JOHNNY SWITCHBLADE REVIEW

I am always on the lookout for new bands to play on my show and to see perform live and recently I came across a group called Johnny Switchblade. They have been around a couple of years, the Kansas City music scene is so huge that sometimes it takes me awhile to stumble across all of the various groups in the various genres and “sub-scenes”, if you will. Recently, I began playing the band’s music on my High Voltage rock N Roll Radio Tuesday overnight/Wednesday morning program on 90.1 KKFI-FM in Kansas City. I also had the band in as live guests in-studio on my June 19th broadcast and have seen them perform twice in concert.

Johnny Switchblade has a sound that hearkens back to early 1980s American punk rock, in particular, bands from California and the U.S. west coast, such as Dead Kennedys, The Germs, or the Jack Grisham fronted earlier version of True Sounds Of Liberty (TSOL). You can also hear some elements in the angular guitar of Darryl Gilland of late 70s and early 80s New York “No Wave” groups such as Teenage Jesus and The Jerks or The Voidoids. The lyricist is vocalist Phil Clark, the lyrics are understandable both in recording and live, and the songs tend to focus on serious real life subject matter, but through a prism of parody and humor and range from songs looking at media escapism (“Trapped In Television”) to youth suicide in India due to educational performance pressures (“Schoolyard Suicide”), to frustration with the media establishment (“Not Meant For The Airwaves”).

When I had the band in-studio with me for a live radio interview, I found them all to be very thoughtful and talkative, they had many ideas and insights as far as music and philosophy of life connected to their songs and what they are seeking to convey with Johnny Switchblade. From the live performances I have attended up to this point, the band is loose, has a good rapport and sense of humor among themselves and with the audience, and the show is lively and moves right along and keeps the audience interested and engaged. They have already released an EP called “The Basement Cut” and are performing new material live and working on releasing new recordings in the near future. They appear to be developing a growing following in the Kansas City music scene, I would encourage you to check them out at least just once, I think you will enjoy them – Calvin C

 

MY BAPTISM OF FIRE – GETTING INTO THE SWING OF HIGH VOLTAGE ROCK N ROLL RADIO SHOW

As was discussed in my last installment, following Curt Mason’s death in the fall of 2010, me and Chuck Cannon ended up filling in for the show, training, and ultimately being officially given the Tuesday overnight time slot on 90.1 KKFI that Curt had manned for over 11 years. By March 2011, we renamed the program High Voltage Rock N Roll Radio Show and have been doing the show ever since. During the 12 to 18 months after that we had others who we allowed to participate in doing the program and select some of the music such as Anarchy Al, Big Jon Willis, Travis Sloan, and others. This helped add to the eclectic nature of the program during this time as each person had their own preferences. The styles I like are very eclectic with a particular fondness for local and regional artists, garage, psychedelic, punk, alt rock, noise rock, and sludge, Chuck tends more toward sleaze rock, thrash, and melodic hard rock, Big Jon leaned toward gothic metal, prog metal, and thrash, Al leaned toward L.A. style glam rock and thrash, Travis leaned toward arena rock and Euro hard rock. By fall of 2012, Big Jon had started doing internet radio through Hard N Heavy Radio, Al moved back to Southern California, Travis dropped out, so it was basically left to Chuck and me at this point. In addition to this, earlier this year KKFI made a policy change in which they would no longer allow people to regularly participate in programming shows and hosting on-air unless they were certified by the station and me and Chuck were the only 2 out of our group officially certified to be Programmers.

Putting together a 5-hour show for each week involves a tremendous amount of work and preparation, especially if you want to do it right and make it something special. Typically, I will spend a good amount of my free time looking for different groups and sounds that I feel might fit the show well, in addition to trying to make it out to a lot of shows to check out as many different groups as I can and become acquainted with the performers, which is good because it gives me more insight into what they are seeking to convey with their music. I have to screen all of the music I plan to play for a given week, not only for language issues, but also to time all of the songs out. I have found from experience that for a 5-hour show I usually need between 260 and 270 minutes of total music, this will get me to cover the 5-hours when my talk time and time to play Public Service Announcements is factored in. I usually can hit it right on the button.

