Kansas City Blog

Once a week, Wayward Blog brings to you an MP3 of music from the area's musical past.

Since Danger Bob has decided to grace Lawrence with their first show in over six years this fall, they seemed to be the logical choice for this week's Throwback MP3.

Danger Bob holds a special place in my heart, because they were the first "big" local band I ever saw (the second was the Nuclear Family). I saw them play a "welcome back" show in the gym at St. Mary's in Leavenworth, KS, my senior year of high school. I'd heard the band on the Lazer--"The Hook" was in mad rotation at the time--and was absolutely amazed that this band that was on the radio was playing a five minute drive from my house. And they were hanging out front of the gym, and I could smoke and talk with them! Holy shit!

Keep in mind I was 17, from a small town in Kansas, and the idea of a band that played actual clubs, as opposed to the 4-H Building over by the car wash, was pretty much a mind-blowing concept at that time. I'd been to exactly two concerts that weren't at Sandstone at that point.

Danger Bob immediately became my favorite band ever because of various reasons, but I'd say it was most likely a combination of glitter cannon, lead singer in pajamas, and they played "Church 'Em Danno" at a private Catholic college. I'd go on to see the band play the Bottleneck innumerable times, as well as exotic locales like a Mexican restaurant and produce company BBQ cook-off next the railroad tracks, but that show in a gym was the show that would most stick in my mind.

The MP3 below is a little hissy, because it was ripped from a cassette that'd been sitting in my closet for the better part of a decade, and that cassette was a recording off the radio. A valuable piece of local music history, this is Danger Bob playing live on the Lazer 105.9 on April 13, 1997. The appearance on the program was to promote the CD release of their Le Pop Shoppe album on CD, as I recall. The Lazer's Local Music Show ran for a while, even after Jeff Petterson left, even after Elena Abatgis left, even after the station had switched formats twice. Chuck Newman soldiered on with it for a good couple of years, but the show finally bit the dust a couple of years ago, not quite making it ten years on the air.

MP3: Danger Bob, "Just Call Me Ninny" (live)

Lions from Austin are not to be confused with The LIONS, who are from Los Angeles. The former is a hard rock powerhouse who released No Generation last year and the latter is a reggae/dub group.

Lions (the former) play around here often enough that, despite hailing from the great state of Texas, they could almost claim regional--if not local--status. Their shows are crazy energetic, and if you're a fan of local acts like the Federation of Horsepower or the Old Black (with whom they shared the stage at the Replay last night), you've got yourself a band right here worth checking out. Plus, they just covered Bob Dylan's "Girl From the North Country" for FX's Sons of Anarchy program. They're doing well for themselves.

Lions play the Record Bar tonight with Kansas City's Hipshot Killer, which features Mike Alexander (late of the Architects) and Chris Wagner (who served time alongside Mike in the Revolvers), along with Brad Wicklander (of Dark Circles / Anvil Chorus).

MP3: Lions, "Girl From the North Country" (Bob Dylan cover)

Las Cruces' Shang-A-Lang is one of the best bands bubbling up in the punk underground right now. They've got a sound that appeals to fans of garage bands like the Black Lips, with some seriously lo-fi production, but the punk kids like 'em too, because they play hella fast. They're one of those band that are timeless in the way they play. They could fit in on college radio circa 1985, or playing with the Vivian Girls at some bar a week from now.

Shang-A-Lang's put out half a dozen splits with assorted bands, the two most recent being their split with God Equals Genocide on Razorcake and one with Brickfight on Mitch Clem's Facepalm Records. However, they have yet to put out a full-length.

That will change with the upcoming release of their LP Sad Magic on Fast Crowd Records. The label describes the album as "punk that's pop with nothing but good times and happy songs about being sad," which is just about an accurate a summation of Shang-A-Lang's sound as I've ever heard. Fast Crowd was kind enough to hook up Wayward Blog with an MP3 off the record, entitled "Best Intentions." You can stream it on the label's MySpace, but we're the only place you can take it with you. Grab it below.

MP3: Shang-A-Lang, "Best intentions"

Backpack hip-hopper Sage Francis just posted his newest mixtape, Sick of Wasting, and you can download that sucker for free. It's the fifth installment in the "Sick Of" mixtape series.

This kind of sprung up out of the blue, considering it's been two years since his Human the Death Dance release. Still, it's totally worth grabbing. It features several tracks with Buck 65, and demos going all the way back to 1996.

The man offers a track-by-track breakdown over at his MySpace blog. You can also buy a real, physical copy (and autographed, to boot) from Strange Famous Records.

San Francisco Bay Area-based Lujo Records is happy to announce the release of their new Spring 2009 Sampler. This sampler is totally free and available for immediate download.

Lujo Records' Spring 2009 Sampler includes songs from their current roster: The Dark Romantics, Pomegranates, Death House Chaplain, Mouse Fire and Baby Teeth. It also includes tunes from new-to-the-Lujo-lineup: A Lull, Enlou, Firs, Nayonets and Summerbirds in the Cellar. For many of you, these songs will be your first taste of these artists and they think you're going to like what you hear. The big deal is that each new artist has a record out in the coming year!

Honestly, I'm plugging this for one reason, and one reason only: Look Mexico's "You're Not Afraid of the Dark, Are You?" Look Mexico recently signed to Suburban Home Records, and has put out two stellar 7"s in the past year: Gasp Asp on Tiny Engines, as well as their Under the Influences split with Fake Problems, on which they covered Looking Glass's "Brandy, You're A Fine Girl."

