Welcome to the first edition of “Sound on the Sound Radio,” otherwise known as “Justin Ripley is one of the funniest, most prolific guy we know and when he has an idea, we happily play along.”

When Justin, lead singer of Salmon Thrasher and Showbox sound guy, proposed recording a podcast for Sound on the Sound with Rooftop Vigilantes, a raucous rock band from his hometown of Lawrence, KS, we said “of course” and kept our fingers crossed. What we got back was like a delightful Christopher Guest take on an NPR interview gone horribly wrong … complete with monotone voice-over, momentum halting questions and a moment of dead air courtesy of a passing ice cream truck.

Unlike the sludgy grooves of Salmon Thrasher, Rooftop Vigilantes offer short anthemic blasts of rock that are at once bright and fuzzy. They’ve been described as a “very drunk Fugazi” and that sits well with me. Or as Justin put it, “One of the main unfortunate things about your band, well there are a lot of unfortunate things, but the main one is you’re completely amazing and that’s all I’ve been listening to the past three months, but yet, you’re band will probably never be successful.”

Listen for yourself and then check out both Rooftop Vigilantes and Justin Ripley (as frontman for Salmon Thrasher) this Saturday June 12th at the Sunset. If you have any requests for which band Justin interviews next for Sound on the Sound, leave them in the comments … we loved this initial podcast so much, of course we asked him back for more.

Sound on the Sound Podcast 01 - Justin Interview’s Rooftop Vigilanties by soundonthesound