“My band’s playing at Churchill’s” is something thousands of band’s have said and done and my band was as well but we had the distinction of being the very first one. How this came to be is the owner of Churchill’s Hideaway, a British Pub in Little Haiti that became the CBGB’s of the Miami rock scene, came to see my band play at the Rathskellar on campus at the University of Miami. It was the 80’s in Miami and me and my band Yin Yang were all music students there. So that’s how we met the enigmatic Dave Daniels. I went on to play there a 1,001 times with an array of bands ( as well as acoustic ) for the next 30 years. Yin Yang, Smokin’ Toad, Peerless Super Eye, and of course Space Hippie. Me and Saxophone Bill played there one year during Art Basel 201?
I can’t emphasize the importance of Churchill’s to the Miami Music scene to follow. Literally 1000’s of bands went on to play there. Some famous touring musicians, some local doing some an art damaged project with their friends but Dave gave them the leeway to do whatever they wanted to do. Back in the 80’s, there wasn’t many options of places to play. Tobacco Road was there but South Beach was non existent. Remember that scene with the chainsaw in Scarface? That was South Beach back then.
Damn I just remember something funny. Yin Yang used to play at the tiki bar on the beach in North Miami and next door to it was a Yaweh hotel. They were like don’t park there that’s the bizarre Miami cult that chopped people’s heads off. It was Miami in the 80’s what can I say? When I was night clerk at a hotel off of U.S.1 and they found a naked guy walking all bloody with a severed head under the tri-rail.
So my band started playing at Churchill’s drawing in all the college kids, it didn’t hurt that the drinking age had just changed for 18 to 21 and they had fake i.d. that would work there lol. We used to pack the place. Dave Daniels would have the band run the door and he got the bar so we could actually make some money. So many great memories of playing there over the years. Yin Yang in the late 80’s were exciting days when it was all new and uncharted terrain. Smoking Toad, my 90’s U.M. band would play there after all the Grateful Dead shows. We had a cool nascent jam band scene going, playing with Day By The River and other like minded bands. I know Churchill’s is associated with punk bands but believe me we used to have pot smoking hippies smoking pot and tripping on that stage. That’s where the Hemp Council’s benefits started which became the Medical Marijuana benefits. The mighty University of Miami Hemp Awareness Council. I used to get all these great bands to play.
Peerless Super Eye in the mid 90’s was a band project with Pink House owner Greg Schwabe. Our sound reflected the grungy metallic sounds of the day. We recorded a cd at his home studio that was well received by college radio. He was a sought after recording engineer at Criteria working with Tom Dowd and other luminaries, so he knew his shit. That was ultimately to be our downfall. When CMJ was asking us to play, he quit to tour with K.C. and the Sunshine Band as their live sound engineer. That’s a Miami story for you and I could tell you more. Like about Rick Finch, Casey’s boyfriend who co-wrote all the songs but sold away all his rights when he downward spiraled as he defined the term, “rock monster.” That organization ran on Cocaine and after a tour or two my once promising drummer was a strung out wreck. They paid for his rehab and he went back to work for them. Our band was done but the music lived on online and other strange places. Like they say about the Velvet Underground, “No one saw them but every one that did formed a band” could be said to be continued…
spacehippieworldwideministries 