I had a smile on my face once I noticed Kurt Cobain sporting a Flipper T-shirt on their Saturday Evening Stay look in January of 1992. It conveyed that imprimatur of underground cool to thousands and thousands, even when most individuals watching had not a clue as to who Flipper was or possibly considered an outdated TV sitcom. And, oh yeah, Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic turned a Flipper bassist from 2006-2009.
Flipper was — and technically nonetheless is — a hardcore-punk band, roughly, however they flipped the script. Loud however s-l-o-w. Aggro to the max, but additionally deadpan humorous, humor itself being anathema to the hardcore horde. Flipper — co-led by two bassist-singers Will Shatter and Bruce Unfastened with Ted Falconi on guitar and Steve DePace on drums — bashed out a minimalistic, heavy low-end mess that might coalesce into this throbbing gristle of rhythm. Suppose “Intercourse Bomb” — the place you’re fairly certain she’s his intercourse bomb child, yeah or “Life” — the place you’re fairly sure it’s the one factor price dwelling for — or “Ha Ha Ha — the place you’re rattling certain suburbia and buying isn’t the place it’s at. And “If I Can’t Be Drunk,” the place the follow-up line is “I don’t wanna be alive!” It was sung someplace between a plaint and a snarl. An alcoholic’s lament or boast?
Learn extra: 20 bands that formed hardcore’s evolution
I latched on to Flipper fairly early, and spent some fairly a little bit of time with them as a critic and interviewer through the years, proper as much as the times when the Jesus Lizard’s David Yow took over the lead vocalist position and raised his personal form of holy hell onstage. Regardless of who was onstage, the opportunity of viewers confrontation was fairly probably within the combine. Yow was a little bit extra in your face than Shatter or Unfastened had been. I’d name it organized chaos, however I’m not fairly certain concerning the “organized” modifier.
And if followers taunted Flipper, Flipper struck again. If followers simply needed to mosh and bang one another round, that was OK, too.
Why is there a Flipper chapter in Backstage & Past Full: 45 Years of Rock Chats & Rants?
Nicely, they actually dinged each bells within the “chats” and “rants” classes. However principally as a result of they’re a band I like (that not all people does, so it goes); I had good entry to them through the years; they usually’re an vital slice of the hardcore punk-and-beyond world. The style’s heyday, if you wish to name it that, was temporary, however Flipper endured. Not at all times in an energetic approach, thoughts you. I imply, they had been absent for chunks of time, however their affect was there from the beginning — apart from Nirvana, rely Mudhoney, the Melvins, and Jane’s Habit — and once in a while they popped as much as entertain us, to remind us.
And bear in mind, these had been completely different instances. Concert events not so managed. Extra permitted or, at the least, tolerated. Positive, Flipper was time, however they didn’t make it straightforward for anybody.
—Jim Sullivan
“I can do not forget that first tour in ’80-’81,” says Steve DePace, drummer for the San Francisco band Flipper. “We’d launched three singles and garnered a variety of consideration earlier than the primary album in ’82. What occurred was the Lifeless Kennedys exploded — it was extra of a gradual prepare dinner for us — they usually did a nationwide tour. Jello Biafra liked Flipper and when he spoke to the press, he talked up Flipper. We did a nationwide tour proper behind them and our title was contemporary on all people’s minds, and we had these singles out. Our very first tour, each present was filled with rabid followers. We had been younger, in our early 20s, and we had been partying fairly exhausting and having a extremely good time. There was positively a really feel of being a part of one thing greater than simply being a band on the highway. We found there have been scenes happening in each little city and metropolis.
“We didn’t make some huge cash: sufficient to take care of the tour car. Within the ’80s, I don’t bear in mind staying in a resort. Each metropolis we went to we stayed at anyone’s home, and we didn’t even have that pre-planned. We might roll right into a city, play a present and invite ourselves to stick with anyone. Typically, we’d announce off the stage we would have liked a spot to remain. There was a punk scene in every single place we went and you bought to know the bands from that scene, all throughout America. A brother- and sisterhood.”
