Kid Congo's Birthday Party on Saturday March 27

Well, to me and others in the know about Kid's musical history will smile to themselves at the pairing of "Kid Congo" and "Birthday Party." I think if this were a television game show, "Nick Cave" might be the correct answer...

But my point really is: Kid Congo is having a very public birthday party in NYC and you're all invited! Celebrate with one of my oldest friends in the world (the other being Pleasant, pictured above with Kid)


Here's all the info you need copied directly from Kid's email:

Sat, Mar 27, Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Secret Project Robot (210 Kent at Metropolitan):

Kid Congo Powers 51st Birthday Party w/Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds (12am), Stalkers (11pm), K-Holes (10pm), Tommy Volume (9pm)

and, later, Le Congo: International Discotheque Psychedelique w/DJs Mr Jonathan Toubin and Josh Styles (1am), 9pm – 6am, all ages, $10 ($5 after bands): This all-night birthday extravaganza celebrates of one of the great names in underground rock music, Kid Congo Powers of the Cramps, Gun Club, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, etc. Kid’s band, the Pink Monkey Birds, who’s In The Red album Dracula Boots made critics’ top-ten lists worldwide last year, make their first NYC appearance in almost two years – and their first ever with the new hard-hitting Texas rhythm section.


Stalkers' Animal and Josh Styles

The Stalkers, return from recording a new LP in Portland to remind you that they are the Brooklyn punk scene’s #1 party band.

K-Holes, a bunch of Atlanta ex-Black Lips, Wet Dreams, and Golden Triangles, play an Alligator Winey steamy swamp stomp. And Star Spangles’ Tommy Volume makes his solo debut to kick off the night.


Tommy Volume

and, after the bands, hold tight… all night…

1-4AM: International Discotheque Psychedelique – the second installment of NYC uber-45 DJs Josh Styles (Smashed! Blocked!) and Jonathan Toubin’s (NY Night Train) latest party. Last months debut last month saw hundreds dancing to 60s discotheque classics, fuzzy movers, foreign language jams, and other global obscurities in an environment of go go dancers and Mighty Robot AV Squad’s tripped-out visuals.

http://kidcongopowers.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/kidcongoandthepinkmonkeybirds

Punk Rock Movie Villain

Could this be-spectacled, teddy-bear-hugging, grey-haired gentleman in the screaming yellow suit pass muster as a movie villain?

Kim Fowley

You bet!

I think it is his calling - the best possible role for a man who has spent over 40 years in show biz... to be portrayed as himself and as a bunch of classic stereotypes - part svengali, part demon, part father figure... The man who invented the Runaways immortalized in the role that so many people want to cast him in: villain.

And he seems to be enjoying it. The Los Angeles Times - the newspaper I read while growing up (and was frustrated by its provincial style, although I did both enjoy and envy one Cameron Crowe, a journalist my exact age who got paid to do what scores of my friends and I did for blood, sweat and tears) features in one of its blogs an interview with the punk svengali himself right here, and its highly entertaining reading.

Kim Fowley knows good music when he hears it.

Witness him here in 2003 and 2004 with bands he deemed up and coming enough to share photo opportunities with...

At left, he's with Jeremy Asbrock and Hans Rotenberry of The Shazam at the Underground Garage Festival in NYC.

You see the photo opportunity is a two-way street. You allow your fans to memorialize the moment they met you, which is partly what's going on here, but at the same time... these images become part of your visual history piggy bank. During the few years I worked with Kim Fowley on his underground films, I picked up a lot of advice by osmosis as I captured him talking to bands... playing that role of Kim Fowley... giving advice in a manner most aggressive and authoritative yet sage and downright fatherly. He'd tell songwriters to collaborate with everyone because in addition to sharing the task and bouncing ideas off each other - you never know who or what is going to make a hit. And if you write with everyone... it will pay off. Fowley should know, he's got songwriting credits with KISS and Joan Jett... and in the Runaways movie, you'll witness Fowley dishing out advice as only he can... while Nick Lowe sang that you've got to be cruel to be kind... Kim Fowley lived that aphorism.



Fowley with Dirtbombs members Mick Collins, above, and Ben Blackwell, below.



(I swear there was NO dress code memo here. The primary colors were sported by these men of their own free will!)

A year or so ago, Fowley produced a record for Atlanta garage band The Howlies and dispatched me to videotape and photograph them. He directed me to get them to dress and act in a way that yielded this image:





This is a "movie still" (yes - a la Cindy Sherman!) of the demonic version of Kim Fowley, in his role as "Satan of Silverlake," one of the Ed Wood style films he has made (which I photographed, videotaped and filmed). yes... just as in the photo, Kim Fowley is indeed a weirdo... but unlike yourself, who may be just as weird... he's translated it into a career and you can't begrudge anyone who has become successful for simply being themself.

Patti Smith as Style Icon

You bet... reading Friday's NY Times, I stumbled upon a headline: Patti Smith's Eye for Fashion and devoured the piece, pausing to smile to myself at this short paragraph: Admirers find her disheveled look alluring. Such observations seem to please her. Gaunt and bony as a girl, she was told by a fawning Salvador Dalí, “You are like a gothic crow.”