I try to arrange the songs in a fairly logical order, I have to take particular care since I typically play a variety of genres each week. I try to put songs that sound well together in a block and arrange the opening and closing songs of each block in a way to where it makes something of a smooth transition to the next style I will be switching to. I want to avoid “jerking” the listeners around during the overall experience. I will tend to play faster or harder music like hard rock or punk earlier in the show and more psychedelic, space rock, or experimental material later. I also try to play a little more international artists later in the morning as most of my local night owls have conked out, however, people in Europe or Australia are awake as it is daytime for them listening live online. I try to have a purpose for whatever I do and I plan everything out ahead of time and write everything out in order on notebook paper so that I can follow along. This helps me stay relaxed while doing the show and minimizes mistakes, as I am busy the entire time, doing all of my own engineering while I also host the program live, and it is live terrestrial FM radio, it moves right along and doesn’t stop for you to catch your breath. I feel like the preparation, although time-consuming, is worth it, because I feel blessed to have the opportunity to do what I do with radio and be able to express my creativity and also encourage the artists who I play, therefore, I want to take it seriously and do my best. Be sure to check us out at http://www.facebook.com/highvoltagerocknrollradioshow   

FROM THE ROCKER TO HIGH VOLTAGE

From April 1999 to September 2010, Curt Mason hosted “The Rocker” on 90.1 KKFI-FM Kansas City, every Tuesday overnight into Wednesday morning. It was an amazing run of over 11 years, cut short by Curt’s untimely and unexpected death in the early morning hours of October 1, 2010. Following his death, two longtime KKFI Programmers who had been friends with Curt, Arjay and Stormin’ Norman who are hosts for KKFI’s “Morning Buzz” program on Friday and Monday mornings respectively, they began to fill in for Curt’s time slot. After all, this is live terrestrial radio, the show has to go on somehow. Curt’s Memorial Service was held on the Thursday following his passing, this was on October 7, 2010. At the service, Arjay and Norm approached several of us who were his closest friends and invited us to come down to the station the following Tuesday overnight and bring music to play and share and also share memories of Curt over the air. Several of us took them up on the offer. While we were down there that night, they mentioned to us that they would not be able to fill-in forever and asked if any of us would be interested in training and possibly taking over Curt’s old time slot. I decided to give it a try after thinking about it for a few days. We also recruited one of Curt’s longtime friends Chuck Cannon, a guy with quite of bit of experience in the music scene from having been a writer for Bonzai magazine and later his own magazine called More Than Music, as well as having done a little concert promotion and even having ran his own record store for awhile. From October 2010 through March 2011, me and Chuck trained with Arjay, Stormin’ Norman, Mike Lytle, and Larry Cruse until we had mastered the engineering, station certification tests, and other requirements to be certified as Programmers and officially take over the show. During this time, we were doing most of the music programming for the show while we trained and working hands on with the soundboard, computer system for public service announcements, etc. We were finally approved to take over the show in March and certified as Programmers. Up until March we were continuing to call the show “The Rocker”. Once we were certified, we decided to change the show name to High Voltage Rock N Roll Radio Show. This is something we had discussed among ourselves and also with Curt’s wife Wendy. It just seemed better to make a new start, you can’t do the show as a memorial forever, the world keeps turning. In my next article I will discuss more about our experience doing High Voltage, some of the people we have had help us do the show, guests, how we go about putting shows together, etc. Be sure to check out our Facebook page for more information about The High Voltage Rock N Roll Radio Show at http://www.facebook.com/highvoltagerocknrollradioshow

HOW I GOT INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY RADIO

During my last article I made brief mention of 90.1 KKFI-FM Kansas City, in particular pointing out that I had eventually made a transition by the turn of the millennium to listening to this station almost exclusively, in particular when 105.9 The Lazer was bought out and turned into a Top 40 station. I had actually been listening to KKFI some since the earliest days of the station. The station began in 1988 on the same frequency and with the same call letters that remain the same today, 25 years later. I remember being intrigued by the station from early on. It was sort of like a college radio station, but not affiliated with a college. Sort of like a public radio station, however, much more diverse and edgy. Early recollections I have from listening to KKFI as a college undergraduate in the early years was great reggae music during the lunch hour (reggae now airs early evenings on weekends on KKFI), plenty of blues and jazz and progressive political programming (these elements also remain). I also remember hearing the type of underground punk, metal, electronic music, etc. that I was used to only hearing before on low-powered college station KJHK in Lawrence. Little did I know back in the late 1980s that I would eventually wind up as a producer and programmer on KKFI decades later.

