At the suggestion of a friend, I decided to make a Back-To-School mix for this month, which of course has nothing to do with me. I left school five years after I started, having completed enough hours to be a sophomore. How does that work, you ask? All I really wanted to do was college radio and start my own label. KJHK was one of the top college stations, the first radio station of any kind to transmit a contunuous live signal over the Internet and was to be the place where the seeds of my dreams started sprouting a bit.
I started college in 1993, which was a damn good time to be involved with college radio. It was right at the beginnning of the signing [record contracts] frenzy for which Nirvana was largely responsible. Indie rock was starting to break and some of the more talented folks to which people are still listening today started seeing their careers take flight in the early nineties (read Elliott Smith, Beck, Wilco, Mercury Rev, Urge Overkill, Guided By Voices, etc).
Now, you may not believe this, but Spin Magazine actually caled Lawrence, Kansas the next Seattle. The local music scene, including Kansas City, was thriving with bands like Paw, Stick, Kill Creek, Butterglory, Vitreous Humor, Shiner, Season To Risk, Tenderloin and tons of others. Ed Rose was just starting his engineering/producing career and was doing it all at Red House Recording Studio (now Black Lodge Studio, co-owned by The Get Up Kids) and William S. Burroughs was reason enough to have Sonic Youth stop by for a visit.
Needless to say Lawrence was a good place to start a record label, or so I thought. Barber’s Itch Records was born and would live for just shy of five years. During that time I worked at KJHK doing everything from production to hosting Plow The Fields (a three-hour local music show), worked as an assistant engineer at Red House Recording Studio, hung out with Burroughs a few times and saw some of the best live shows of my life at The Bottleneck and Liberty Hall. I could probably write a book about those five years, but that’s for a later date.
To those going back to school (and those not), here’s a mix of stuff I was listening to and feeling inspired by. I left out a lot of the obvious stuff, but there were a few I had to leave (no, Nirvana isn’t on here). I’ll be back next month with more new music.
NOTE: Due to bandwidth constraints (that didn’t take long) I am unable to continue offering the files this month.
01 Supersuckers . Creepy Jackalope Eye from the album La Mano Cornuda
02 The Figgs . Slow Down from the album Lo-Fi At Society High
03 Drive Like Jehu . Golden Brown from the album Yank Crime
04 Girls Against Boys . Cruise Your New Baby Fly Self from the album Cruise Yourself
05 Jennyanykind . Windchimes from the album Etc…
06 Heatmiser . Temper from the album Cop And Speeder
07 Superchunk . Driveway To Driveway from the album Foolish
08 Archers Of Loaf . Plumb Line from the album Icky Mettle
09 Seam . Hey Latasha from the album Are You Driving Me Crazy?
10 The Dambuilders . Slo-Mo Kikaida from the album Encendedor
11 Shudder To Think . Red House from the album Hit Liquor
12 Dinosuar Jr. Feel The Pain from the album Without A Sound
13 Buffalo Tom . Tangerine from the album Sleepy Eyed
14 Kill Creek . Fruit Pie from the album St. Valentine’s Garage
15 Vitreous Humor . Squares Of Squares from the album The Vitreous Humor Self-Titled EP
16 Urge Overkill . Positive Bleeding from the album Saturation
17 Swell . Kinda Stoned from the album 41
18 The Afghan Whigs . Debonair from the album Gentlemen
19 Mike Watt . Chinese Firedrill from the album Ball-Hog Or Tugboat?
20 Poster Children . He’s My Star from the album Junior Citizen
21 Sebadoh . Ocean from the album Harmacy
