Flipper Live -- Sept. 5, 2008 and Ruminations

It is September 5th,2008, and Flipper nears the conclusion of another raw, powerful set. Tree tall and bearded, Krist Novoselic calls for another song, please. He pounds out the bass line to “Shed No Tears”. The rest of the Flipper fish bite, and Krist smiles like he’s won the grand prize, and having the time of his life.
The guy has played stadiums. He, with his Nirvana co-horts, blew up “Saturday Night Live”. But this little Obama benefit, sparse, yet fiercely attended, seems to beat what’s gone before. Because he’s playing with the guys he probably never thought he’d play with, and it’s really, really good.
As his brethren begin to leave the battlefield, Krist stands alone with his bass still on. He slings it off his neck and tries to hang it up mid-stage. When it almost crashes down he is not dissuaded. He will not be defeated by gravity. He’s making his own physical laws – his own gravity. He moves to the side of the stage and lobs his bass up onto a monitor above his head. Feedback city. He lets the drone go on – a heaviness that makes me feel lighter than air – a sensual, sexy moan of musical muscle.
San Francisco, 1979. The toddler years of punk – and the enfant terrible is pissed. After it attempted suicide in the womb, yet was forced to live on, it decided to mutate into forms never heard before, well, in quite this way. Take a bit of the Velvet Underground, some Gore Vidal, Wilhelm Reich and the tetched stylings of a Vietnam Vet on fire with electricity. Add in a lot of beer, some speed and heroin, and smart-ass, mouthy monkey-business, and ta-da, you have Flipper.

Legend has it, and you know how legends are grown from kits housing acid-tested sea creatures, that original Flipper singer Ricky Williams named all his pets Flipper because he was too stoned to remember their names, so by extension, his band became Flipper. Whether you believe that or the Thalidomide baby story (babies born with flippers from poisoned wombs – how punk!) , it’s up to you. But that is the story the Flipper guys and the liberal-fascist-clueless-devout media have perpetuated since I was in 7th Grade.
In 1979 (or was it ’78, now I’m not sure) I saw my first concert. I was an odd, skinny, bespectacled 13yr old staring raptly at the blinding white satin crotches of the Bee Gees. A few years later I found myself similarly staring at the bulge in Black Flag singer Henry Rollins’ shorts (there was no way to avoid it -- it was huge and it was everywhere). In just three years I had gone from a dweeby kid to a dweeby Punk Rocker, and life would never be the same. In that three year time I had first heard Flipper. The first song I ever heard was “Ha, Ha, Ha”. It is possible that my friends in Mr. Epp & The Calculations (my favorite local band) foisted the single on me. There was no internet back then – it was all singles and mix tapes changing hands. An underground railroad of music was happening, and I caught the express.
Flipper was smart. Flipper was different. Flipper was fun. Flipper had a cool logo that even the drunkest fan could scrawl – a jagged-toothed fish. Unlike the Dead Kennedys, who’s very name spoke volumes politically, Flipper wasn’t a political band, per se. But in the context of a scene where the fastest, thrashiest horse won, Flipper not only ran a different kind of race (heavier, often slower), it made its own track and had its own rules. Flipper’s refusal to play by the punk rules made it loved or hated, depending on who you talked to. Their whole existence was a political act.