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Flipper (band)

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Flipper was an influential noise band from San Francisco, California, forming in 1979 from the ruins of punk bands SSD, Sleepers, and Negative Trend, and continuing in often erratic fashion until the early 1990s.

Contents

Original members

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 1985 followup Gone Fishin'.

Flipper's music was very shambolic and noisy, and oft 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.)

Grunge bands would later admit to being influenced by Flipper, including Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, who wore the band's t-shirt in prominent TV appearances and photos, and The Melvins who in 1992 covered the song "Sacrifice" on their album Lysol and released a 5" vinyl single of two Flipper covers ("Love Canal"/"Someday").

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.

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 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 vinyl only greatest hits collection entitled "Sex Bomb Baby" released in the spring of 1988.

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 and stole the band's master tapes from Subterranean's warehouse. He and DePace sold them to 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 on American Recordings 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.

The band continued playing from 1990 to 1995, pursuing a more straighforward 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, resurfaced with a one off gig at Berkeley's 924 Gilman Street space as "Not Flipper". He is not making music with either the reclusive Ted Falconi or drummer Steve DePace. 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, reunited to support CBGB on August 26 and 28, 2005. Singer Bruce Loose appeared on stage with a cane and heart monitors.

Discography

Trivia

External links














 





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