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Orange Opera, Punx Fest and more coming soon

By EA Poorman and Jim Fester

Fort Wayne Reader

2014-08-16

The Lovelines show (see our feature this issue) happens on August 30, but if you also need something to do on August 29 look no further than The Brass Rail once again.

Kevin Hambrick and The Orange Opera will be playing that Friday night with Dayton Ohio's Motel Beds, as well as Meat Flowers. If you're not familiar with Dayton's Motel Beds, head over to motelbards/bandcamp.com and give their album Dreams a listen. This is some seriously great, gritty lo-fi pop. Think The Black Lips, Cherry Twister, and The Teeth all rolled into one gooey pop rock mess. They will mesh perfectly with Kevin Hambrick's Beatles-esque citrus-y jangle pop.

Meat Flowers? I have no idea, but flowers and meat mixed into something resembling rock n' roll can't be a bad thing. It seems the Motel Beds' manager Leo DeLuca contacted Hambrick about swapping some shows, so here's Fort Wayne's show. Should be a great time, with the Orange Opera coming off their triumphant gig opening for the mighty Cheap Trick at the Three Rivers Festival. And as far as new music, Kevin says a new solo album is in the works as well as possibly some new Orange Opera tunes. Stay tuned.

FW Pizza Punx Fest

And the next weekend… The Brass Rail is hosting FW Pizza Punx Fest, featuring a stellar line-up of (as of this writing) of about a dozen punk and punk-flavored bands over two days — Friday, September 5 and Saturday September 6.

Headlining the fest is Zero Boys, a hardcore punk band that came out of Indianapolis in the very early 80s and released their debut full-length — Vicious Circle — in 1982. The band has a long, convoluted history that we don’t really have the space to do justice to here, though Sean Smith interviewed singer Paul "Paul Z" Mahern back in 2009 for FWR #121.

Suffice it to say, they toured widely back in the day, and continue to do so, reforming and sometimes releasing new material every so often (Vicious Circle has been reissued several times by different labels, including Lookout! Records back in 2000 and Secretly Canadian in 2009). Along the way, the band has acquired near legendary status among rockers of all types. Craig Finn, of The Hold Steady, had this to say: “Zero Boys' records are not just incredible punk records, but fascinating artifacts from four Midwesterners who created a mighty racket to be heard above the stifling boredom of young adulthood in America's heartland."

Joining them on the bill are The Lurking Corpses, Flamingo Nosebleed, Left Lane Cruiser, Unlikely Alibi, and The Snarks, just to name a few.

Once again, FW Pizza Punx Fest happens on Friday, September 5 and Saturday September 6. Tickets are $8 for Friday and $12 for Saturday.

You can find more info at fwbrassrail.com.