*Kid Congo Powers and The Pink Monkey Birds Brings Philosophy & Underwear To The West Coast.
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Kid Congo Powers -- the darkly charismatic legendary sideman in The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Angels of Light, Congo Norvell, Knoxville Girls, Diamanda Galas, Die Haut, et al. -- now leading his first band as front-man, The Pink Monkey Birds opened for George Clinton and P-Funk during the 2006 CMJ festival in New York City before venturing out to his native L.A. for a series of dates on the west coast in November.
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The band recently toured throughout the U.S. in support of its New York Night Train release, Philosophy & Underwear which features Powers' former Knoxville Girls bandmate Jack Martin, alongside former members of The Warlocks, Nikki Sudden's band, the Honeymoon Killers and Rhythm of Black Lines. However, this month marks the first time that Kid Congo performs as front man on the west coast.
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The gigantic tone of Kid Congo Powers' open-tuned guitar is one of the more readily identifiable sounds in the history of underground rock. Best known for his contribution to the development of the contemporary noise guitar with The Gun Club, The Cramps, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in the 1980s, Kid's spent the last fifteen years as a sideman (Make-Up, Mark Eitzel, Angels of Light, etc.), as a partner in Congo Norvell and Kid and Khan, a member of garage rock supergroup Knoxville Girls, and, most recently, the leader of Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds. What's important about Kid's resume isn't only that he played with some of the best bands of all time, but that he did so during their finest hours, from The Cramps' Psychedelic Jungle to Nick Cave's Tender Prey to Angels of Light's How I Loved You, Kid's always had a knack for being with the right people at the right place at the right time. The last five years however, Kid's gradually quit relying on his luck and taken matters into his own hands, emerged as a world-class songwriter and a distinctive vocalist.*
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Jump-starting his career when he and Jeffrey Lee Pierce formed The Gun Club in 1979, Kid Congo Powers left the obscure new band in late 1980 when he was offered the universally coveted gig replacing Bryan Gregory in The Cramps. Though Kid was already a Cramp when The Gun Club recorded their classic debut Fire of Love (1981), a number of songs that he helped write and develop appear on the record. Kid wound up in The Cramps throughout the peak of their popularity, leaving the band in 1984. Psychedelic Jungle (1981), Smell of Female (1984), and Bad Music For Bad People (1984), are among Kid's souvenirs of the era. After rejoining The Gun Club for a 1984 Australian tour, Kid stayed in the picture for their The Las Vegas Story (1984). When the band fell apart the next year, Kid moved to London and played with The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, The Beasts of Bourbon's Tex Perkins, and his own band, The Fur Bible. In 1986 he was invited to join Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for the Your Funeral, My Trial tour - moving to Berlin and becoming a full-time member until 1990 - appearing in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987) and on the albums Tender Prey (1988) and The Good Son (1990). During his German years Kid not only played and recorded with Die Haut, The Butcher Shop, and Barry Adamson, but also embarked upon seven-years of constant recording and touring with The Gun Club.
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In 1993, Kid Congo Powers made his final appearances with The Gun Club and Die Haut to devote full-time attention to his own project with actress/chanteuse Sally Norvell - Congo Norvell. After the duo released a string of singles, EPs, compilation tracks, and the success of the LP Music To Remember Him By (1994), Priority signed them to record The Dope, The Lies and Vaseline (1996). Falling victim to the dissolution of the “alternative” division of the label, the two moved to New York and recorded Abnormals Anonymous (1998) for Jet Set. Kid was immediately asked to play with everyone in town - performing, recording, and touring with Jonathan Fire*Eater, Mark Eitzel, The Angels of Light, The Vanity Set, DC's Make-Up, and a number of others. During this period Kid teamed up with Bob Bert from Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore, Jerry Teal from the Honeymoon Killers and Chrome Cranks, guitar ace Jack Martin, and keyboardist Barry London to form the prolific hard-touring supergroup, Knoxville Girls.
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After a trio of albums on In the Red, Knoxville Girls imploded in 2001. Not long after the breakup, electro-star Khan invited Kid to appear on his Matador LP No Comprendo (2001). By 2002 the duo forged an official project, Kid & Khan, and began touring the world alone or with Twin Peaks vocalist Julee Cruise. Around the same time Kid formed his first band of his own, Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds with his favorite guitarist Jack Martin. With the release of Kid & Khan's Bad English and Washing Machine, 2005 was a big year for Mr. Powers. 2006 will see the American release of Philosophy & Underwear and career-spanning compilation Solo Cholo on New York Night Train. Still the hardest working man in showbiz, Kid Congo Powers shows no signs of slowing down - touring and recording regularly with both the Pink Monkey Birds and Kid & Khan.