In 2000, I began to take special interest in a new program on KKFI, an overnight rock program called “The Rocker”, hosted by Curt Mason. I first met Curt at a concert in Lawrence, he was handing out flyers for his show. Sounded interesting, the show had been on only about a year at this point, so I started listening. I did not know at the time that me and Curt actually worked for the same “day job”, we both worked for a large government agency that employs thousands locally. It was about 2 years later when I got a promotion at work and ended up working in the same building as Curt and I remembered him from the concert 2 years earlier, and we started talking about music daily. Our musical tastes had some things in common, we were both very diverse in what we liked. He was more into metal than me, I was more into pop rock or garage rock, however, we both learned from one another and respected one another. I could see his unquestionable sincerity in what he was doing with his radio program and I began helping and supporting him with it in any way I could. All of us Programmers at KKFI (we are not disc jockeys because we actually get to decide what we play and have creative control), we are all unpaid volunteers. It is a lot of work, fun, but a lot of work and requires some serious dedication to try to make the programs something special. Curt had that dedication through and through. Over the years, Curt evolved into my best friend and he began helping me to get more involved with KKFI as a guest programmer on a number of occasions, both on his own show and, in particular, when he would fill-in Saturday nights on the Retro Redeye Express program. I was happy to help Curt and support his program. Sometimes he would try to show me a few things about how he was engineering the shows, etc. and he would try to get me to try to get a show of my own on KKFI, however, I was happy just helping him.

October 1, 2010 was very dark day for many of us. Curt “The Rocker” Mason died unexpectedly early that morning. I had actually been with him only 48 hours earlier at the station during his show. He had not been feeling well, we thought he had bronchitis and needed to see a doctor. It turned out to be far more serious. This not only created a terrible void in the lives of Curt’s friends, listeners, and family, but also meant that this overnight slot in the middle of the week would need to be filled. That is where we will continue our story next time.

RECOLLECTIONS OF RADIO IN THE KANSAS CITY AREA – LATE 1980s to 2000

Rock radio is always in a constant state of change and flux. The late 80s into mid 90s brought about large changes to rock music in general and also local radio. Towards the end of the 1980s, melodic hard rock and glam metal ruled the airwaves in this area and generally nationwide. A syndicated station known as “Z-Rock” eventually made the airwaves in Kansas City, along with other major markets across the U.S. Here in Kansas City, Z-Rock could not find an FM outlet and ended up being broadcast on AM 1030. This was not well-accepted by some listeners who could not stand hearing hard rock and metal on an AM signal, however, many of us went with the flow and accepted it because we loved the music. Z-Rock had a great mix for anybody who loved hard rock and metal, particularly of the late 80s and early 90s variety. I remember listening to this station a lot in my car, the AM signal didn’t really bother me much at all since I had grown up listening to a vintage vacuum tube console radio and was used to mono sound anyhow.

Sometime around 1990 or 1991, the musical landscape began to change. Melodic hard rock and glam metal began to fade in popularity and what was once deemed as “college rock”, then “modern rock”, and finally re-christened “alternative rock” was on the rise. Ironically, the radio station in the area that should have been most ready to take advantage of this change, Lazer 105.9 in Lawrence, had went to a rather pedestrian Top 40 format circa 1986. The first station in the Kansas City area that I actually remember getting onboard the coming alt rock bandwagon was actually Top 40 station Q-104, which started airing a block of programming at nights that they called “Planet Q” that featured groups like The Jesus And Mary Chain, Camper Van Beethoven, Jane’s Addiction, and others.

KLZR in Lawrence eventually got with the program and changed their format back to embrace alternative rock in early 1993. As Z-Rock was on it’s way out, 105.9 The Lazer came onto the scene. I particularly remember the early months after the Lazer changed their format back to alt rock as especially good. You could hear music from Paw, Television, Keith Richards, Daniel Ash, Nirvana, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Blur, The Velvet Underground and Jellyfish, all in the same hour. In the earlier year or so after the format change, I especially loved that the Lazer would include a lot of great early 90s British rock such as Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Jesus & Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Blur, Swervedriver, The Catherine Wheel, Adorable, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, Inspiral Carpets, Soup Dragons, The Farm, The Charlatans, World Party, The Waterboys, and many more. They also broadcast a syndicated show on Sunday nights called “Rock Over London” that I enjoyed. Over time, the Lazer began to play less British rock, while simultaneously American alt rock began to get watered down, I won’t mention any names, but those of you who were around probably would understand what I am talking about. By 2000, the Lazer was bought out and turned into a dull Top 40 station, which it has sadly remained to this day.