I saw Look Mexico play at the Knitting Factory during CMJ last year, and they managed to get the entire basement full of folks to go from standing around and gossiping while they played to sitting quietly on the floor while the band sat down on stage and played a couple of quieter numbers. It was one of those moments where you look around, giddy, with a grin on your face, wondering, "Is this really happening? 'Cause this is awesome."

They come through regularly, and played the Replay just last month. Check them out the next time they mosey through. When that new record comes out this fall, they're bound to come through.

Within weeks of launching The Music Tee, an innovative new T-shirt that literally weds music and fashion by embedding digital music in the shirt, clothing label LnA announced the second shirt in their new series -- and the first "artist" shirt -- The Mos Def Music Tee, containing the new Mos Def album, The Ecstatic. The shirt was produced in collaboration with Downtown Music and Invisible DJ, and will available for purchase beginning July 7.

The Original Music Tee, a "mix tape" shirt containing "album art" on the front and a play list on the back, features such up-and-coming artists as The Asteroids Galaxy Tour, Alice Russell, Theresa Andersson, WAZ, Magic Arm, Lettie, Passenger, Holmes, Amy Kuney, Charlie Mars, The Silent Years, Mason Proper, Nive Nielsen and Afternoons. Each shirt also has a hang-tag printed with a URL and a unique code allowing the purchaser to download the play list. Several more shirts will be added to The Music Tee Collection in the fall, including several more artist shirts and four "mix tape" shirts being created exclusively for fashion retailer Shopbop.

It's cool and all, but when I read "embedding digital music in the shirt," I was thinking more along the lines of ThinkGeek's Personal Soundtrack Shirt, "an amazing new wearable audio solution that features a working speaker embedded into the front of the shirt." Now, maybe if you were to buy the Mos Def shirt, download the album, and use your iPod with the Personal Soundtrack Shirt (as it can "also play sound from your portable audio player through the speaker on the front of the shirt"), you might be able to combine the two in some sort of beautiful technological wonder.

Or not.

MP3: Mos Def, "Casa Bey"

The Legends' Over and over on Labrador Records is out now in North America and we'll celebrate this by giving away the first song on the album for free.

"You Won" is sparkling pop in colossal production with Philip of The Mary Onettes adding deliciously doomy 80s-esque drum sounds to the song's anthemic qualities. Epically lovely!

Spin calls "Always the Same" an "early favorite for summertime anthem of 2009," and Brooklyn Vegan says that "Over and Over might be The Legends' best since their first."

MP3: The Legends, "You Won"
MP3: The Legends, "Always the Same"

What's better than a new record from No Idea, Florida's finest purveyors of reasonably-priced punk rock? A new record from No Idea that's free! Pretend Record is limited edition and first-come, first served (shoes and shirt optional).Nothing to trade, nothing to sell, in fact it's all a big PRETEND RECORD!! You can't watch it spin, you can't hand number it, you can't auction it.

"Well, heck, what CAN you do with it?"

You may LISTEN to it. With your ear bones!

You can head over to this page to get the tracklisting and download the compilation. It features tuneage from No Idea's forthcoming releases, as well as music from records they distribute. You can hear the first track off Dear Landlord's Dream Homes, which is called "I Live In Hell," and is one heck of a sing-along. Also, it gives you the chance to check out the Screaming Females' track "Buried In The Nude," off their Power Move release on Don Giovanni.

The Screaming Females are currently charting over at KJHK, and (more importantly) were just tapped as the opening act on the Dead Weather tour. As you might recall, the Dead Weather is the new band with Jack White and Alison Mosshart. So, the Females are probably going to blow up. Say you heard 'em before they get into rotation at the Buzz.

Weird Al Yankovic has just put up the video for his new song, "Craigslist." You'd know that if you followed his Twitter feed. It's not a straight song parody. Rather, it's one of his "style parodies," where the song is original, but sounds like a kind of style -- i.e., "Your Horoscope For Today" didn't parody any specific ska song, but it certainly sounded an awful lot like Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, et al (it also happened to feature the Reel Big Fish horn section).

Much like that song, "Craigslist" sounds an awful lot like the Doors and even has Ray Manzarek on keys. If you like it enough, it's an iTunes exclusive, but the video is good enough for now.

You know from reading this week's Wayward Son that Mac Lethal is a grown-ass man with an impressively growing label.

Illustration by Johnnie Cluney for Daytrotter.com

But one thing that slipped past my watchful eye, and probably yours as well, was that Mac dropped by the Daytrotter studios in Rock Island, Illinois, for a live-in-studio sesh nearly a month ago.

Click this link or on the illo to go hear Mac "addressing the goats, the beer and jollying in rampant idiocy" and performing four songs: "Calm Down, Baby," "Rotten Apple Pie," "Pound that Beer" and "Die Slow."

Sean Moller, Daytrotter's in-house John Dryden, had this to say about Lethal:

He takes his irascibility seriously and finds no fault in his agitations, finds no wrongdoing or malice in taking so many different stands against so many different provocations and people. It easily makes for the most entertaining and yes, intellectual hip-hop experience that's out there in the crumbling world right now.

Oh, the crumbling world. Speaking of that, when I interviewed Mac, I asked him what his ten-year plan was. First he said he wanted to pay off the house and keep the music going (but in more words). But then he painted this sunny scenario:

"I'm not sure there's gonna be electricity in 10 years. We might all be making weapons out of elephant tusks, fighting over nonperishable items that we find in large factories and shit. There's a chance in this just going nuts. I'm a full believer in the commercial real estate bubble exploding and hurting worse than residential real estate, and this turning into a -- what is it? -- an underdeveloped country?"

When and if that shit goes down, I want to be on Mac's side.