Back to Rockville: Middle of the Map, Day 1: It's a KCMO reunion

Above: Molly McGuire peformed Thursday night at RecordBar. Photos by Forester Michael/Special to Ink

Thursday was opening night for Ink’s three-day Middle of the Map Fest, and at a packed RecordBar, the evening was a reunion of sorts and one long, loud and raucous trip back in time.

Mike Stover (left) and Mike McCoy of Cher UK

For about five hours, four well-known Kansas City bands unleashed several flavors of uncompromising rock — Middle of the Map’s version of Rockfest, you could call it. The bands: Cher UK, the Esoteric, Season to Risk and Molly McGuire, who last played in Kansas City more than 10 years ago. It made for a great night of music, despite a few technical glitches that were eventually remedied.

Cher UK, lead by demonstrative frontman Mike McCoy (and with Mike Stover filling in on guitar), started the assault, performing tracks from albums that go back to the early and mid-1990s: “Go Go Fish,” “She’s a Weird Little Snack” and “Berdella.” The set list included “College Song,” “Disaster,” "Cooks," “Kibbles ‘n’ Bitz,” “Ba Ba Ba Ba” and “Motocaster.” The band’s enduring blend of power-chord-punk and garage rock — high-speed, melodic noise pop — is still appealing. Some music ages vey well.

Stevie Cruz of the Esoteric

The Esoteric, a Lawrence band born in the late 1990s, followed with a set of hardcore punk/metal screeds. Its lead screamer is Stevie Cruz, now of the speed-metal band Hammerlord, who wore a Beatle-ish mop-top wig for more than half the set. He led his five-piece through a bruising set that, according to the set list, included “Our Exquisite Corpse,” “Make Fine Dreams,” “Ram Faced Boy,” “Destroy She Said” and “Science is Sexy.” Theirs is music to be seen as well has heard: Cruz is a whiplashing dervish, and his mates perform high-speed feats on their instruments to keep up with him.

Steve Tulipana and Season to Risk

Season to Risk followed. The band has been around since 1989 and has gone through several lineup changes. Thursday’s version was the 1995-99 lineup, with Josh Newton on bass. Steve Tulipana is the band’s lead singer, and he showed off his engaging front-man moves throughout the set — moves he doesn’t get to express much in his other bands (Roman Numerals, Thee Water Moccasins). It’s always great to see a band leader who looks like he’s having as much fun as anyone in the place. Its music is a blend of noise, crunch, hard-groove and melody. Its set list included “Game Over,” “Mine Eyes,” “Jack Frost” and “Snakes,” which Tulipana dedicated to writer Harry Crews, who died March 28.

Jason Gerken of Molly McGuire

The closer was Molly McGuire, a Kansas City band that released the album “Lime” on Epic Records in the mid-1990s. Its last Kansas City show before Thursday, according to the band’s herculean drummer Jason Gerken, was in 2000 at Recycled Sounds, the former record store and local-music haven at Westport Road and Main Street. They have been missed.

Its music is a bristling and dynamic blend of hard rock and progressive/post-rock; it has thunder and groove and arrhythmia all at once. Frontman Jason Blackmore led MM through a set list that included “Sick,” “Smoker” and a new one, “Fat Lip.” The band reunited early this year just for the Middle of the Map Fest and has since started work on a new album, “Cursed.” Given the rowdy reaction from a sold-out RecordBar, a lot of people around here are happy to have them around again.

| Timothy Finn, The Star

Season to Risk setlist