[Laughs] I went on to join Nick Cave’s band, and that brought me to Berlin, which I love and has somehow become a second home to me.
I came back to L.A. in the early ’90s for a little bit. Had a band called Congo Norvell with the singer Sally Norvell. It was a cool band. We recorded a great album and [the label] wouldn’t release it and they wouldn’t let us buy it back from them, which was completely disillusioning and depressing. And we said, “We’ll just move to New York!”
What’s your relationship to L.A. right now? You’re writing your memoir, rescuing obscure figures from L.A.’s punk past like Gorilla Rose, but you’ve also been sort of in exile for many decades.
I’ve always had a foot in L.A. because my family lives there — well, less now because my mom passed away last year. But my sister lives there and I have family and, of course, a fair amount of friends. So I’ve always had a strong connection to L.A. and ... Mexican food [laughs].
You know, I love L.A., it’s just that I haven’t been able to ... live there [laughs]. I miss a lot. I miss Mexican culture. I miss Hollywood culture. There’s a certain family aspect to L.A. that I have and that’s my relationship with friends, different musicians there. And of course I grew up there and since I’ve been revisiting all of this, it tells me how much I still do have a connection, and a connection is something in your blood and in your culture and inside you.
Have you noticed a movement or local scenes that are indebted to bands like the Cramps or the Gun Club?
I’ve been hearing a lot of bands that are flipping their wigs, and this is good. [In the Red’s main man] Larry Hardy has a very good eye and ear for that. I like his roster, ’cause it went from being a grungy, dirty kind of thing to being far more eccentric. And that’s what I appreciate about the bands that he’s signing.
ILLUSTRATION BY JIM RUGG
"I've always been a complete eccentric": Kid Congo Powers
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It’s a label that I’m very comfortable in because I’ve always been a complete eccentric, and all the bands I’ve played with are eccentric, so it seems very logical to be with In the Red right now and it feels good to be older and to be around younger people who are just as eccentric and will probably grow old to be as eccentric as me.
There’s a whole generation of people now who grew up listening to records that I made, or that my peers have made. It’s like when I was young and I was a record collector and I collected ’60s and ’50s music and I grew up hearing the Dr. Demento radio show — that was even ’40s music. For some kids nowadays, the music I made in the ’80s is like ’50s music to me. There’s that much of a generational span of time. To me it seems like a healthy, deranged influence! (laughs)
I’ve really noticed recently, the audiences in the past couple of years that I’ve been doing Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, we’ve been drawing younger and younger people and, more specifically, a lot of younger girls love and know of Gun Club. I play some Gun Club songs on the set and when I play them, these young girls go crazy!
What do you play?
“For the Love of Ivy,” sometimes “Sex Beat.” The ladies loooove Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s songs!
My band members are much younger than me and they’re really into what’s happening and what I wanna be doing now. That makes it not a retro thing — we’re interested in making new music.
In 2006 I saw the Cramps’ last tour and it had a huge influence on my solo stuff, ’cause I had forgotten how amazing they were. I was completely blown to pieces again, as if it was the first time I’d ever seen them. You know, it’s three chords and this ’n’ that, you know —it’s just rock music. But it was ... somewhere else.
And then I thought, “Wait, I’m part of this. This is something I founded and I was connected to in a big way. This is where I need to be.” I think it was their freedom, and their ability to be themselves. This is how much freedom they gave themselves to freak out.
That was a big game-changer for me. It was freeing — don’t be afraid of anything and you can be as crazy as you want, or as silly as you want, or as serious as you want, but finally be free. Let your freak flag fly! [Laughs]
The other element that had an influence on Gorilla Rose was European bands like Goblin or Neu!
Going back to Gorilla Rose and the Screamers, when I was first hanging out with all of them at their house, that’s what they were playing. It was Neu! and kraut stuff, early Nico — they had the German version of [Kraftwerk’s] Trans Europa Express! It was incredible to me, and that was like a new introduction to a kind of music I ended up getting into.
