Throwback MP3 of the Week: Danger Bob, “Just Call Me Ninny” (live)
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.
