Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds Make Friends at SXSW

It's easy at SXSW to lose sight of the fact that indie rock didn't originate with hip bands from Brooklyn. Those groups are part of a bigger story, in which Kid Congo Powers has had a big role: he played with the Gun Club, the Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and, Thursday, he played with his latest band, the Pink Monkey Birds, at Prague.

"We're gonna be your friends for the next 45 minutes," Powers announced at the start, apparently referring to the sort of friends who dress in punk-rock mariachi suits and tell crazy stories about dropping acid.

He played guitar in an open tuning, the rest of the band churning around him as he delivered his vocals in a casual, conversational tone somewhere between singing and talking. The songs varied in sound: there was taut, stripped-down punk on 'Rare as the Yeti,' grinding guitar and dispassionate vocals on 'LSDC,' a swirling, noisy guitar freakout on 'Black Santa' and fast, stomping rhythm and blaring organ on 'Bobo Boogie.'

In a nod to his past, Powers threw in versions of the Gun Club's 'For the Love of Ivy' and the Cramps' 'I'm Cramped,' which he followed with words of praise for Cramps leader Lux Interior, who died last year, and for Big Star'sAlex Chilton, who died Wednesday.