Another station in the mix from 1988 to present is 90.1 FM KKFI Kansas City. I have been listening to this station for 25 years and began listening to it almost exclusively by 2000. Next installment I will discuss a little bit about the history of KKFI, “The Rocker” radio show hosted by Curt Mason, and the current High Voltage Radio program co-hosted by me and how I ended up doing this program.

 

MY EXPERIENCES IN RADIO – PART 2 – HOW 1970s/1980s RADIO HELPED DEVELOP MY MUSICAL TASTES

Growing up, I relied on radio for most of my music, our family didn’t have a lot of money, so I could not afford to buy very many records or tapes as a kid, so radio was an important resource. I first started listening to radio avidly at the age of 6. Believe it or not, the first station I got into, just because it was the one my parents listened to was 610 AM WDAF in Kansas City, 61 Country. So this rocker actually got started with Waylon and Willie. Not necessarily a bad thing, country was still old school back then and some of it was pretty damn good. I soon discovered stations such as KYYS-FM in Kansas City, “KY-102”, so it was out of the fire of classic country and into the frying pan of what was termed “album rock” at the time and groups such as Boston, Jay Ferguson, Supertramp, and of course the big names of “classic rock”, The Who, Zeppelin, The Stones, The Beatles, etc. When you are a kid and hearing this music for the first time, it is still “fresh” and exciting because it is new to you. It would take a few years before the constant repetition of classic rock staples would begin to bore me and force me to seek new sounds to listen to.

My first foray into more adventurous territory came from listening to “Lazer 106” KLZR-FM in Lawrence, Kansas. “Lazer Rock” consisted of a mix of hits, quite a bit of early 80s “new wave”, and some of what was called “college rock” at the time (prior to the music receiving the dreaded “modern rock” or “alternative” labels). I won’t tell you that KLZR was totally underground or revolutionary, it wasn’t, however, I heard groups frequently on the station that I could not hear on the Kansas City “album rock” stations such as KY-102, groups I recall fondly from the Lazer include such groups as Cruzados, The dbs, Marshall Crenshaw, Graham Parker, Hoodoo Gurus, Big Audio Dynamite, and others. KLZR was also the first station I remember turning me onto U2 and REM, well before they started to even sniff at any kind of mainstream popularity. Another station I liked in the early to mid-80s was the old “96X” out of Ottawa, Kansas. The station had a format that was called “hot hits”, was much edgier than other top 40 stations in the area and generally had a cool mix at the time. During the early 80s, I also stumbled across 90.7 KJHK in Lawrence, Kansas, a low-powered college station that is still going strong. KJHK was the first place I heard punk on the radio. I also continued to listen to some of the “album rock” stations during the 80s out of Kansas City. I still liked KY-102 during the noon hour and the 6pm hour weekdays as they featured shows called The Electric Lunch and Psychedelic Supper respectively and would play some deeper album cuts during these hours that you usually did not hear in their regular rotation. The current big “classic rock” station in Kansas City, 101 The Fox, actually began in the early 80s as “Stereo 101” and I remember them trying to be sort of an “adult alternative” to KY, in other words, they would play Genesis, Steely Dan, Hall and Oates, etc., but eschew glam bands like Motley Crue, Ratt, Twisted Sister, that KY would include in their mix.  Eventually Stereo 101 morphed into 101 The Fox. When 101 The Fox started, I enjoyed them quite a bit as they would play the typical album rock but also play a lot of 60s garage punk and 60s soul like Junior Walker & The All-Stars, Sam & Dave, etc. Over time they became more conservative and less adventurous, however, for a few years, they were actually quite good. Another KC station that I enjoyed listening to some in the early to mid-80s was KKCI-FM aka “106.5 KCI”. I like to recall this station as having a slant toward slick melodic, hard rock groups, what some of us called “pop metal” back in the day, stuff like Aldo Nova, Steve Walsh’s post-Kansas band Streets, etc. These stations were my main influences throughout most of the 80s. As you can see, I had eclectic tastes even back then, would listen to a variety of genres and radio stations, that remains true to this day – Calvin

