SF punk legends the Avengers share stages with Kid Congo Powers in San Francisco, San Jose
Pioneering San Francisco punk band the Avengers co-headline two shows this week with Kid Congo Powers (The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) and his current group the Pink Monkey Birds at the Great American Music Hall and the Ritz.
They were only around for a couple of years during their initial existence, yet the Avengers have managed to influence legions of punk disciples. Founding guitarist Greg Ingraham and drummer Danny Furious -- aka Danny O'Brien -- started the band in 1977, inviting charismatic lead singer Penelope Houston to join the group (bassist Jimmy Wilsey filled out the quartet).
The band's debut three-song EP We Are the One showed off Houston's ferocious vocal style and Ingraham's fiery riffs. The Avengers opened for the Sex Pistols at the group's notorious final show at San Francisco's Winterland, a gig that led to Pistols guitarist Steve Jones producing a recording session, but the departure of Ingraham in early 1979 was the beginning of the end. The quartet had split up a few months later prior to the release of their second self-titled EP drawn from the sessions with Jones.
The posthumous Avengers compilation in 1983 would further spread the legend of the band's potent punk songwriting. Houston would reinvent herself as an acoustic singer/songwriter, but the release of the new collection Died for Your Sins by Lookout Records in 1999 led to the Houston and Ingraham putting together a new line-up with bassist Joel Reader and drummer Luis Illades. That version of the group has been playing regularly since 2004, including a tour with Irish punk band Stiff Little Fingers in 2019 that took the Avengers to parts of the U.S. the quartet had never played before. Two years ago, the Avengers opened the first ever punk show at Stern Grove, providing support for LA greats X.
The Avengers will be joined Kid Congo Powers and his current band, the Pink Monkey Birds. An early follower of the fledgling punk-rock scene in the mid-1970s, Powers was the president of the Ramones fan club and fan a fanzine for early LA electro-punk outfit the Screamers before embarking on his own career in music.
Returning to Los Angeles in 1979 after travels in New York City and London, Powers met songwriter Jeffrey Lee Pierce and co-founded Creeping Ritual, the band that would eventually evolve into the swampy, blues-inspired punk band the Gun Club. While Powers departed from the group prior to the recording of their 1981 debut Fire of Love, he would employ the opening tuning guitar style he learned from Pierce when he became a member of primal psychobilly punk outfit the Cramps in late 1980.
Powers would contribute to two seminal early albums by the group -- Psychedelic Jungle in 1981 and the incendiary live effort Smell of Female -- but eventually reunited with Pierce in the Gun Club to record The Las Vegas Story and Mother Juno. In 1988, Powers moved on to the next chapter in his career, joining Australian songwriter Nick Cave in Berlin as a member of the Bad Seeds.
Beginning with his contributions to the landmark Tender Prey album, Powers would play a key role in Cave's backing band as the singer/songwriter rose from his earlier status as a punk cult figure to become an international star. The guitarist would go on to collaborate with other notables like Swans mainstay Michael Gira in his acoustic group Angels of Light, but in 1997, he also began fronting his own outfit, the Pink Monkey Birds.
While it would take time for Powers to finally release his debut recordings as a bandleader with 2006's Philosophy and Underwear (a collection that veered wildly from sleazy garage punk to soulful balladry to primitive electronic), he has issued a series gritty, unhinged albums for In the Red Records including career highlights like Dracula Boots in 2009, Gorilla Rose in 2011 and the band's last full-length effort La Araña Es La Vida from 2016.
While the band hasn't released any new material since the 2021 EP Swing from the Sean DeLear -- which paid tribute to the late LA queer punk icon Sean DeLear as well as his Gun Club collaborator Jeffrey Lee Pierce in the 14-minute Latin psych epic "He Walked In" -- the Pink Monkey Birds are set to unleash That Delicious Vice, their first album as a trio with Powers backed by longtime drummer Ron Miller and guitarist Mark Cisneros, this April on In the Red Records.
Powers has also stayed busy with other projects. In addition to the release of the album Kid Congo Powers and The Near Death Experience Live in St. Kilda that documented a one-off Australian performance with the British psych-punk band, he published his colorful memoir Some New Kind of Kick on Hachette Books, and last year put out Summer Forever and Ever, the second album of his supergroup the Wolfmanhattan Project with singer-guitarist Mick Collins (leader of Detroit garage-rock bands The Gories and The Dirtbombs) and drummer Bob Bert (Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch's Retrovirus, and Jon Spencer and the HITmakers).
For these two Bay Area shows at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and the Ritz in San Jose, the two bands will be joined by another veteran San Francisco punk act, Frightwig. The pioneering all-female group was formed by bassist/singer Deanna Ashley and guitarist Mia d'Bruzzi in 1982 (drummer Cecilia Kuhn joined later). Taking a decidedly feminist stance in response to the hostile reception they often received when they took the stage, the band would have male audience members perform onstage striptease for their song "A Man's Gotta Do, What A Man's Gotta Do."
Having become an established band at San Francisco underground punk clubs, Frightwig recorded their debut album Cat Farm Faboo with guitarist and frequent Residents collaborator Phillip "Snakefinger" Lithman in 1984 in the space of just 72 hours. The abrasive, noisy songs and salicious lyrics heard on that album and the 1986 follow-up Faster, Frightwig, Kill! Kill! would prove to be an enormous influence on the riot grrl movement and groups like Bikini Kill, L7 and Hole the following decade. While Frightwig split up in 1994, they would reunite nearly two decades later. Last fall, the band released its first new album in 37 year -- We Need To Talk... on Label 51 Recordings.
The Avengers with Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds and Frightwig
Wednesday, Jan. 10, 7 p.m. $24-$27
Great American Music Hall
Thursday, Jan. 11, 7 p.m. $20
The Ritz
