(this bounced, from the email address below. I thought, gee, what the heck?)

To: aaron@cometbus.com
From: Mike Whybark
Subject: on the off chance that this works…
Cc:
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Once, long ago, Aaron wrote about walking around Indianapolis trying to find people who knew about a band called the Gizmos that had released a song, “I like the Midwest” on the compliation LP “Red Snerts”.

Well, he didn’t find anyone then, but the zine eventually found me, and I had a ton of unreleased material by the band on a tape that was informally known as “the Gizmos Story”.

I meant to send it along, but I’m lame.

Flash forward ten or more years, and the label, Gulcher, that released the original Red Snerts is re-releasing old material and adding on lots of new stuff too.

The first 2 CDs by the Gizmos that Gulcher released are records by a completely different band than the band Aaron once wrote about. They’re interesting, but not my cup o’ tea. Each CD has an exhaustive booklet about this version of the band, due to the band’s surprisingly widespread exposure at the time of the initial record’s release.

The next 2, “The Midwest can be Allright” and “Never mind the Gizmos Here’s the Gizmos” are by the band I love. The first of these two (which features the “official” title of that midwest song) is six or seven songs recorded in 1980 just before the band broke up. “Never Mind” includes all the other released material by this incarnation of the band – from a 1978 EP to the half-album “Hoosier Hysteria” with maybe another track or two. Neither of these CDs has much in the way of written material included.

Gulcher will be selling another CD of unreleased late-period Gizmos material soon, “Real Rock n Roll Don’t Come From New York”.
You can reach Gulcher at gulcherrecords@aol.com.

Dale Lawrence, the late-period band’s primary songwriter, eventually went on to co-lead the Vulgar Boatmen (another band with very complex backstories), and currently (with Jake Smith and Freda Love of the Mysteries of Life) is involved with a label project, www.nonostalgia.com, which will be releasing a Vulgar Boatmen restrospective “soon”.

I hope you eventually see this note.