MY EXPERIENCES WITH RADIO – PART 1 – GROWING UP WITH RADIO

Recently I had a great conversation at a local coffee shop with an area musician and we got to talking about stereo VS mono recordings and I was discussing how, growing up, I actually listened to most music in my formative years on a vacuum tube console radio similar to the one pictured, so I was used to mono music initially. My dad was a TV repairman and also had been a Ham radio operator and FCC licensed radio engineer and, in our home, the main radio was a large console radio like this one, the radio was from the early 1960s and we used it until the late 1980s. We lived in the country, so we did not have cable TV, instead dad had a huge rooftop antenna on top of the house directed toward Kansas City and he also had an additional booster/amplifier wired in from the antenna to the living room. We would use a clip to attach either the TV or the radio to the rooftop antenna, therefore, the radio had super reception. We lived in Osage City and most people in the rural area there without cable could only pick up Topeka TV stations, we could also pick up all of the Kansas City stations as well, even KQ-2 out of St. Joe, Missouri. I could also pick up all of the Kansas City radio stations very clearly and could pick up the low-powered KJHK college radio station out of Lawrence, that was where I first heard punk rock on that vacuum tube radio. I have this very vivid old memory of my mom making divinity candy once and me sampling it while listening to KJHK and hearing Minor Threat for the first time. I probably developed a particular love for garage punk style music because I first got into rock n roll listening to mono rather than stereo. Of course, by the time I got to the mid-80s and was in my mid-teens (yes I am THAT old), I got around to getting a cassette radio boombox with headphones and stereo, but I always miss the sound of that vacuum-tube console and it’s mono sound for certain kind of music, very full and rich in its’ own way and definitely “rock solid”.

 

 

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Who Killed Your Scene?

You did.

I’ve been lucky enough to be accepted in to a family in Kansas City. Not your run-of-the-mill sit down at the dinner table for a nightly argument over food kind of family. I mean a family that will listen to each other bitch and moan, laugh and cry, spit and fight, raise hell and mend fences, if not several times a week, several times a month. I am talking about the Midwest Punk scene. I moved out here from Colorado back in September of 2011, having accepted the current corporate cube job in which I still reside. Is it fulfilling?  Yes. Did I need something else to do? Absolutely. So after a rejected tryout with a local butt-rock band (blessing in disguise), I walked in to a garage about 30 minutes south of downtown Kansas City, stepped up to the mic, and was accepted as the lead singer of a punk band, something that I never thought I would be a part of.

Coming in I had no idea what I was getting myself in to. We played a couple of shows around this time last year and the more and more we played, the more I found myself becoming a part of something unbelievable. We HAVE SOMETHING HERE PEOPLE. The amount of talent that I was seeing and am seeing every night with every set, and every fucking song is only getting more and more obvious. I don’t need to say it but I will: The bands that I am lucky to play shows with is better than 90% of what I hear on normal airwaves and I believe that, if properly exposed, a lot more people would agree with me. The Rackatees, American Dischord, Documentary, 5 Star Disaster, Smash The State, Plug Uglies, The Uncouth, Four Arm Shiver, The Bad Ideas, Dead Ven, Dead Deer, The Shidiots, Hipshot Killer. I see these bands and I literally yell out, “WHAT THE FUCK!?! Why are these people playing to crowds of only 20 or 30 people a night? Most of which are the other bands playing?”. Well, I gave it some thought and came up with an answer: It was my fault. I had been staying in on Wednesday nights when I didn’t have to work. I had been sitting there on my couch, living vicariously through some dude on a T.V. show, when I could have been watching Kolin, Pattsy and Korey tearing up a set at The Newsroom, Schamle ripping off a bass solo, or Mike vocalizing his thoughts on the ignorance of a generation. This needs to change, I believe it can change, and it starts with us.

Now I understand that we all have jobs, families and other obligations to take care of and support, I get that, I understand, so do I. But I know there are times when we find ourselves on our couch, beer in hand, watching a machine, when we did that last night. What else can we do? We can tell our friends, we can tell our families and we have our friends tell their families! There is nothing more DIY than word of mouth. Point these people towards these band’s ReverbNation/Facebook/Soundcloud, whatever! Tell them to listen to Calvin on 90.1 KKFI, tell them to listen to Chris SLAM Radio on Sunday nights at 6! There is so much out there that isn’t being taken advantage of, so many different forms of Rock and Roll that we have some of the best of here on the Mid-Coast and any support that we can give to these people is deserved and you can do it from your phone, your computer, your couch and most importantly, by getting there and listening.

