As he publishes a new memoir, the guitarist with the Gun Club, Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds looks back on four decades of creative extremism and experimental living
“We set out to destroy music as much as create it,” says Kid Congo Powers talking about the Gun Club, a riotous punk-blues band he co-founded with Jeffrey Lee Pierce in 1979.
Powers also went on to be a guitarist for the Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, a journey he documents in his new memoir, Some New Kind of Kick: a juicy and humble account of a joyful yet traumatic life spent in three of the most beloved alternative bands of the 1980s. As well as a nod to a Cramps track, it’s an apt title for a man who spent much of his life in perpetual search of endorphin-spiking kicks. “Finding excitement was my holy grail,” he says. “The crazier and more fun, the better.”