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Kid Congo On Tour:
11/15 Portland, OR Towne Lounge
11/16 Seattle, WA Sunset Tavern
11/17 Vancouver, BC Railway Club
11/18 Bellingham, WA The Nightlight
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Black Moth Super Rainbow Perform On Top of Old Coal Mines, Release Collaborative Effort with The Octopus Project.
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A few years ago, a mysterious band of cousins and long-time friends decided to make the ideal soundtrack for dancing in the woods.*But don’t mistake Black Moth Super Rainbow for gleeful campfire twee.* Black Moth Super Rainbow has a knack for turning childhood memories into dance numbers.* They concoct a tantalizing set of psychedelic acid jams complete with flutes, vocoders, synthesizers and high-tech computer gear on the new collaboration with The Octopus Project on The House of Apples and Eyeballs (Graveface Records).
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The two thematic dualities Black Moth Super Rainbow produces – childhood vs. adulthood and technology vs. woods – were the perfect match for a collaborative project with fellow guitar vs. samples dualists The Octopus Project.* *Shortly after hearing and loving each other's music late last year, the idea of a collaborative record came up between the two bands.* While a couple of tracks did make it to the record in their original one-band form, most were passed back and forth from Austin to Pittsburgh for several rounds of dismemberment, rearrangement, and augmentation. The result overflows with sonic treats: cut-up beats and vocoder melodies collide with huge, distorted riffs.
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Black Moth Super Rainbow lives on Graveface Records and, although known as somewhat of an enigma, came out of the forest in 2006 to play at the request of bands like Of Montreal and The Black Angels.* The band is working on its third full-length, Dandelion Gum, which will be released in the spring of 2007.* Band member Tobacco (yes, that’s his name) says the band is influenced by “The Flowers of Evil record, borf, gum, the song version of ‘Freebird’, Longmont Potion Castle, musicians like Led Zeppelin when they were in search of the greatest riff, Boards of Canada and Odd Nosdam.”* Do any of those things strike a chord with you?
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Where did Black Moth Super Rainbow come up with such a catchy band name? “I wanted something that rolled off the tongue like the name of a breakfast cereal.* And something that to me, was timeless, and not easily confused with anything else.* Something that could mean a lot and nothing,” says Tobacco.* Why is this name timeless to this band?* An interview with Black Moth Super Rainbow is the best way to find out. The band members also have elusive nature based names like Power Pill Fist, Father Hummingbird, The Seven Fields of Aphelion, Tobacco, and Iffernaut. *
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Like their band name, Black Moth Super Rainbow’s favorite performance spaces are quite out of the ordinary.* The band is no stranger to the woods.* The craziest place they’ve performed is on top of twin stupas of coal mine refuse in Western Pennsylvania surrounded by bugs and old mines. *Those twin stupas are actually a Pennsylvania state mandated environmental project that takes old coal mine sites and converts them into habitable sites for turkeys by planting birdsfoot trefoil.* The two mounds rest on a 22-acre multi-grass earthwork, and the mounds are over 1,000 feet in diameter. *You can find out more information on the mounds here:*
http://moncon.greenmuseum.org/papers/ciotti1.html.*
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“Roo!” is The Octopus Project’s favorite word in the dictionary, and its live shows are an electro mass of homemade masks, balloons and bizarre party favors.* The band has been fortunate to share the stage with folks like Four Tet, The Shins, Deerhoof, The Dismemberment Plan, and And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead. The Austin-based group wowed audiences at the 2006 Coachella festival after winning a MySpace contest that which picked it as the act to land the coveted spot. Rolling Stone Magazine also named the group as one of the break out bands at South-By-Southwest 2006.*URB Magazine says The Octopus Project plays “post-rock that actually rocks.”* Its 2005 release One Ten Hundred Thousand Million also received praise from Remix Magazine, XLR8R, Nylon, and Filter. The Octopus Project is currently in the studio recording their next full-length, which should hit the streets in 2007.*
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Linear Mode
