BC Related Bands

[sam]

I was looking at some vintage concerts posters on Ebay last night. I noticed a lot of them included a band/person called Captain Speed. Does anyone here have any idea who Captain Speed was? I have not been able to find anything about them. There were a few pretty cool ones with Blue Cheer on them as well.

[psychedelicteen]

Hey sam, I looked it up and here's what I found(Its a lot so get ready to read):

"In 1968, Mike Greer and Steve Hutchinson from Winston-Salem formed the infamous Captain Speed & the Funji Electric Mothers ("Funji" being pronounced, "Funky"). Although they started out doing covers of The Amboy Dukes, Hendrix, Cream & Vanilla Fudge, they were soon writing their own raucous material. Captain Speed eventually recorded the "Yesterdays Tommorow" b/w "Reptilian Disaster" single at Greensboro's Crescent City Studio. Though musically cool, their outstanding live shows are what made them of interest to us. One such show was done with the Soul band the Versatiles at the sold out 600 capacity Miller Park Gym. On this occasion, Captain Speed opted for a grand finale of the Who's "My Generation" and the smashing of Mike's guitar. Other memorable shows included ones where a duck named "Captain Speed" would join them onstage and run around in circles whenever the band played. Some have said the duck was given drugs in order to make him dance, but these have proven to be nothing but rumors. These kinds of rumors and antics, often made a band an influence for the younger up and coming musicians.

In 1969, Mike Greer went to college at UNC-CH and soon learned that roomate Robert Kirkland and down the hall neighbor Don Dixon had similar musical tastes. With the addition of Kirkland's high school bandmate Jimmy Glascow, they started out as the Dog Breath Blues Band. They played a folk coffeehouse called the Cat's Cradle and a hippie/biker bar known as The Asparagus Farm. The guys in Dog Breath soon learned how to play Sgt. Pepper by heart, as well as an import LP by a band called Black Sabbath that no one else seemed to have heard of. Mike took his new band to Crescent City Studios, where he'd previously been with Capt. Speed, and they recorded a single of their own. The band cut the intense "An Estimation" b/w "Black Death" single (CS-1091/1092) in January 1969 and released it in '70. Don says, "The only reason to cut a single back then was to get it in some jukeboxes or talk some DJ into playing it on an AM station somewhere." They decided it was time to change their name, since "Blues Band" no longer described their sound, and became Arrogance. It was released in 1970, at a time when its impact cannot be overestimated. Since no one had heard of Black Sabbath, much less Sabbath mixed with Sgt. Pepper into a Mountain-esque stew, the first Arrogance 45 was important to many N.C. musicians and tops the list for early influential N.C. vinyl. A somewhat different line-up with an altogether different sound went on to record many albums under the same name."

[sam]

Thanks for the info. Sounds like Captain Speed's music would be a little hard to get a copy of now. That coffee house mentioned in the article called The Cat's Cradle is still open in North Carolina. It is not too far from where I saw Blue Cheer play there in November.