kuniform

Peep was a band that existed in various forms from 1993-1996. The band began as a spoken word effort by Jeff Rawwin and a guitar player whose name I can’t remember because I never met him.

I called Jeff one night and then went to see him and the guitar player as a spoken word and guitar duo at the Elbo Room, a bar in Chicago. The guitar player quit that night and I signed on as bass player. After auditioning several folks as drummers and guitar players, we met Barry Bennett, who played tribal percussion (djembe, doumbek, congas) as well as straight kit. After auditioning more guitar players who were either comic or tragic but untalented, I revealed that I played guitar and off we went to Idful studios to record a demo.

We then used that demo tape to secure a bass player, Fabian Guerra, who could actually play bass to djembe and congas, which had confused the hell out of me. We played in Andy Rosen’s Untamed Studios’ practice space and recorded a few songs there, too, while gigging out at clubs like the Wild Cherry, the Avalon, the Elbo Room, Thurston’s, Phyllis’ Musical Inn, the Czar Bar, the Highway Roadhouse, Bub City, etc. Eventually, we moved up to clubs such as Double Door and Metro, played a couple of fashion shows, and released a few CDs. We even got radio play on 4 or 5 Chicago radio stations. Fun!

My biggest regret is that we fired Fabian Guerra after a few years in. We fired him as a scapegoat for all of our problems. He wasn’t a great bass player, but he was adequate. Fabian, if you ever read this, my apologies to you for our treatment of that situation. By the way, I understand you stiffed Barry on a Wild Horse gig. For shame.

We hired Derek Wu, who was scared as hell of all of us from day one because we were grizzled, burned out, and road ready. Unfortunately, we also were falling apart at the seams. He walked into an abusive relationship. Sorry, Derek!

Barry and I went on to play in another band, milkbaby, and we played a few gigs, including one at Lounge Ax, before I quit and he kept the torch rolling. We released a couple of CDs, played a fashion show, got on the radio a coupla times. Laughed a lot, but cried more.

I will be posting more mp3’s from live shows and other recordings sometime in the next week or so (this is being written on 2002-12-04).

These pictures are kind of little because they were optimized for 600×480 monitors a looong time ago.

Hard times above the Lady Luck Lounge
This was our peep mansion, above the lady luck lounge on damen and roscoe in chicago.

Left to Right:
Fabian, Jeff, me, Barry. Geeks.