Kid Congo...king of the party ghosts

Hey, happy Monday!

I had a very weird Sunday, first some unexpectedly good news on the college scholarship front, which I cannot talk about in detail but which makes next year look much, much, much more doable. Second, my brother broke up with his girlfriend and she started sending me some very odd, very angry Facebook messages and email messages and so on. Vile stuff, full of f-bombs and not very well spelled or punctuated and, as far as I can tell from talking to my brother and seeing what she was writing about me, completely untrue. But okay, fine, if we were friends maybe it would make sense that she was including me in her meltdown, but we're not. I mean, I've only met her once or twice and have no real relationship with her outside the fact that she sees my brother (ahem, saw my brother), so what the hell? Life...so confusing, so tawdry.

Anyway, and more to the point, I also have a music review up today at Blurt.

Haunted Head
KID CONGO AND THE PINK MONKEY BIRDS
In the Red

BY JENNIFER KELLY

Kid Congo continues his ju-ju spooked, surf-whammied, mystically debauched brand of rock ‘n roll, infusing sawed off, minimalist guitar riffery with a whiff of the supernatural. Haunted Head tends towards the eerily subdued, its grooves blaring in through some trapdoor to the otherworld. Shreds of rockabilly, soul, r&b and punk wind their way through these shrouded tunes, all much to be expected from a founding member of the Gun Club, a sometime Cramp and a guitar slinger for the Bad Seeds.

“Killer Diller” brings all these threads together, in a straight-up rock ‘n roller that is built on pompadour-spiked 4/4 guitar riffs, slurred insinuations and inebriated shouts of “yeah.” It’s a slouchy, slippery, decadent kind of rockabilly, dedicated apparently to Phyllis Diller. You can imagine Elvis breaking in for a verse or two, turning green and vomiting over the side. “I Don’t Like” which follows, is even better, a slanting, ranting, two-chord assault that must surely get the people moving live.

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Another one for rock ‘n roll heaven…

Lux Interior of the Cramps died yesterday of heart problems, ending a long and crazed career that bridged punk and rockabilly, surf and horror movie theater. There’s a pretty good tribute up at Pitchfork.


“Bikini Girls with Machine Guns”


“Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?”


The squirrels have been at my pathetic internet connection again, and I can hardly even get email. (I had to try about ten times to post this. Why is www.blogger.com so bandwidth intensive?) My comments are also getting swallowed most of the time, so if you’re wondering why I didn’t hop onto Michael’s The Wedding post to say how brilliant it was, I did…it just didn’t take.

Anyway, onward…I wrote a 4000-word plus feature on the Cline brothers this week, which took up most of my reviewing time, so lots of catching up to do.