Sunday, November 30, 2008

Civilian Art Projects, Kid Congo Powers and Quintron, Nov. 14:

The restaurant and theater district at Seventh and D streets NW was shuttered by 11:30 p.m., but a few floors up from street level, at Civilian Art Projects gallery, the party -- a concert featuring "guitar stylist" Kid Congo Powers and New Orleans organ-rocker Quintron -- was just getting started.

This was an old-school, over-30 crowd, full of vintage-clothing-clad musicians and filmmakers.

In the muggy front room, Kid Congo Powers, the one-time guitarist for the Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, played raunchy electronica that was the perfect ambient noise for this bubbling scene. Then, the surreal happened: Miss Pussycat, a petite woman who accompanies Quintron (and vice versa), climbed into a six-foot-tall aqua contraption in a corner of the gallery and put on a puppet show. The crowd of 200, beers in hand, crouched on the floor or leaned against the back walls to watch.

Amid it all, Ian Svenonius, once the lead singer of great old Washington bands Nation of Ulysses and the Make-Up, played proud host, dancing and chatting up everyone in the fog-filled room as Quintron rocked on.

-- L.R.