Flipper (band)

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Flipper
Flipper, 1980. Clockwise from top left: Steve DePace, Ted Falconi, Bruce Loose, Will Shatter
Flipper, 1980. Clockwise from top left: Steve DePace, Ted Falconi, Bruce Loose, Will Shatter
Background information
Genre(s) Punk
Pet rock
Years active 1979-1987
1990-1995
2005-present
Label(s) Subterranean Records
American Recordings
Members
Bruce Loose
Ted Falconi
Steve DePace
Krist Novoselic
Former members
Will Shatter
John Dougerty
Ricky Williams
Bruno DeSmartas

Flipper is an influential punk/noise band from San Francisco, California, formed in 1979, continuing on in often erratic fashion until the mid-1990's, then reuniting in 2005. Its founding members included former members of the Sleepers and Negative Trend.

Contents

[edit] Members

[edit] Core members

  • Bruce Loose - vocals, bass guitar
  • Ted Falconi - guitar
  • Will Shatter - vocals, bass guitar
  • Steve DePace - drums, backing vocals

[edit] Current members

  • Bruce Loose - lead vocals,
  • Ted Falconi - guitar
  • Krist Novoselic - backing vocals, bass guitar
  • Steve DePace - drums, backing vocals

[edit] Initial impact

The band made their first recordings available in late 1979 via the SF Underground 7" compilation series released through Steve Tupper's newly-formed Subterranean Records. In 1981, a 7" comprising "Love Canal/Ha Ha Ha" followed, and the original lineup made two full-length studio albums on Subterranean, 1982's Generic and a 1984 followup Gone Fishin'.

Flipper's music was very shambolic and noisy, and often considered "slow" for a punk band of the time. In many early shows, the band had half the audience onstage with them singing backup vocals, and encouraged horn players to join them for their anthem, "Sex Bomb"; the crowding onstage usually knocked the stringed instruments out of tune. Guitarist Ted Falconi installed spikes in the head of his guitar to help prevent this, but blaring, out-of-tune dissonance became part of the band's signature sound.

Flipper was often as strongly in league with conceptual art and atonal music as with rock or punk. They were originally known in San Francisco as a band that 'everybody hated,' and who bombarded the city with graffiti far more than they actually played. Years after the band's demise, its spray-painted dead fish logos were still visible in San Francisco (although signs on the city's Clipper Street have since been reverted from "Flipper Street"). (Other notable places to find their fish logo include the Berlin Wall, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China, and the bathroom at the Vatican in Rome.)

Flipper's charm as a band lies in their ability to upset audiences, while attracting their undivided attention and curiosity at the same time. Their first single, "Love Canal"/"Ha Ha Ha", was widely derided, not only for its offensive cover art, but its bizarre sound, and yet sold many copies in the underground. This, in brief, was the band's concept: to be bad in ways that no band had ever been bad before. However, in true Flipper fashion, they even failed to fail, and their audience continued to grow as their outlandish approach appealed to those seeking something different.

Two more singles on Subterranean followed, "Brainwash"/"Sex Bomb Baby" and "Old Lady That Swallowed The Fly"/"Get Away" before Album (also known as Generic Flipper). Their debut LP sees the drone and blare molded into startlingly effective songs, with a lyrically bleak outlook, but humane vulnerability in the vocals, and flashes of genuine musicianship. It is widely considered a classic album of this era. The mayhem contained on the disc is infectious as Will Shatter repeats "Life! Life! Life is the only thing worth living for!" Similarly, "Sex Bomb Baby" is a seven minute track with only one lyric, "She's a sex bomb, my baby, yeah.", intertwined with a raucous yet melodic musical interplay.

The follow-up studio album in 1984, Gone Fishin, was even darker and artier than the first LP. It featured the disorientating opening track "The Lights, The Sound, The Rhythm, The Noise", the haunting "Survivors of the Plague" and the decrying of the war machine in the song "Sacrifice". The multi-colored delivery step van pictured on the cover was also where Ted Falconi lived when the group was not on the road. The van, along with figures representing the band and their equipment could be cut out and folded with Subterranean offering extra covers through a small mail order fee.

In 1984, the ROIR cassette label released a live Flipper document of a CBGB's performance entitled "Blow'n Chunks" that became available on CD in 1990, and goes in and out of print. A 2001 reissue includes four outtakes from the live sessions.

John Lydon's Public Image Ltd was widely accused in the US of stealing the cover art and concept of Flipper's album, Album. Consequently, Flipper entitled their 1986 double live album, Public Flipper Ltd. The album unfolded into a board game complete with a cutout spinner and game cards with Subterranean once again providing extra covers through mail order.

