Kid Congo Powers is the closest thing we have to the Forrest Gump of goth and punk rock – popping in an out of some of the biggest moments in the genre. The influential and entertaining guitarist co-founded LA’s Gun Club after starting a Ramones fan club in his local Los Angeles before being poached by The Cramps and eventually put in time with Nick Cave as a member of The Bad Seeds. All the while he was hanging around London and Los Angeles with The Screamers, Joan Jett, Siouxsie Sioux and just about every punk band based in LA throughout the ‘70s and ‘8os.
Powers, with the help of journalist Chris Campion details it all in his enthralling memoir Some Kind of Kick. Growing up as a gay Mexican American in the 1970s he found his people first at the legendary Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco hanging out with the other Glam rock kids trying to catch a glimpse of celebrities like David Bowie and Iggy Pop. Thanks to the Ramones, he pivoted to the burgeoning punk scene and founded the LA chapter of the band’s fan club – which allowed him access to the band as well as other groups touring through the area like Blondie and Patti Smith.
Part of the charm of this book is how Kid Congo – a name he was christened with by Lux Interior and Poison Ivy upon joining The Cramps – manages to be humble and almost downplay his role in helping to co-create a remarkable music scene through his participation with some of the most influential bands to come out of the genre. He’s also frank about his flaws, in particular his drug use that included a longtime heroin addiction.
He also covers at great lengths his own experiences as a music fan, trying not to gush of meeting and eventually partying with many of the bands he obsessed over. It was through that shared fandom that he first met the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce, another equally odd kid seeking a connection through glam music and punk rock, who he co-founded the Gun Club, agreeing to be the guitarist without even owning a guitar, let alone knowing how to play one.
Covering decades, growing as a musician, falling in and out of love and fighting addiction – something he ultimately would conquer – in Some Kind of Kick Powers gives testament to a nonconventional life lived to the fullest. Unlike many of his friends and peers from that scene who never made it out, Powers is still making music, branched out into acting in movies and TV shows and has amassed an incredibly compelling story.
