Rock Never Dies: The Pedaljets prove that sometimes it just needs a 20-year time-out

It's July 5, and Lawrence's Replay Lounge is packed. Veterans of the '80s underground are everywhere.

One-time Lawrence singer-songwriter Lori Wray, back from Minneapolis and onstage with her old band, the Von Bulows, has just thrilled Shelle Rosenfeld, writer and former editor of The Note, by reprising her cover of Lulu's "To Sir With Love." DJ Ray Velasquez, now firmly established in New York, is back in one of his old haunts, standing in the center of the crowded floor.

Four unassuming guys take the stage. There's been a little slack between sets, but the crowd shuffles forward. The lead singer, Mike Allmayer, hasn't changed much over the years — in his brown Levi's and black T-shirt, he still looks straight out of the garage. Standing to his left is legendary Lawrence ax man John Harper, wearing a Sasquatch T-shirt and filling in for this band's regular guitarist, Phil Wade. The similarly tall, lanky Matt Kesler is bald now, with shades, a Fu Manchu mustache and a sinister goatee.

Kesler is the one who looks most obviously different, with a Western shirt and boots the only signs of his former longhaired self. On the drums, Rob Morrow looks considerably more bright-eyed than in the old days.

Allmayer contemplates his guitar like it's some piece of equipment he's just rediscovered, and he begins playing a complex, circular rhythm. He seems to have to stretch his neck to reach the mic, and his slump-shouldered stance suggests he's fighting gravity to stay up there.

I'm just a dumb waiter, he sings. I don't know how to serve you. The band's pounding rhythm insists otherwise.

Sooner or later, I'm going to deserve you, yeah, he sings, repeating the yeah in a small build that anticipates the screaming crescendo of yeahs the audience knows so well.

That's when the band explodes into bass, guitar and drum fills that knock everything back down to the basic pulsing rhythm, only to start building again.

The slightly grizzled crowd is bopping to the music. The guy who was sitting on the floor in front of the stage has now stood up to rock on his heels. A woman just to the right of the stage has found incredible rhythmic possibilities in this throbbing beat. Creating the sense of some Underground Garage version of The Today Show, people on Mass Street are putting their faces to the window to see who's playing inside.

The Pedaljets don't let up through crowd favorites "Liking You" and "One Million Lovers" before hitting "Tiny World," the climax of their 1988 debut album, Today Today.

But then a swirling counterpoint to “Dumbwaiter” begins, and Allmayer is moaning, I left my motor runnin'. Kesler applies almost sadistic pressure with this unrelenting, descending bass line. Morrow hits the stuttering beat hard, like a car that will shake apart before it quits idling. Meanwhile, Harper reels back and forth in a kind of half-circle pogo while he strangles countless variations on the spiraling core of this bit of nightmare.

The Pedaljets, "Dumbwaiter" live at the Record Bar, 3-31-07

Now Allmayer is screaming, And I can't turn it off/And I can't turn, can't turn, can't turn can't.... Though it sounds like he's shouting down one hell of a nightmare, the pulsing house suggests no one wants him to stop.

He doesn't, not right away. The band closes with an unrecorded gem, "Get Lucky," that has taken on new life in recent performances as a sort of rockabilly rave-up. Tonight, it feels like a love letter to the room.

In some ways, the whole set has felt like that. Tonight's lineup is Act II in a reunion of KJHK DJs that started hours ago at Burcham Park with a barbecue that featured DJ Ray spinning records.

Lawrence's KJHK, run by University of Kansas students, was a model independent college rock station throughout most of the '80s, when the punk-influenced underground couldn't get on the radio any other way. In Lawrence, that meant bands such as the Embarrassment (who were really based in Wichita), Get Smart and the Mortal Micronotz — by most accounts, the greatest punk band Lawrence or Kansas City has ever seen — and the Pedaljets.

The fact that the Pedaljets signed on for this reunion generated momentum enough to haul aboard Topeka rock band the Klusterfux, Get Smart's Marc Koch (with his current band, Crying Out Loud, playing all of the old material) and the Mortal Micronotz (all original members except for Kesler, filling in for the late David Dale). The room swells through these sets, and it's clear that the core of the crowd — including the double-drumming headliner, anarchic party band Gourmet Mushroom X — has this music in its bones.

The Pedaljets were key to making this night happen in more ways than one. For starters, in May, after nearly two decades apart, they staged their own second act by nationally releasing a brand-new version of their 20-year-old second album, Pedaljets (this time on Kansas City's new Oxblood Records). The unconventional move breathes new life into that rock-and-roll spirit that says to hell with the rules.