Where do you keep your Dracula Boots?

In January, Brian Tristan announced that he would assume the identity of his alter ego, Kid Congo Powers, full-time, at least onstage. Not such a bad move — Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds’ Dracula Boots, released in 2009, should be in the collection of anyone who calls themself a fan of post-punk garage rock, sandwiched in between your Rocket from the Crypt and your Minutemen. Kid Congo Powers’s thing is a basket full of old garage-rock snakes that writhe and twist around familiar sounds and chords. But in place of that drive to cram whole songs into 2.5 minutes, the Pink Monkey Birds take one or two riffs and give them plenty of room to unwind. The strain that results makes for great grooves and utter disambiguation: is this guy for serious? No. With a name like Kid Congo Powers, probably not.

The Pink Monkey Birds are Kiki Solis, Ron Miller, and Mark Cisneros. Brian Tristan, 56, played guitar at different times in the Cramps and the Gun Club, and he was a Bad Seed long enough to make two records with Nick Cave. He was born in a suburb of Los Angeles and his facial features are somewhat amphibious, owing to his ample mouth, which he sings out of the side of so that he can keep his eyes focused on the neck and fret-board of his guitar. This compounds the comedic aspects of what is an otherwise solid rock band with roots that go all the way back to, who else — the Ramones. “So I became such a big fan,” Kid Congo Powers writes in the first installment of his autobiography, “I really became hysterical when the Ramones album came out. Because that, even more than anything, really was something different... But the Ramones were faster, funnier, and the energy was incredible to me as a teenage kid.” Exactly.

The Rezillos and Shady Francos also perform.