Life on the highway for an indie punk rock band…
In 1993 I used to be in a bar with former Replacements singer-guitarist Paul Westerberg who — now sober — was sipping a cola at a Hyatt Regency in Cambridge. He was in Boston to advertise his first solo album. Flipper got here into the dialog, because the band was on a comeback tour and taking part in an area membership, the Center East Downstairs, that evening.
“We thought we had been a punk band till we met Flipper,” Westerberg mused, recalling a invoice they shared a while in the past. His tone was someplace between admiration and disgust. “They had been imply. They had been the scariest group we ever noticed. They stole our excessive hat [cymbal] and we didn’t have the nerve to ask for it again. They had been some tough clients. A few them died, didn’t they?”
I didn’t understand it on the time, however Westerberg was proper. Bassist Will Shatter (actual title: Russell Wilkinson) overdosed on heroin and died in 1987. However unique singer Ricky Williams, who’d been fired from the band earlier than they made any recordings, additionally checked out in 1992, a reality I didn’t study till a lot later.
After Shatter’s dying, Flipper’s surviving members — guitarist Ted Falconi, DePace and singer-guitarist Bruce Unfastened — went underground, hibernating (with incoming bassist John Dougherty; he died of an OD in 1997) till they had been re-animated by producer Rick Rubin, who turned most all the things he touched — from hip-hop to metallic to (later) nation — gold. He signed them to his Def American label and produced American Grafishy. He didn’t fairly flip Flipper gold (they had been nonetheless Flipper in spite of everything), however he received them again within the recreation.
They received one other increase the earlier 12 months when Kurt Cobain wore a Flipper T-shirt on Saturday Evening Stay, exhibiting the world that Flipper was (a) cool and (b) one of many locations the place Nirvana’s roots had been buried. There was some fact to each.
Later that evening on the Center East, Bruce Unfastened began the present with a rambling admonition: “There might be no riot … I can’t be hit by anybody … We is not going to have bottles thrown at us anymore.” They lurched right into a rendition of the determined, dirge-y anthem “Fucked Up As soon as Once more,” and Unfastened let unfastened with an explainer: “It’s not about medication, it’s not about drunkenness — it’s concerning the gradual grind.”
To me, it appeared like the entire above, however, then once more, the track does have a twist and a kicker on the finish about being fucked up — “By no means once more!” Who’s to inform? Flipper’s métier is mess, they usually had been knee-deep in it, vacillating between the gleeful and the grotesque, however in truth, they didn’t appear as willfully demented as they as soon as did. The mosh pit folks didn’t even knock one another mindless, although they did coalesce for bash in the course of the nearer, “Ha Ha Ha.”
When it first hit in 1976 and 1977, punk rock was a poke within the eye and a kick within the nuts to mainstream rock. Punk rock waned because the ’80s approached; much less radical new wave bands took over middle stage. However a unique, extra virulent pressure of punk rock developed, an excellent quicker and thrashier type dubbed hardcore. On the floor at the least, its musicians appear extra alienated from, and angrier at, the state of the world. It was Reagan Time. And, but, after all, they had been on the market to have enjoyable, too, to convey some blurry catharsis into our depressing little lives.
On the sting of this motion lived Flipper. At its greatest, hardcore punk can reduce like a razor; Flipper’s blade is purposefully rusty. Their music is messy and aggressive, strewn with odd melodic hooks which might be as abrasive as they’re catchy. Flipper’s strategy has its roots in proto-metal bands equivalent to Blue Cheer and the Stooges: Thick slabs of bass, drums and rhythm guitar, typically topped with screeching, distorted lead guitar.
From the outset, Flipper rode the antagonistic/welcoming line in addition to the sarcastic/we-mean-it-maaan line. There was an enormous, low-end roar and a sure sneer but additionally black comedy. They weren’t slow-core, that offshoot style whose bands, like Codeine, Low, American Music Membership and Galaxie 500, lived on the sadder, softer facet.
Not Flipper. Their music had the identical ferocity as hardcore however moved at a glacial tempo, which by some means upped the aggro issue much more. Within the hardcore world that valued quick songs and breakneck pace over all the things else, Flipper performed gradual, sludge-rock punk. Among the hardcore children hated them; others dug the Flipper piss take.