An admirer of Ms. Smith I certainly am. She was and continues to be an inspiration and role model; she was the first female pop culture figure I looked up to (right down to the "gothic crow" look identified by Dali)... previously, I found inspiration in men such as Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Francois Truffaut. You could definitely say that Patti Smith punked me. She offered all that Dylan, Lennon and Truffaut did and more, because she made me believe that a life in the arts on your own terms was attainable AND you didn't have to work hard to look like the other iconic women of the rock n roll era (models, most of them... Patty Boyd for example).

Now that her genius is indeed recognized by more than her die-hard fans and admirers (punctuated, consecrated and documented not just by the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame but by The City of New York as well), it seems that Patti Smith as subject matter in all aspects of pop culture is fair game. I've discussed within these cyber-pages what might be referred to as a punk fashion sensibility and I've also declared that we punk rockers put a permanent stamp on the face of high fashion as well as ready to wear. It should therefor come as no shock to me that the New York Times is taking my baton and sprinting to the next messenger on this course... but I am always surprised when I find any vehicle of the vox populi, especially one as noteworthy (ie: "the paper of record") as the Times, agrees with me or shares my taste.



The photo above was taken in May of 1978 in the parking lot behind the erstwhile Licorice Pizza record store (the building at 8878 Sunset Blvd. now houses an Aahs! gift store that stocks among other merchandise, punk rock branded memorabilia). Patti was doing a reading from her book, Babel while on tour supporting the album Easter and garnering some ink in more mainstream magazines and papers than before... though she was always a critic's darling.

Patti refers to some garments she wears on tours as emblematic of that tour. In 1978, that brown suede jacket and the hounds tooth vest you see on her in these off-stage pictures were part of her on-stage ensemble, together with leather pants (super rock n roll a la Keith Richards!)



The first time I saw Patti perform she wore an outfit similar to what she wore on the cover of Horses - somewhere between a 1950s/60s beatnik and Charles Baudelaire (19th century Paris).




Clothes do not make the man or woman, but Patti Smith featured in a New York Times story on fashion just vindicates what we punk rock chicks knew about her AND fashion some 30+ years ago.

Joan Jett: Required Reading

I've already said that 2010 is the Year of the (Punk Rock) Memoir... and now, the paper of record even anoints one in its review of the feature film The Runaways in Thursday's edition (Cherie Currie's Neon Angel). Even though the Times' reviewer has positive things to say about the movie and its director (Floria Sigismondi), I happen to think they're missing the real story.

On March 19, which is the date of the movie's release, AMMO BOOKS (the folks who brought you the BOMP book by Suzy Shaw & Mick Farren that I suggest is Required Reading) will publish JOAN JETT. The author is none other than designer Todd Oldham, who "curated" the book's 30 years worth of interviews and photos with Joan herself. Riot grrl Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill) writes the introduction.

For women Hanna's age, Joan Jett is the big sister who cleared the path for bands like Bikini Kill (and pretty much all the female rock bands post-1975 really). For me and my LA punk rock friends, Joan Jett was just the girl next door... who happened to become a rock star.



When you grow up in LA, famous people are par for the course. And when you grow up in Modern/Postmodern times, "fame" seems almost a reasonable career goal. Playing in a rock n roll band was definitely far more attractive than being a grocery store cashier or bank teller even though all those job descriptions entail being on your feet for the entire duration of your "job" ... true artists can't do anything but their art... anything else would be demoralizing and a betrayal to the soul. There are indeed short cuts to the top of the charts, but the one-hit wonder phenomenon betrays them... endurance is what sets the artists apart from the entertainers. Joan Jett is that Artist... a true rock n roller in heart and soul.

Joan Jett, friend, neighbor and rock star blazed a trail and continues to do so. The Runaways were the first of the LA bands of my generation to get a major record deal, inspiring all their friends to follow their hearts into their own respective arts. After the Runaways, Joan started her own rock n roll record label - the first woman to do so. She's still rocking and the label, Blackheart Records is still rolling. She continues to mentor artists, just as she did back in the 70s when she lent her fame (such as it was in the early days), her experience and her love of music to The Germs, producing GI for them.

With the movie, The Runaways, audiences will see Floria Sigismondi's interpretation of Cherie Currie's memoirs. In JOAN JETT, audiences will get unmediated access to Joan's memoirs in the authorized collaboration with fellow trailblazer Todd Oldham... like being able to sit in on a conversation!

I for one, am looking forward to reading this book to learn how Joan remembers the nascent days of punk rock and all our notorious parties on San Vicente... and all our mutual friends....


The Germs at the Whisky in 1977 - Joan was at this show


Backstage with Nigel Harrison at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium... Blondie and the Runaways did a few gigs together in the 70s


Monkeying around for the camera with Stiv Bators (1979 - published in Creem with the caption: "Stiv and Joan iron things out")


A more cozy photo opp with Stiv and Cynthia Ross (B-Girls)



Joining the Dead Boys on stage at the Whisky A Go Go (January 1979)

And the faces that were at the party that launched a thousand (or more like 10) careers:


With Billy Idol and Pleasant Gehman (May 1978)