The original lineup began splintering after a long debauched period of touring, and singer and core member Will Shatter eventually died in 1987 of a drug overdose after forming A3I (Any Three Initials, a punk outfit whose title mocked the prevalence of acronymic band names). Subterranean packaged the band's most popular recordings in a greatest hits collection titled "Sex Bomb Baby" released in 1987. The initial release featured several different hand drawn covers and the cassette edition and later CD rerelease featured three bonus tracks.

[edit] After Will Shatter

By the early 1990s, the band resurfaced with a new single on Subterranean called "Someday"/"Distant Illusion" and began performing again. Bruce Loose had become a heroin addict by this point. After Loose allegedly stole the band's master tapes from Subterranean's warehouse, he and DePace brokered a deal with powerful Los Angeles-based music industry figure Rick Rubin. Rubin used his attorneys to quash Subterranean's claim to the music and soon re-released Album Generic Flipper and the singles compilation Sex Bomb Baby on his Infinite Zero label. Even with Henry Rollins onboard as the latter label's A&R, the label soon went defunct. By 1997, Flipper's groundbreaking music went largely out of print, with Rubin still holding onto the rights, though tentative plans have been made for the band's catalogue to be re-released on Rubin's American Recordings in 2007.

As part of the legal settlement Subterranean Records was awarded the right to reissue its Flipper records on vinyl in the United States.

The band continued playing from 1990 to 1995, pursuing a more straightforward rock sound and attempt to cash in on their notoriety. In 1992, the new lineup released "American Grafishy" on Rick Rubin's Def American imprint; this is their only recording that is still consistently (legally) available. Their demise was again forthcoming due to another death by heroin overdose, this time that of replacement bass player John Dougherty.

Loose once commented to SF Weekly on the band's history as "like Spinal Tap, except the bass player keeps dying".

In 2002 Bruce Loose, father of a teenager, using a cane to get around (following a horrific car accident), resurfaced with a one off gig at Berkeley's 924 Gilman Street space as "Not Flipper". Falconi is somewhat reclusive. DePace is reportedly shopping Flipper stories to potential publishers. He lives in the L.A. area and works in the animation industry.

The original members of Flipper, barring the late Will Shatter (with Bruno DeSmartass replacing Shatter once again as he had done for a 1982 tour), reunited to support CBGB on August 22 and 28, 2005. Singer Bruce Loose appeared on stage with a cane. This line-up of Flipper then continued to play live again beginning in 2006, with plans for a new album to be released and recorded in 2007.

In December 2006, DeSmartass was replaced by Krist Novoselic on bass for a tour of the UK and Ireland, as well as several US shows. In an ironic (Flipper) twist, the song "Scentless Apprentice" was added to the band's setlist in Galway, and is notable for the fact of Novoselic performing a Nirvana song in public for the first time since Nirvana's final concert in 1994. [1]

[edit] Discography

[edit] Studio Albums

[edit] Compilations and Live Albums

  • Blow'n Chunks - (1984) ROIR (A126)
  • Public Flipper Limited Live 1980-1985 - (1986) Subterranean Records (SUB53)
  • Sex Bomb, Baby! - (1988) Subterranean Records (SUB59)
  • Nürnberg Fish Trials - (1991) Musical Tragedies (MT-155/HS103)
  • Live At CBGB's 1983 - (1997) Overground (OVER63)

[edit] Singles

[edit] Trivia

  • Founding member and original vocalist Ricky Williams of The Sleepers was fired from the band before any recordings were made because he was ironically deemed too messed up to remain in the band. He later reformed The Sleepers after being kicked out of Flipper, later joining Toiling Midgets before dying from respiratory-related complications in 1992.
  • Kurt Cobain was a great fan of Flipper and often wore self-made Flipper t-shirts, e.g. in the booklet pictures of Nirvana's In Utero and on the band's first performance on Saturday Night Live in 1992.
  • Bruce Loose joined the Universal Life Church as a minister so that he could conduct the marriage ceremony of Jello Biafra.
  • WWF wrestler Hillbilly Jim often wore Flipper T-shirts in his early TV appearances, almost in contradiction to his character's hillbilly origins.
  • Early Flipper shows are legendary in punk circles due to their chaotic nature as well as the amount of drugs they would bring to shows.
  • A dubious version of Flipper (featuring only DePace and Falconi) recorded a cover of Metallica song Sad But True for the Punk Tribute to Metallica album.

[edit] External links

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