The primary time I ever heard them play “If I Can’t Be Drunk” was in live performance, earlier than it made it to file; therefore, it was a first-time rollout in my world. Seven minutes or extra of roiling thunder whose solely lyrics are the title plus the rejoinder, “I don’t wanna be alive!” You could possibly learn that two methods: As dead-on fact, an alcoholic’s determined, demanding plea that life with out booze just isn’t price dwelling, or (subtext possibly, or after-the-fact analyzing) a denunciation of that mindset and way of life as a result of it was so clearly pathetic and reductive.
Let’s return. It is 1982 and I’m in a protracted defunct Boston membership referred to as Jumpin’ Jack Flash. The present begins with three of the 4 Flippers onstage, hammering out the chords and large beat of “Ha Ha Ha,” their, uh, hit. Nicely, their best-known track. It’s a caustic quantity concerning the folly of dwelling in suburbia, adopted by an observance of low-cost squishy motel intercourse, with the band (and viewers) laughing at everybody. However there’s nobody to sing it. Shatter notices this and calls out, “Who needs to sing?” A child who has nothing to do with the band takes the stage, does a creditable job on the refrain and wings it on the verses. About 5 minutes later — the track nonetheless pounding away — Unfastened joins his mates, takes the mic and begins the caustic first verse, declaring life’s a blast, like dwelling prior to now.
After the set, I requested Shatter about its shambolic starting. “We didn’t know the place Bruce was, and we needed to start out,” he defined, reasoning Unfastened would hear the noise from wherever he was and be a part of the social gathering.
Shatter and Unfastened, the band’s songwriters, swap guitar and bass all through the evening. “The Approach of the World,” “Sacrifice” and “Intercourse Bomb” increase from the stage, constructing from a bass riff, with lead guitarist and Vietnam vet Ted Falconi including piercing layers of noise, his again turned away from the mosh-mad punks.
The next 12 months, Springtime on the Channel membership in Boston…
Flipper had one other new bassist, Bruno DeSmartass (né Steve DeMartis), however the sound remained the identical. The songs transfer alongside at lumbering mid-tempo paces. The tempo could appear leaden, however do not be deceived. The combination is risky. Rock and roll does not boil over rather more than this; the noise reached quite a few factors of superb abandon and seething uncooked energy; it practically resulted in a full- fledged combat between the band and several other viewers members. Unfastened and Falconi challenged their antagonists within the crowd to come back up on stage and combat. Fisticuffs had been prevented, it appeared, solely as a result of the group stayed put.
Swilling and spilling beer on stage, Flipper had been pelted by plastic cups, beer, spit, firecrackers and ice cubes all evening. At one level, Unfastened struck up a refrain of “Let’s get three-year-old, three-year-old” to the tune of Olivia Newton- John’s “Bodily.” (It needs to be famous that, on this context, a barrage of particles will be an affectionate gesture, a bond that suggests everyone seems to be in the identical mess collectively. Band members being hit by this shit, nonetheless, typically differ.) After Unfastened obtained one specific nasty wad of spit close to the tip of the present, he leapt wild-eyed into the group, toting his bass, on the lookout for the wrongdoer.
Except for that discomforting bit, Flipper succeeded with their extra. The wild spirit of primal rock and roll thrived. And once they launched into “Life,” certainly a most life-affirming track, it carried actual import, the place it’s forcefully declared that life is the one factor price dwelling for. Sure, it’s a joke on the extent of Spinal Faucet (“Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight”) but it surely’s the apparent fact, too. I imply, what else ya received however life? Amidst all of the chaos, it’s a takeaway price, uh, taking away.
Fall of 2019 …
Flipper is on the Center East Downstairs in Cambridge once more. The gig started in blood and resulted in chaos. I suppose that’s no shock, although once I talked with DePace after the shambolic set, he mentioned what went down on the finish was not precisely what was deliberate for.
They opened with “The Gentle, the Sound, the Rhythm and the Noise,” which was a fairly good indicator of the place the band was headed. Subsequent, Flipper performed a truncated model of its sneering throbber “Ha Ha Ha.” The track collapsed when singer-yowler David Yow, out browsing upon the fingers and among the many our bodies of these packed on the membership’s entrance, had suffered a gash over the best eye and was bleeding. An occupational hazard, identical as old-school professional wrestling. DePace, Falconi and new bassist Rachel Thoele huddled. Yow was attended to and it was determined, after all, that the present should go on. Bloody, however unbowed.
