Three Penny Opera

Ottawa’s Three Penny Opera started in early spring of 1997 in the basement of Adam and Hayden Menzies (who are identical twins, born two and a half years apart). Rounding out the band were Shawn Stapleton and Brian Martin. At this point Three Penny Opera were one player short of a hockey team and had several instrumentals in the can. They ran into Matt Deline (ex-Shotmaker, ex-30 Second Motion Picture) at a basement punk show and asked him to sing (and play nets). This was during the waning of 30 Second Motion Picture and Matt was a little unsure of starting something new. In the end everything worked out quite nicely. Three Penny Opera’s first match was on May 24th 1997 in Quebec City where they lost a close game to hometown favorites Fifth Hour Hero. Their first home game saw them defeat Chicago’s Braid, 5-2. Since then, Three Penny Opera’s 1986 GMC Vandura 2500 has traveled over 40,000 kilometres and the band has played 82 shows and 213 street hockey games. 3PO have replaced virtually every major part of the van except for the engine itself. They have also gone through three bass players. Brian Martin returned to the band on a free agent deal in the first round of the 1998 draft. Besides the two spectrasonicsound releases, two songs from countless trips appear on District Skateboards No Time To Heal video.

Keep your stick on the ice, and no raising the puck.

Matt went on to play in Slow Parker and makeshift and currently plays with Hayden in The Grey. They released a CD entitled Open Credit on spectrasonicsound. Brian played in Slow Parker and he plays in a new band with Okara’s Andy Cant.

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