Gizmos World Tour Diary Saturday June 14, 2014 - Dayton, Ohio

The Giz-men all slowly awoke at sax-man Eric's house in Indy, had breakfast and killed a little time before getting out of the Weddle's hair and heading off to Dayton, Ohio. Uneventful trip other than a stop at Fricker's restaurant, which Kenne and Ted thought was pretty hilarious. Got to Blind Bob's in Dayton mid-afternoon and did some more hanging out and wandering the area, which seemed to be a college-y, hip part of town, with a guitar/record store two doors down (where we get a couple of necessities and signed their Gizmos poster), a vintage store, a Goodwill, a park and other cool mom'n'pop stores. A good meal at the club and eventually the other bands started showing up with equipment. Everyone was pretty low-key from lack of sleep but kept each other company until the opening band, the Give-Ups appeared around 10:00 (we were told that the show was supposed to start at 9:00). I'm not a big fan of this kind of hard-core, but they were tight musicians people did seem to dig them.

Apache Dropout were up next and, if anything, sounded even better than the last couple of nights. Again, the minimalistic, almost cymbal-less drumming and thumping fuzz bass reminded me a lot of the Monks crossed with the Velvets while singer Sonny screamed like a Roky Erickson-possessed banshee! Sonny and Nathan did do some fine harmonies, as well, and each had some wild fuzz licks. The interaction between the three was really top-notch, as they would at times all follow Seth's primo-primitive beat or they would trade off riffs - Nathan walking on his gold-top Epiphone Jack Cassidy bass while Sonny played rhythm on his Les Paul gold-top and vice-versa. Sonny could whip up a wall full of noise when needed - he used a number of effects to vary the sound - and when Seth would go to the cymbals, because they were used so sparingly, it was particularly effective. Really a knock-out band!

Of course, Deezen were in top form again, as well, with a boatload of fuzz/garage/surf-styled licks and songs ranging from a Pagans cover to the garage pop of "Don't Die" to the new-wavey "I Need Drugs" to the cool dynamics and starts'n'stops of "Another Nail in the Coffin" to the slower 60's groove of "Wrong Kind of Love". Singer Cary rocked'n'raved like a man half his age while Craig and Kelsey smoked the rhythm, Ed/Fez fed up hip, Farfisa-styled lines and guitarist Samuel wailed on his SG with enough fuzz and noise to break it in two! Unfortunately, they don't have anything released yet, but keep a lookout for these cats and kitten - very cool garage mania!

The New Regrets were another hard-core band of damn nice guys but it's just not my style - no offense meant! But the audience were on their side and they got good reaction.

The Gizmos finally were able to start setting up at about 1:30 am. We were a little worried because we were told that the club closed at 2:30, but since no one was saying anything to us and the sound man was taking his time, we hoped that there wasn't anything to stress over. The crowd had thinned a little by now - don't blame them - I was almost falling asleep myself! - but still had a decent amount of people and they were with us as we started "Gizmos World Tour". After a brief spat of "moshing" during "America First" (thankfully that didn't continue), the club turned on the house lights, but still didn't say anything, so we just kept going. After a few more tunes we finished "Ballad of the Gizmos" only to have the PA shut off and told that the show was over and everyone had to leave. Obviously, that didn't go over too well as we had people who drove up to ten hours to see us so finally the club relented and let us do one more, "Muff Divin'". Blasted through it fast'n'furious and then they threatened violence to anyone who didn't leave immediately. So, not much chance for after-gig socializing and since the 4 Gizmos were going separate ways, we said quick goodbyes to each other and the great musicians that we had with us - Max, John and Ian - along with the other bands and headed off into the night.

Quite a large number of people were taking pictures and videotaping so keep an eye out on The Gizmos Facebooks page or the Gizmos World Tour 2014 page for these and info on upcoming events.

Huge thanks to Max Demata, Marvin Goldstein, Ian Brewer, John Terrill, Eric Weddle, Apache Dropout, Deezen, the Cowboys, the Brothers Gross, The Give-Ups, New Regrets, Bob Richert, Kenne Highland, Eddie Flowers, Ted Niemic, Davey Medlock and everyone who came to the shows for making this a very memorable trip.