Trash Man
Kid Congo Powers Gets Back To The Essence

Certainly one of the more significant figures in underground rock music, Kid Congo Powers has played his distinctive open-tuned guitar alongside a gaudily colorful array of cohorts in a flurry of projects, including those fairly well-known (a late '80s lineup of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Michael Gira's Angels of Light), those scarcely known (Knoxville Girls, with Jerry Teel of the Honeymoon Killers and early Sonic Youth drummer Bob Bert) and those largely forgotten but to a few of us (German avart-garde ensemble Die Haut, Fur Bible with Patricia Morrison, Congo Norvell with Sally Norvell). But he's primarily notorious for his membership in two of post-punk's most important groups: The Gun Club, which he founded with the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce in 1979 (and kept returning to throughout the band's existence), and The Cramps, whose ranks he joined a year later. Both outfits melded raw American roots styles with punk abandon in thrilling ways that influenced scores of bands in their wake.

Until recently, though, Kid Congo (born Brian Tristan) had never led his own band. Enter the Pink Monkey Birds, a group whose loony tunes are appropriately ridiculous for a band with such a name. Following 2006's Philosophy and Underwear, their second album, Dracula Boots, was released by the ever reliable In The Red label in March. With titles that read like old Rudy Ray Moore movie names, the dozen selections wiggle and jerk and shimmy and groove like a nocturnal, upside-down, south-of-the-border, peyote-powered gutter-funk party from 1973 or perhaps 2073, difficult to estimate the vintage. I thought it was completely retarded the first time I heard it. It's since become my favorite album so far this year.

Reached at home in DC, where he moved in 2006 after living in New York for 12 years, Kid was enthused to discuss the new album, but being that he's in the midst of writing an autobiography, his eventful past was also fresh for reflection...

Stomp and Stammer: Dracula Boots is so funny and trashy and bizarre...

Kid Congo Powers: I set out to make a really fun record. There's actually a lot of good music going on now, thankfully. There always is, but right now it's kind of at the forefront of a lot of things going on, and people have really decided to go for abandon, you know! Abandon ship, and just go crazy. And it's good. Actually, Atlanta is quite good for that. And it's always been – Atlanta's always been really fun for me. But right now, there's a lot more, like Black Lips and things associated with it, like King Khan...In The Red sort of people.

In The Red is a great fit for you, too.

I knew it was the perfect place. Knoxville Girls had a couple records on In The Red. [Label head] Larry Hardy is so great. He's the perfect combination of loving really old music and liking the new slant on it. His label has gotten a lot more eccentric than it once was. It started with just...these very garage rock ideas he had in the beginning, but now it's become so eccentric in his roster, I really love it. I belong with the eccentrics... Have you ever listened to this DJ Howie Pyro, who does this show "Intoxica"?

I haven't heard that.

Oh, you should definitely check it out! He is really a disciple of all retarded, trashy kind of music, and I've been listening to his show for like two years nonstop. So that really influenced [the album] a lot. And I think also another thing that happened was that, after many, many, many years, on The Cramps' last tour I went to go see them and meet up with them, and I was like, "Wow! There is just nothing like this!" Many try, and it just doesn't work. It's still three chords, but, I don't know...it's just how they play it rather than what they're playing. And who they are. And it just brought back what I really love about them...and started me on a kind of road to say, "OK, I wanna tap into the essence of what all this is." That kind of magic in music. You know, The Cramps continue to influence me. And they were such an influence on The Gun Club. We had the song 'For the Love of Ivy' then, in 1980.