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Last night was another in a hopefully long line of Vice / Scion AV Club Garage parties at The Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, featuring the garage barrage of Hunx and His Punx opening for the legendary Kid Congo Powers who was backed by The Pink Monkey Birds. This wasn’t any ordinary four to the floor swamp stomp, this was an all around gay panic edition as Hunx thrust his sexuality into the audience, including yours truly, on more than one occasion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Nor, really is there anything wrong with a band playing one of these events. From what I’ve read they’re treated and paid well, and get to perform before an adoring audience. There’s still the usual talk of artists playing these events “selling underground culture” but while the issue may be a complex one, it’s difficult to fault a band whose entire back catalog is available for free to want to play one of these events.
Hunx and His Punx has a bit of a reputation for pouring on the gay panic in live shows and he seemed to single out the straights as he came over to me and thrust his crotch in my face. Twice. Before the first song started.
This reputation was pretty much upheld. Hunx and His Punx is Hunx of Gravytrain!!! backed by four musicians in the time honored rhythm, lead guitars, drummer and bassist with occasional keyboard work. Hunx takes the role of front man / provocateur very seriously keeping up a constant line of effete banter in between songs. “How many gay people are in the audience tonight?,” he asked early on, and when lots of hands went up, he seemed a little shocked. “That’s way too many!”
Hilariously, there was one girl who may not have gotten the memo because she was constantly reaching for Hunx and his junx and she managed to bury her face in his groin.
The music was good. Bubblegum garage with not a lick out of place. It was immaculate as his pencil-thin John Waters mustache. Think Chantels or The Shangri-Las spectrum of 1960s musical adoration rather than the Motor City violence of The Stooges or MC5. Pop hooks and clean, familiar structure to the point where you can sing along to the second chorus after you’ve heard the first.
It was good, surprisingly clean fun, considering Hunx at one point did poppers on stage and had to sit down having forgotten where he was and what he was doing there.
Kid Congo Powers is a busy man. At fifty-years old he’s been up in the guts of Garage and punk since forever. Thirty-four years ago, he was the president of the Ramones fan club, he was in The Gun Club, ditching that outfit for The Cramps to go back to The Gun Club before joining up with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds before striking out on this, his latest project.
Kid Congo Powers was a great frontman. His smile and laid-back enthusiasm was inviting and familial and the whole set was like hanging out with a favorite uncle. Each of his songs had little intros to set the tone of the song about to be played. Like “La Llarona” was prefaced with “How many of you are Mexican? Then you have to know the ghost story of La Llarona!”
The Pink Monkey Birds are probably without a doubt the tightest, most honed rhythm section I’ve ever heard. The drummer gets insane props, as he was as sharp as an ice pick with clever fills and drops.
The music of Kid Congo Powers was befitting the long and varied career of their front man. Their songs could be fast dance songs that evoked driving down the highway with the top down fleeing the law (“LSDC”), Haunting evocative surf psyche (“La Llaona”) to slight country twangs and patterns subverted and tremolos to hell and back (“I Found a Peanut”). I’d never heard this project’s stuff before, but last night I was turned into an instant fan.
Kid Congo Powers & His Pink Monkey Birds have a 7” series and a full album coming out this year on INTHERED records. Get it.