An abrupt cut-off point can be a useful narrative device for the memoir-writer, offering a sense of dramatic finality, a little intrigue and perhaps the chance to gloss over the years when life became less interesting. Brian Tristan – known to almost everyone by his rock’n’roll pseudonym, Kid Congo Powers – closes Some New Kind Of Kick almost exactly 25 years before its publication, on the day he did heroin for the last time.

Powers, from California, is widely respected as a guitarist while retaining a somewhat elusive image. During the 1980s, he joined The Cramps (who gave him his nickname, and this book’s title), The Gun Club and Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds: each impactful on the alternative rock landscape, all sounding like consistently stressful experiences. By the time Powers began to haphazardly develop his musical technique, he’d left home as a teen and ingratiated himself with the early LA punk scene, depictions of which will be rich pickings for fans of bands like the Screamers or even the Go-Go’s.

From this point and every one onwards, Some New Kind Of Kick features a considerable amount of drugs. As damaged rock autobiogs go, Powers’ is neither especially lurid, celebratory or moralising: getting high was good, until it wasn’t, like most addiction tales. As such, you should read this less for scenes of wild excess than the efficient elan of its author’s prose; and for his ability to recall the people who shaped his life (many no longer alive) with both endless generosity and a candid sense of how punky edginess could just be plain unbearable.