the pows - once lp

THE POWS were the unknown psych / garage warriors of the Columbia, Missouri scene.....

featuring members of CAVE and HEATER, these guys just rocked out not giving a fuck if anyone payed attention, but Permanent Records sure did.   and they wanted to share this lost gem of rock goodness with the rest of us for RECORD STORE DAY......

think lo-fi garage bent punk mixed with some minimal post punk angst and a bit of psych weirdness....  but listen for yerself...the POWS are not easily definable music, yet who cares when its so fun.... fans of seedy underground rock like the TESTORS, DEAD MOON, SCREAMERS, CHEATER SLICKS and/or PERE UBU will love the POWS.....

just read what Lance and Liz from PERMANENT had to say about the POWS......Columbia, Missouri was our mecca for music in the early 2000's.  The scene in this small oasis of a college town was loaded with talent, creativity and youthful energy.  Some really talented musicians came out of that era of Columbia.  The bands they performed in and went on to perform in include bands you may have heard of like Cave, Mahjongg, Heater, Bitchin' Bajas, Jerusalem and the Starbaskets, Bobby Conn, and California Raisins.  The Pows were one of the best bands in Columbia during the 1998-2004 years.  The band began as a snotty garage punk duo before they were old enough to drive.  Over the course of a couple of years, they added a couple members, aged slightly, and got way more experimental.  Columbia's Andy Warhol figure, Channing Kennedy, and his CDr label Cat Jams fostered the the local music scene.  The Pows put both of their records and a 'Hits' comp out on Cat Jams, alongside bands like The I Love You But I'm Not In Love With Yous, Swamp Fuck, the post-Pows project Sabertooth, and a bunch of other stuff no one outside of Columbia, save for a few hyper-cool Japanese peeps, have ever heard of.  We digress.  This scene is what we grew up with.  It inspired us to start our first band, open our own record store, and start our own label.  How's that for DIY?  The Pows were one of our favorite bands in Columbia while they existed.  Their brand of snotty White Stripes-like minimalism meets Chrome-esque weirdness (supposedly they hadn't heard Chrome before recording this stuff) was like anything we'd heard up to that point and, honestly, still some of our all-time favorite shit.  Seriously.  Liz and I learned all the songs on their first album and performed as The Pows after they'd broken up at a show that Channing booked at Maude Vintage (another important piece of the Columbia puzzle) as a The Pows final performance.  So few people saw the Pows when they were active that hardly anyone even noticed that we weren't them.  We were honored to be mistaken for The Pows.  We were also honored to release another Columbia band's last LP, Warhammer 48k's epic "An Ethereal Oracle", as the first record on Permanent a few years later after just having opened our Chicago location.  Warhammer broke up and a couple of the guys went on to play in Cave.  Cave's drummer, Rex McMurry, was an original member of The Pows.  As was Cave art guru and Heater member, Zach McLuckie.  We hounded these guys for years about doing a Pows record on Permanent and it's finally come to fruition.  We couldn't be more proud to be releasing this Pows career-spanning restrospective LP as the 30th Permanent release.....


and check out three songs from the POWS below.....and go to PERMANENT RECORDS in chicago or LA on RECORD STORE DAY to pick up a copy.  limited to 100 copies.......so don't sleep on it.....