But I met the man on a dozen occasions and logged hours of conversation with him in our natural habitat: the record store. He once regaled me with a story of how he was banned for life from a well-known Oklahoma City record store and venue after chastising the owner for selling Skrewdriver bootlegs. After about an hour of conversation, we would shake hands and part ways. Earlier this month, Josh passed suddenly. His family has set up a memorial fund to help pay for the funeral and other related expenses.
If you knew Josh, or you shared some laughs and memories like I did, please consider donating. Betterton fronted the long-running KC punk band Hopeless Destroyers , a group who outlasted many of the venues at which they performed El Torreon, The Anchor, and the Sleeper Cellar, among others.
Happy New Year, everyone. Hello, and welcome to Riot on the Plaza. My name is Greg, and I created this blog over a year ago to document my infatuation with music from the Kansas City area. Like so many other projects I have taken upon, it unsurprisingly went absolutely nowhere. Since then, a few respectable Lawrence-based blogs have popped up to keep tabs on what is going on over there, and, seeing as most people assume I run a music blog anyway, I with a bit of pressure decided to give this another shot.
Fun fact: the name of this blog is taken from a Tanka Ray song, and this space was created exactly one month prior to the incident that occurred on the Country Club Plaza in April of Guess I missed my chance to get a flood of search results.
As this blog implies, I love local music. At the age of 31, I have now spent over a decade compiling various odds and ends from the area, and what started as a collection of some favorite bands has snowballed into what you see listed below. This is what I have on my hard drive as of the date below. I am constantly adding things, so the chances of this list quickly becoming outdated are very good. I am, of course, always willing to trade for that which I do not have, whether in digital form or a physical copy on vinyl, cassette or CD, though I intend on keeping a physical copy of everything I own.
