Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

Swing From The Sean Delear

In The Red

Swing From The Sean DeLear is the new four song 12-inch by Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds on In The Red Records. It celebrates a dreamlike bridge between life and memory. Recorded and mixed with Jim Waters (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Sonic Youth, etc.) at Waterworks Recording in Tucson AZ, the track “Sean DeLear” is a tribute to the late, magical, and ubiquitous Los Angeles underground institution named Sean DeLear. This rocking song uses the metaphor of those passed on as swinging from a chandelier, a festive image everyone hopes is true!  Side two of this 12-inch is a fourteen-minute psych, Chicano-groove titled “He Walked In.” The text is based on a visceral fever dream Kid had about his friend and Gun Club bandmate Jeffrey Lee Pierce, who passed away in 1996. Leading the listener back to the theme of feelings sustained between life and memory, the song dreams on as the band spreads their monkey bird wings, featuring Mark Cisneros on flute, and guest tambourine-queen Cesar Padilla—lost in music but found in sound.  In such uncertain times, one thing is most certain—Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds will always bring the party...and the other world.

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

Spider Baby / Apple In The Razor Blade

In The Red

ITR are proud to announce the first in what we hope will be an ongoing series of seven inch records celebrating the only holiday that matters. Kid Congo kicks the series off in grand style tackling the theme song to the movie Spider Baby (originally sung by Lon Chaney Jr) and a very creepy instrumental. Pressed on beautiful black and orange splatter vinyl, housed in a ghoulish sleeve designed by Igor and pressed in an edition of 666.

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

La Araña Es La Vida

In The Red

***Back in print on vinyl!  Kid Congo and The Pink Monkey Birds’ fourth full-length for In The Red Records, La Araña Es La Vida feels the Mexican muse of The Great Spider Goddess of Teoticuhan, who sprouts hallucinogenic morning glories and protects the underworld—or in Kid’s eyes, the world of underground music. Recorded at The Harveyville High School gym in Kansas, this self-produced album finds guitar slinger and singer Kid Congo Powers (The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds), bassist Kiki Solis (Knife in The Water, Rhythm of Black Lines) and drummer Ron Miller (Switch Hitter, Up The Academy) joined by Chicano-Mosrite-playing guitarist Mark Cisneros (Medications, Deathfix).La Araña Es La Vida rocks ’n’ rolls its way through a planet of Glamazons (“Psychic Future”), blisters with the tricks of a “Magic Machine,” then gets to work out a low-rider groove on “Chicano Studies.” Tales of gender-bending disembodied heads, gente from La Puente and even a TCB-era Elvis-inspired rave up on “Karate Monkey” are merely a smattering of the mythic magic on this platter! The world is a wild and wooly place and with the help of La Araña Kid Congo and The Pink Monkey Birds will continue to reflect it. Orale! Living La Vida Araña!Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds - "La Araña" (Official Video) from ské üblé productions on Vimeo.

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

Bruce Juice / El Cucuy

In The Red

Kid Congo & the Pink Monkey Birds will be dropping their latest and strongest album in early 2016. To prime the pump, they present this new single featuring two brand new tracks not featured on the upcoming full-length.

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

Haunted Head

In The Red

Waking from a nap in the swamps of outer space, Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds ride a geisterbahn into the hypnagogic, a place between sleep and consciousness also known as the “Haunted Head.” Haunted Head is the third LP the quartet has oozed out for In The Red. Legendary guitar stylist Kid Congo Powers (The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds) and longtime cohorts bassist Kiki Solis (Knife in the Water), drummer Ron Miller (Up The Academy) and guitarist Jesse Roberts (Sandrider, The Ruby Doe) take matters into their own mitts by having Roberts engineer and Miller mix the record at the now well-known Harveyville Project High School in Kansas.  With The Pink Monkey Birds’ cocktail of fuzz guitars, New Orleans drum beats, soulful strut bass lines and sonic ambrosia at its most potent, Haunted Head offers the purest distillation of the group’s powers. The trip of your dreams includes the “cheap and tawdry” in a tribute to dearly departed actress Susan Tyrell (“Su Su”), the morphing of Jerry Lee Lewis with Phyllis Diller (“Killer Diller”) and the plain ol’ insanity of romantic love (“Dance Me Swamply”). The band also tells you how they like “the mondos and the cholos and the weirdos and he freaks” on the rollicking “Let’s Go!” and how they don’t like “neocons in square back suits” and “throwing up in a dirty phone booth “ on the punky proclamation “I Don’t Like.” I mean, who does?  On...

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

Conjure Man

In The Red

Kid Congo (Cramps / Gun Club / Bad Seeds) and his Pink Monkey Birds are back with two brand new recordings on this limited-edition 7-inch single.  The A-side features a swampy new original while the B-side has a deranged cover of an old Seeds tune. Neither track will be featured on the band’s upcoming album, Haunted Head, to be released by In The Red later in 2013.

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

Gorilla Rose

In The Red

Gun Club co-founder. Gunslinger for The Cramps. Six-string stylist for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The legendary Kid Congo Powers named his new album Gorilla Rose after the artist / performer. As a teenage boy, Powers met Gorilla Rose in the emerging LA punk scene of the ’70s through seminal weirdo band The Screamers. He recalls, “Gorilla was a close and constant presence and influence on The Screamers and me as a young pup. He was to The Screamers like Bobby Neuwirth was to Dylan—a jester of sorts, sparking many of their great lyric ideas. I still think Gorilla Rose is the most fabulous nom de plume in history. His unsung specter was in my mind a lot last year so I decided to title the album Gorilla Rose to honor his name and bring him into rock ’n’ roll’s ongoing conversation.” While editing his fan club newsletters at a haunted Hollywood house, a teenage Powers was also exposed to the sounds of Neu, Nico, Billie Holiday and Goblin’s soundtrack to the film Susperia, and along with Gorilla Rose, these past influences found their way into the Kid’s new full-length. To record the album, Kid Congo and The Pink Monkey Birds grabbed producer Jason Ward and hightailed it back to the magik gymnasium at The Harveyville Project, a high school in Kansas and also the scene of the crime of their much acclaimed 2009 release Dracula Boots. Kiki “El Coyote” Solis on bass and Ron “The Cap’n” Miller on...

Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds

Dracula Boots

In The Red

The legendary Kid Congo Powers returns to the psychedelic jungle with a stripped-down, no-frills set of volcanic songs. The premier voodoo guitarist for seminal sexy, swampy bands like Gun Club, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and The Cramps, Powers is a restless aesthete whose earlier solo efforts explored and mixed genres. With Dracula Boots, he comes back to his roots as a crackerjack guitarist playing the primitive music that inspired him--the raw sounds of garage and early Chicano rock.  It only makes sense to record such glittering gems as Thee Midniters' "I Found a Peanut" and Bo Diddley's "Funky Fly" in a high school gymnasium. The sessions took place in a Midwest town called Harveyville with his nefarious Pink Monkey Birds. Bassist Kiki Solis from El Paso,TX and drummer Ron Miller from Macon, GA provide the Southern soul sauce needed to fuel the engine of the rhythm train. Recording on a stage with an old PA system created a natural reverb, summoning the magic of a bygone prom interrupted by a juvenile delinquent rumble.  The original songs on Dracula Boots go from loud, fuzzy biker rock ("Hitchhiking") to a greasy rump-shaker groove ("Bobo Boogie"); from a scary movie soundtrack ("La Llarona") to The Meters having an acid flashback ("Black Santa").  So sink your teeth into this hunk of wax and waste no time strapping on your Dracula Boots. You will dance your way from the cradle to the grave, and beyond.