Day-radio music sucks. Modern Pop music sucks too, and it isn’t getting any better. This scene has the talent and the drive to change things. I know, I’ve seen it. Let’s make it happen and do more than just keep the scene alive.

Let’s make it thrive.

-T.J.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON CENTER OF THE CITY FEST 2013

Center Of The City Fest 2013 went down last weekend from April 5th to 7th at The Black & Gold Tavern in midtown Kansas City. The festival featured almost 40 local and regional acts in total and alternated between full band performances upstairs in the main room and acoustic performances downstairs in the bar which provided for non-stop music all 3 nights. This was the second year of the festival, an event conceived to provide a platform for outstanding local and regional artists, particularly punk artists, who have been overlooked in the huge Kansas City and Midwest music scene. 

The opening night of the festival got off to a brisk start with fast-paced high energy sets from The Protesters, Four Arm Shiver, Dismantle The Virus, and Dead Deer. Dead Deer (Emporia, Kansas) is a band that must be seen to be experienced, wild and frenetic in energy, reminiscent of the best of classic hardcore. The high-energy fast-paced music continued throughout the evening with The Donner Diaries, The Shidiots (Omaha, Nebraska), The Rackatees, and Wiseguy. Opening night of the fest was like a bomb going off, excellent job from all of the bands with a non-stop juggernaut of energy unleashed upon concert-goers. The final performance Friday night in the main room was the return of Documentary. Documentary is a unique band stylistically, nobody else in Kansas City sounds quite like them. The music shifts from doom and sludge metal tempos to fast-paced hardcore punk, often within the same song. There really is no other band I can think of who manages these terrains in quite the same way as Documentary, the band that strikes me as somewhat similar would be the Winnipeg band Ken Mode, however, Ken Mode tends to switch tempos from song-to-song, whereas Documentary often does this within the song. 

Friday night also brought us some excellent acoustic performances downstairs. Beaten Down Bastard gave an outstanding, gritty performance with excellent songs that provided a truthful realism in lyrics. BDB is a solo artist (Josh Anderson), he used some amplification on his guitar, however, it was very minimalistic, allowing the listener to concentrate on the songs and words, reminiscent of early electric blues such as early John Lee Hooker in volume, combined with the melodic sense of street folk. Another acoustic performer was A.J. Gaither OMB. “OMB” stands for “One-Man-Band” and, although there are a number of performers these days who are doing a one-person-band act (Molly Gene, Bloodshot Bill, etc.), it is still a very rare thing to see and makes for an amazing performance. At times, A.J. will be simultaneously playing a guitar, a foot drum, and alternating between vocals and harmonica, he really does create a full band sound on his own. Another interesting aspect of A.J.’s music is that he is using mostly homemade instruments, such as a cigar box guitar, and he also had a homemade guitar that resembled a metal pipe for the guitar neck. A.J. had this particular device hooked up to some amplification and feedback as he played it, how he was able to manipulate notes and bends out of that, I am not sure, almost surreal like magic. Friday night acoustic performances were rounded out by some great stripped-down acoustic guitar sets from Mike Alexander (Hipshot Killer) and Paul Gibson (Donner Diaries).

Saturday night’s festival night was kicked off with more great high-energy punk from The Hemorrhoids, 5-Star Disaster, and Itching Regret. Itching Regret is especially known as a good-time band with a great sense of humor and I recommend them for adults only (provided that they aren’t too mature). In an interesting turn of events, at the beginning of one of their songs, Itching Regret tossed porno DVDs to the crowd. Later I noticed that someone had propped one of the DVDs up against the back shelf of the main room, turned around so that film highlights were visible. Following Itching Regret was Dead Ven, a very unique band on the Kansas City punk landscape. Dead Ven combines street folk with punk rock, including accordion on some songs with fast-paced good-time tunes that primarily address concerns of working people, although they are also apt to throw in a great old-school style drinking song, specifically about Kansas City’s Boulevard Beer. Following Dead Ven were KC punk veterans Bombs Over Broadway, always explosive and high-energy like a bomb going off, they definitely brought the heavy artillery to the concert-goers. The high-energy punk continued for the rest of the night with sets from American Dischord, Smash The State, Hipshot Killer, and Red Kate as the closer, with Red Kate combining punk with good old-fashioned Kansas City rock n roll, rough-and-tumble all of the way.

