Concert Review: The Max Floyd Roast at the Uptown

Saturday night’s Max Floyd roast at the Uptown wasn’t a roast in the strictest sense of the word. Most of the roasters actually paid tribute to Max Floyd, rather than verbally eviscerating him, as is usually the case. One of the early presenters, Richard Ward Fatherly, accurately described the proceedings as “old home week.”

Sadly, most of their words went unheard, at least from where I was standing. Despite the fact that most of the folk at the podium and on the microphone were veterans of radio, and thus quite able to speak loudly and clearly, most presenters were overpowered by folks back at the bar.

Blaming the folks back by the bar isn’t entirely fair, actually — from where I was standing, at the top of a ramp about halfway back in the room, there were several people who seemed more interested in loudly discussing the KU/K-State game than listening to what was going up under the spotlight. From where I was standing, you could see event organizer and longtime friend of Floyd Bob Garrett getting visibly uncomfortable.

Thankfully, several presenters stepped up to the podium, and after taking the microphone from emcee Skid Roadie, managed to grab the room’s attention, and get everyone running their mouths to shut the hell up. Stan Andrews read a letter from the KY102 hippo (evidently happily retired in Florida), while Shooting Star‘s Van McLain played a video of Shooting Star playing to a crowd of bikini contest winners on KY102 Backstage, a tv show that used to air on WDAF.

The king of the whole evening, the man who stole the show and owned the room for his three minutes, had to be Marty Wall. He roasted everyone in the room, making references to Floyd’s need for “hairless Cuban boys” and just killed. Video of his piece should be required viewing for anyone ever wanting to roast someone. It was spot-on, hilarious, and oddly touching.

When the roast was all over, Floyd got to step up.

“Where’s the band?” he asked. “We’re the worst opening act ever.”

Floyd then thanked everyone for their kind words (he described KY102 as “a good ship”), sent out a few barbs, and closed by saying, “Tonight, I’m glad to be me.”

After two hours of stories that could have easily gone all night, it’s not surprising.