Sister Double Happiness
Biography
Sister Double Happiness was an American punk rock band formed in San Francisco, California by ex-Dicks singer Gary Floyd originally with ex-Dicks drummer Lynn Perko, ex-Offenders bassist Mikey Donaldson , and guitarist Ben Cohen (formerly of The Pop-O-Pies). Sister Double Happiness was one of San Francisco's most popular & hardest rocking club bands of the late 1980's, continuing to record & tour through the mid 90's. They released their self titled debut on Greg Ginn's SST Records in 1988, and...
Sister Double Happiness was an American punk rock band formed in San Francisco, California by ex-Dicks singer Gary Floyd originally with ex-Dicks drummer Lynn Perko, ex-Offenders bassist Mikey Donaldson , and guitarist Ben Cohen (formerly of The Pop-O-Pies). Sister Double Happiness was one of San Francisco's most popular & hardest rocking club bands of the late 1980's, continuing to record & tour through the mid 90's.
They released their self titled debut on Greg Ginn's SST Records in 1988, and Floyd subsequently went through a religious conversion to Hinduism. The band resumed activity in a couple years and signed to Reprise, released Heart and Mind, and toured soon after with Nirvana on their breakthrough Nevermind tour of large theaters. With a heroin problem hindering Donaldson's professionalism, the band brought in the much younger Jeff Palmer on bass.
Despite a solid blues rock sound, major label backing, and Gary's booming soulful vocals, Sister Double Happiness never broke through commercially. The band soldiered on for a few more years as an indie act with stronger touring popularity in Europe, releasing 1993’s Uncut and 1994’s Horsey Water there via Sub Pop/Glitterhouse and in the US on Dutch East India. A second guitarist Danny Roman was added and Miles Montalbano eventually replaced Jeff Palmer on bass.
When the band's dwindling commercial prospects petered out, Gary Floyd formed The Gary Floyd Band and Black Kali Ma as well as performing at occasional Dicks reunion shows.
A posthumous live acoustic collection of Sister Double Happiness surfaced in 1999 on the Innerstate that was recorded 8 years earlier in San Francisco. The final line up of the band reformed sporadically for a few reunion shows in the early 2000's but the members stayed busy with other projects.
Perko had joined the sucessful indie rock act Imperial Teen, and Cohen played with the less well known El Destroyo. Donaldson briefly rejoined MDC circa 2005 but passed away in the Netherlands in 2007. Roman played with Floyd in his blues based side projects. Montalbano busied himself as a video editor. After leaving SDH, bassist Jeff Palmer was a longtime member of The Mommyheads and did a brief stint with Sunny Day Real Estate.
Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.