulously crafted concoctions. Then he waited another lifetime for its release - but it was well worth it. You can find Kid on “Don't Be Afraid” and “Flame."