Great music of the Gainesville 60's. Where are these guys now?

The members of The Rare Breed went on to do other things with their lives. Among the "graduates" of the band is a lawyer, a contractor, a couple of teachers, an architect, and a newspaper photo editor. Some of us continued to play in bands over the years. I was in a band made up of reporters, editors and photographers at The Philadelphia Inquirer. We stayed together for nearly 12 years.

Our student days were a long time ago, and Gainesville is a very different place from the days when we played fraternity gigs and at Dub's. While I'm not active in bands anymore, I still have my horns. Some things you just can't give up. And although I don't play, I do still listen to the old and the new music. I think all the rest of the guys are that way too. We still keep in touch via email.

It's been fun to read on this site about the changes that went on down there during these past thirty-five years or so. I guess Hogtown always has, and always will rock.

Yeah !!! Where are these guys now? How come no one knows?

As of the lates sighting, the organist and singer for The Rare Breed, Ron Gause, was seen in Houston, Texas where he is still playing music and has a day job fixing and restoring VW's. Actually, he lives in Porter, Texas which is a small town close to and north of Houston.

I joined the Rare Breed as the lead singer after Frank left, in May/June of 1967 and was with them through the winter of 67/68, after which Randy took my place beginning about March of 1968. At that time we were the house band at Dub's and he was our manager. We were negotiating with Mainstream records(Janis Joplin, Ted Nugent, etal) but that fell through). My voice is on the "Don't Blow Your Cool/I Talked To The Sun" 45 on CoolasaMoose records. Previously I had been lead singer for "The Rockin Rovers"(10/65-05/66) and "The Better 1/2"(05-66-04/67) both of which played the frat house circuit and various gigs from Jacksonville up into Dothan, Alabama. It was the era of the Maundy Quintet(Bernie Leadon and Don Felder from the Eagles started here), the Tropics, from Tampa, The Soul Survivers, from G'ville, Gene Middleton-who used to play Mom"s Kitchen in the Ghetto all the time--and many others. Agreat period for fun, money , booze and other substances. I am now retired after a full career of HR consulting and play lots of golf in G'ville.

I was the lead singer for a band that was formed on the UF campus in the mid-60's called The Playboys. The core of this band (myself, Jim Garcia, Bill Carter, Bryan Grigsby became the Rare Breed when Paul McCarthur was added on the drums. I left the band in '66 when I graduated and moved to West Palm Beach where I became an architect and I started up a new band called The Eighth Day, which was very popular in the South Florida area for several years. Bill Carter joined up with me with The Eighth Day when he moved backed to West Palm Beach after graduating. Bill and I stayed in touch over the years after playing in different bands but we never had much contact with the other guys in the Rare Breed or the Playboys until we had our first band reunion in 1999 (jokingly called "The Playboys World Tour") followed by one each year in 2000 and 2001. We fondly remember our days at Gainesville where we played at Dub's, most of the frat and sorority houses, most of the bars, and had a whopping big time at Bernadette Castro's birthday party highlighted by a young quarterback named Steve Spurrier doing "The Gator" on the dancefloor. Seems I also remember a repeat performance by him at Dub's Steer Room not long after that. If I'm not mistaken, his buddy, Ron Zook, was there to cheer him on. Those days will last forever in our memories as a time that was carefree and a lot less complicated than today's world. Or did we just grow up? Nah, not a chance.