Kaplan, who helped organise the upcoming Flick anniversary celebration, worked the Flick several times between 1966 and '69, and it was there that he launched his comedy routine that eventually became the inspiration for his hit TV series "Welcome Back Kotter." Kaplan claims that when he heard there was a place called the Flick, he assumed it was a movie theater. "I'd say the word 'shit' in my act, and at one point Max comes up to me and says, 'If you have to use that word, okay. Kaplan recalls Launer taking offence at his use of profanity. When Steve Goodman, by then a famous folksinger and the composer of the classic "City of New Orleans," played the Flick, he was denied headliner status and relegated to an opening act. Apparently Launer was also short on savvy. "Of course, Vince Martin resisted that and when he saw that flashlight, he'd simply start another song. Max had this strict rule about keeping the performers' sets limited to twenty minutes, and he's start waving a flashlight if the musician ran over" Neff says. Despite his ambitions, the onetime show store owner from Newfoundland Canada apparently didn't always have the tact needed to be a show business entrepreneur. Launer, who had grown up in an era of Vaudeville and the New York club scene of the freewheeling '50s, was hardly the savviest proprietor, but those who knew him insist he was quite a curmudgeon. ![]() She felt so bad about that she just had to get out of there." "She walked off stage, packed up her $400 guitar and walked all the way back to Grove all by herself. I tried to encourage her but she was obviously distraught." Kaplan recalls one night when the small crowd she played for left in droves, leaving only two people in the audience by the time her set was finished. ![]() "I told her not to listen to him," Neff remembers. "But Max Launer, the owner - after watching and listening to Joni's wonderful set - mused sincerely, not unkindly, 'How can she expect to be successful only singing her own songs!'" "When I brought Joni Mitchell to the Flick, the people loved her," Martin recalls. One such memory that remains vivid in the minds of all three is the disastrous first appearance at the Flick by a young Joni Mitchell. The Flick regulars scheduled to participate in the club's 50th anniversary celebration later this month - from comedian Gabe Kaplan to veteran folk singer Vince Martin, and seminal South Florida musician, writer, and filmmaker Peter Neff - still overflow with recollections of a time and place nearly forgotten. See also: Moody Blues' John Lodge on Rock Nostalgia: "I Don't Really Like Looking Over My Shoulder"Īlthough the Flick had a relatively brief life span, lasting only about a decade between 19, it hosted an impressive array of performers, including Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Jimmy Buffett, Jerry Jeff Walker, Dion, Tom Rush, and John Sebastian, among many others. In those halcyon days, when South Beach was mainly a retreat for sun-starved tourists and its elderly inhabitants, and when a still nascent Coconut Grove was a gathering point for hippies, beatniks, and the radical underground, the Flick represented one of the few locations for live music between the Grove and the Keys. That place was known as the Flick, an unassuming little club and coffeehouse located on the outskirts of the University of Miami campus where the Titanic Restaurant and Brewery now stands. And while South Florida could never match either of those cities in terms of star power and mystique, it did have a venue that helped foster South Florida's burgeoning folk scene in the 1960s and '70s. New York had its Cafe Wha? and Bottom Line.
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