Yow, who took over the vocals that when belonged to the long-dead Shatter and the irreparably broken/sidelined Unfastened, at all times performs his half with reckless abandon, going again to his Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard days. On this evening, he was both drunk or performed drunk rather well. (One of many guys working the present who met him pre-set mentioned it was the previous; Yow was drunk when he received there.)
Neither Yow nor anybody else in Flipper are Trump followers. Considered one of Yow’s shout-outs was a delicate “Fuck you Trump, fuck you asshole for fucking up our world.” That closed “That is the Approach of the World.” The feral Yow crawled the ground like Iggy and certainly would have reduce his chest with damaged glass had he gotten the chance. He launched Steve DePace saying “he appears to be like like Jabba the Hut however kicks ass like John Bonham.” I consider that was a praise. DePace, at the least, smiled.
That the ultimate track was “Intercourse Bomb” and Yow had left the stage by that time. The track started as Yow and Tibbie-X, the singer from the previous band Reagan Youth took the mic and started to wail She was joined on stage by a long-haired topless trans lady. Yow got here again on the finish declare one thing concerning the Butthole Surfers being actually good, however Flipper was this “artwork pressure.”
I requested DePace about Unfastened’s situation. He had extreme again issues and had been utilizing a cane on stage for years. The again issues pressured him out of the band, however DePace mentioned he was even worse now. Except for his dangerous again, DePace mentioned, “he’s fucked up within the head. He’s toast.”
Flipper in 2024?
Nonetheless exists, type of. They’d gotten bassist Mike Watt — he of the Minutemen, fiREHOSE and (the briefly reconstituted) Iggy and the Stooges — to hitch in 2019 and once more in 2022-’23. Falconi says on their final U.S. tour, he blew out tendons in his knee they usually had been going to scrap a part of that tour. However Yow and Thoele got here again on board to complete it. Then “Rachel received Covid in Florida,” Falconi says, “and our driver Neil Peterson stuffed in for her. All was good, then Yow left to do a video venture in Austin, so for the Oklahoma exhibits we had Niccolo Birkitt fill in on vocals. For the final two exhibits in Los Angeles, Yow did one and Brandon Cruz [from Dr. Know] did the second present. Nathan Calhoun [from WE Are the Asteroids] was on bass.”
For his or her next-to-last present, that they had Wyatt and Fletcher Shears from the Backyard. The ultimate gig was Might twenty ninth on the Caterwaul Competition in Minneapolis, with bassist Tony Ash from Conan Neutron & the Secret Buddies and Shannon Selberg from the Cows on vocals.
Falconi does the maths. “So, within the final ten exhibits we performed with eight completely different folks. Now we have been attempting to get the again catalog out once more, however Steve has been sitting on his ass, getting fats and feeling dangerous. I hope we are able to get the catalog out. Additionally, attempting to get the John Peel session on vinyl together with a not but launched epic model of ‘Kali.’ I believe the Peel session is without doubt one of the greatest recordings we did, with John Dougherty on bass and Bruce on vocals.”
Does Flipper nonetheless exist as a reside entity?
Possibly at festivals. “It comes right down to a matter of cash to afford these sorts of exhibits,” says Falconi. “Fly in, get a resort, rehearse and play. Fly residence. Proper now, Flipper is Steve and I. Watt is doing his personal band once more, and Yow is usually doing his band and no matter film he can do. I’ve been going via some medical points, emphysema and fibrosis. I’m nonetheless attempting to remain energetic, biking and gardening, and the final MRI confirmed no new progress of the fibrosis. However I nonetheless get winded quicker than once I was younger. I am able to journey for a couple of extra exhibits and we’ve an possibility on bass gamers however singers, that’s the query. Oh properly.”
With that, Falconi was off to go biking.
Backstage & Past Full: 45 Years Of Rock Chats & Rants is out July 1 through Trouser Press Books.
