Gizmos World Tour 2015 - State Street Pub, Indianapolis Indiana Friday July 10, 2015

After a few months' hiatus, the Gizmos returned to the scene of the original crime, Indiana, for a couple summer shows and a recording session! Given that our rhythm section - the infamous Craig Bell (Rocket From the Tombs, X_____X, Deezen, the Down Fi and much more) on bass, Kelsey Simpson on drums and Sam Murphy on guitar - all live in Indy and perform in Deezen, we set up a "warm-up" show for the night of our arrival in town and had the terrific Deezen open up.

Most of the out-of-towners arrived late afternoon/early evening and we immediately went down to the secret Deezen practice cave to run through our set, along with the songs that we would be recording on Sunday. Everything went surprisingly (to me, at least!) well and we headed off to the State Street Pub.

Piling in our gear, we took over the bar and stage and the Deezen-Gizmos members were joined by keyboardist Rippy and singer Kerry and they jumped into their set of garage/punk rockers. Opening with the appropriately titled original "Rock'n'Roll", they sounded in top form, with some tight harmonies and plenty of energy. String popping was the theme for the night - I broke one at practice, Sam busted one during Deezen's set and Craig busted a bass string (!) as he was setting up for the Gizmos - but that didn't deter the rock. Cool garage/psych/Monks-ish number with tremelo'd guitar and Mo Tucker drums, a fast punker ("Hot Dog"), heavy reverb on a mid-tempo dynamic garage rocker "Wrong Kind of Love" and plenty more! Really superior set from this hot-shot group!

The Gizmos ran through everything in a comparatively quick set (another band, Wet Heave, who would also be playing the next night at Mutant Fest, went on after us) but we played all of our tunes, with Kerry Miller joining us on drums so that Kelsey could move to guitar for "Pumpin' to Playboy" and including a couple of new numbers that we would be recording, along with Rocket From the Tombs' classic "Final Solution". Fun time all around and off for some rest for the next day's festivities.