Buzzbait

I once learned in science class that if you could actually hear all of the radio waves that pass by your head throughout the course of a day, you’d probably go insane. I later discovered that the same effect could be achieved simply by turning on the radio and listening to a few hours of commercial broadcasting. Between car dealers’ screamed invocations of Nineteen-nine-ninety-nine! and most stations’ allegiance to the music of the 1990s, insanity is the inevitable outcome.

But that’s just me. I may be convinced that a few more years of sending “Your Body Is a Wonderland” off into the cosmos will bring the wrath of the Vogon FCC to planet Earth. But plenty of people enjoy commercial radio, just as millions enjoy inhaling burning tobacco — as habit, diversion, social ritual. Some people even call stations because they enjoy letting the radio hosts ridicule them and taunt them with prizes the station gets for free (more on this later). Me, I’d rather go to the zoo and allow enraged chimpanzees to hurl dung at me.

Within our market, however, things could be a lot worse. Entercom, the conglomerate that owns many of the popular local stations, seems to allow its babies to get a little rowdy in the playpen. The most fun is KRBZ 96.5, better known as the Buzz. Even though the scrappy young station seems forced to squander its listeners’ time by playing atrociously outworn Stone Temple Pilots hits or that damned “Hey Man Nice Shot” song at every opportunity, the Buzz at least supports local music.

Witness the station’s weekly Homegrown Buzz. In this program, a venue pays to have a Buzz personality broadcast from the club from 9 to 10 p.m. and MC the entire show. Since last fall, said host has been Jeriney. She’s young and tall and curvy, with short, blond hair — she looks like a college senior who should be hosting drink-and-disrobe games in a sorority house. Instead, she’s doing it at a Johnson County bar.

See, since January, Homegrown Buzz has been at Jerry’s Bait Shop in Lenexa, where, according to Jeriney, the management’s goal is “to get people drunk and naked.” Perhaps a better way of putting it would be “to attract people willing to get drunk and naked.” On a Sunday night.

Therefore, the beer is cheap, the waitresses are dressed like softball-playing nymphos, the TVs are tuned to sports, and every surface is littered with Planned Parenthood-sanctioned condoms — ooh, racy — decorated with stickers for Afentra‘s Big Fat Morning Buzz.

To the organizers’ credit, every cent of the $3 cover goes to the bands, which, on this particular night, are the unknown Copus and the even more unknown the Device.

“Most of the time, it’s a band I’ve never heard of, and they’re always really, really good,” says Jeriney, referring to the Bait Shop’s booking record.

When the Device takes the stage, its members’ barbershopped hair and the singer’s cargo shorts and flip-flops foretell of an oncoming attempt at rocking like a band that lives Three Doors Down from Tool. So the straightforward songwriting and the singer’s gruff, Southern-inflected voice (minus the occasional nu-metal dipthong) are a welcome relief. But after nearly an hour of diluted, minor-chord teeth-gnashing, silence is an even bigger relief.

By that time, the room has filled up, and the moment has arrived that everyone has no doubt been waiting for: the Buzz Halftime Show, wherein patrons are coerced into nudity with the promise of “free shit” to be named later. This free shit is, of course, schwag from record companies — stickers, shirts, CDs and, occasionally, tickets — which, in terms of market value, is all completely worthless.

The night’s game is spin the bottle. Jeriney exhorts the crowd to gather around one of the waitresses, who is to spin an empty, Buzz-logo-emblazoned beer bottle, randomly stop it with her foot, then require someone to remove an article of clothing. The person can opt instead to take a prize, but not until a suitable amount of flesh has been displayed. The crowd that immediately gathers has about a 27-3 guy-girl ratio, which is disappointing. When the prizes run out, a skinny dude has stripped to his boxers, several other male chests have been bared, and two bras have seen light of bar.

The lack of true nudity owes to Lenexans’ latent, puritanical tendency to layer casual clothes even in warm weather.

Wanda and Joel — a gorgeous blonde in a shirt that reads “I [Heart] Nerds” and a bespectacled, lucky bastard who fit the shirt’s bill — are watching the proceedings. Together, they’re in a band called Wanda and Joel.

There to watch, not to play, the self-described indie duo say they trust the Buzz to deliver decent live music, so that’s why they’ve taken a chance on the Sunday show. Though neither dug the heavy metal, they had no objections to the hormonal distraction of the halftime show.

“I think it’s an added bonus,” Wanda says. “It gets people pumped up past that awkward stage — after they’ve seen you naked, you don’t care if you’re dancing stupid.”

To an extent, she’s right. The very same crowd that assembled for spin the bottle, almost to a person, has moved to the front of the stage for Copus, which launches into its set with added confidence and swagger. (It helps that the drummer got shirtless at halftime.)

But no one so much as moves. Why? Because the music is more slow, wallowing metal juxtaposed with bursts of distortion and vocal abuse.

The kids in metal bands these days need to put down their Tool and pick up their Sabbath and realize that 4/4 time is God’s gift to rock and roll. The only thing 3/4 time is good for — regardless of how loud or heavy the music is — is waltzing. And another thing. I have seen Tool live, and it was one of the scariest experiences of my life. And you, senator, are no Tool.

On the way home, I would have listened to the Buzz, but that Loveline show was on, and I didn’t need to hear Adam Corolla berate any teenage mothers.

Such is the life of the not-so-easily amused.