Floor Length Hair

Kid Congo Powers played guitar in both The Cramps and The Gun Club (and Nick Cave's Bad Seeds) and his album from two years ago, Dracula Boots, got played regularly round here. I've just discovered Kid Congo and his band The Pink Monkey Birds have got a new album out, Gorilla Rose. So that's on the shopping list. This is from a split single from last year (the other side was by Hunx & His Punx. Anyone?), a thrilling piece of garage rock called Floor Length Hair, that makes the hairs on the back of the neck stand up a little.

Floor Length Hair

The Return Of Friday Night Is Rockabilly Night 17

A smoking tune from 1958, Jody Reynolds' slow, spooky, bass riff led Fire Of Love. A seriously good song. So good, Jeffrey Lee Pierce took it's title for the first, definitive, Gun Club album and then recorded a cover for The Gun Club's Miami (which I posted ages ago). He looked pretty sharp too.

'The fire of love

Is burning deep

The fire of love

Won't let me sleep'

Fire Of Love

Miami Beach

Sticking with American alternative 80s this is The Fire Of Love by The Gun Club. Their first album, also called The Fire Of Love, was an electric punk blues tour de force. The follow up album Miami was recorded with a largely different band and saw Jeffrey Lee Pierce go slower and spookier, and whilst it's not as good as the debut, it still has it's moments. The Fire Of Love is an old Jody Reynolds song. None of it really reflects what a stereotypically British view of Miami is, no bronzed bodies and flash cars, more like what Greil Marcus called 'the old, weird America'. And the cover does at least feature palm trees.

The Fire of Love.mp3