 

Saturday night acoustic performers included David Snyder (of the great McPherson, Kansas band Get Jonny), Steven and Tracy of Deco Auto, Scott Eggleson, and acoustic performances from members of the great KC punk stalwarts Bent Left. David Snyder’s songs mixed the personal with the sociopolitical, excellent and thought-provoking. Scott Eggleson delivered a great performance of personal, reflective songs with outstanding harmonies. Steven and Tracy from Deco Auto gave a minimalistic amplified performance, some of the songs just had electric guitar and vocals, others were also accompanied by Tracy on bass. They performed a combination of Deco Auto originals as well as some covers. The cover version of Del Shannon’s “Runaway” reminded me of how The Jesus & Mary Chain might have done the song if they had recorded it for one of their B-sides or for their John Peel Sessions album. The Bent Left acoustic performances were squarely in the classic tradition of protest music, very challenging and thought-provoking in the sociopolitical commentary of the lyrics. 

Sunday night’s festival lineup included a mixture of punk rock along with some garage, surf, and ska. The Big Iron kicked of the night with great straight-ahead punk n’ roll, they are KC music veterans and have that classic KC sound, much like Red Kate, Cretin 66 or The Architects and older bands like Parlay, Buddy Lush Phenomenon, or Sin City Disciples, definitely rough and tumble just like the real Kansas City is itself. The Big Iron were followed by Mr. & The Mrs., a great two-piece husband and wife band who combine garage, surf, and punk into a stew mixed with some grunge and noise influences reminiscent of bands like Mudhoney or Sonic Youth. Mr. & The Mrs. were followed by an excellent horror punk/surf-punk band from Hutchinson, Kansas, The Terminals. Following The Terminals was another great high-energy punk act, Stinkbomb from cross-state in St. Louis. They were followed by The Electric Lungs, great rock n roll with some new wave influences and keyboards, and by new wave I am not talking about wimpy new wave but the good stuff like Split Enz or The Kings. The Electric Lungs were followed by The Uncouth, and man, these guys rocked the joint, they were on fire! Following The Uncouth was a ska punk band The Plug Uglies, with three horns (a trumpet, trombone, and saxophones). I have always loved brass instruments in rock n roll music, helps add textures and gives things a twist and The Plug Uglies really did a great job of it, had the crowd dancing and getting down. The night was closed out by The Zoids, a late addition. I had never seen The Zoids before, I enjoyed their sound a lot, a combination of fast punk with some noise-rock elements with fuzz bass mixed in at times. Listening to them live, they reminded me of some of the latter-day CBGB New York “No Wave” type groups such as Bush Tetras, Destroy All Monsters, or Teenage Jesus and The Jerks. 

Sunday night acoustic performers included Bike Power (Kent Downing), Cosmic Kid (Sean Richey), Dukes Of KC (Este Leon), and Evan Ryan Marshall (formerly of The Tards). Kent Downing (under the moniker of Bike Power) has an interesting style, sort of a mixture of flamenco guitar with street folk and very unique stream-of-consciousness lyrics. I particularly enjoy the song “Neighborhood” that is like a “cinema verite” documentary of observing a typical day in Westport/Midtown Kansas City, if you live in this part of the city like me, you will definitely relate to the lyrics.  

I really enjoyed attending the festival and participating in it. On my radio show on KKFI, I had special segments on the March 20th and April 3rd programs dedicated to the festival and a number of the performers stopped by for acoustic performances and to talk about the festival and their music. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the performers and thought the festival went smoothly, especially considering that it involved nearly 40 acts total over the 3 nights, however, things moved along relatively hassle-free all 3 nights, a demonstration of what people working together can accomplish on their own. 

 

 

 

  

 

 

WELCOME TO CALVIN’S CORNER

My name is Calvin. I have been a lifelong fan of rock n roll music and the radio medium. I have been a regular host, engineer, producer, and programmer of an overnight rock radio program on 90.1 KKFI-FM here in Kansas City, Missouri since October 2010. I will be writing periodically about all manner of topics related to music, radio, and some of my experiences past and present. Keep that dial locked in and tear off the knob.