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In August of 1979, Steve Tupper made a decision that would carry Flipper’s (along with many bands’) music to the hinterlands of America and cause their influence to spread. He was hanging out with Mike Fox, the guitarist for the Tools, discussing the difficulty for underground bands to get records out. Fox was ready to release the first Tools single (“Smoke-Filled Rooms”) , which he had recorded on his own 4-track. He had already recorded other bands’ demos, but this was his first attempt to make a record. Steve Tupper said, “I had long been thinking in terms of a better distribution network for new punk records, as well as how music, visual art and design and social change worked together, so we decided to start a label”. Thus, Subterranean Records was born.
Mike suggested Steve check out Flipper for possible inclusion on their first project, “S.F. Underground”, a four-band 7” compilation. Steve “cornered” Ted Falconi after the show about making a recording. “A big ear-to-ear grin is what I remember”. Flipper recorded a demo session in Mike’s garage, and the result was the song “Earthworm” being included in the first Subterranean release, which was actually recorded on an 8-track in a rec room studio in El Cerrito.
After the 7”comp. Flipper had three songs included on a live lp, “Live at Target”, another compilation. After that came out, the band asked Steve Tupper to work with them on a long-term basis. No contracts were signed back then; it was all done in good faith. Steve would take care of all the label type chores, and in turn have “exclusive license to the recordings”.
The first Flipper 7” record, “Love Canal” (b/w “HaHaHa”) came out February 1981 to rave reviews in the underground rags at the time. October of 1981 saw the release of the “Sex Bomb” (b/w ) single, followed by Flipper’s first full-length album in March of 1982, referred to as “Generic”, but simply titled “Album”. The rest of Flipper’s releases on Subterranean are as follows:
December 1982 – “Get Away” single.(b/w “The Old Lady Who Swallowed The Fly”)
August 1984 – “Gone Fishing” LP
October 1986 – “Public Flipper, Ltd.” Double live LP
September 1988 – “Sex Bomb Baby” LP
January 1991 – “Some Day” single
Flipper sold well for an underground group, especially “Generic”. The first 5,000 copies sold out, and Subterranean had to “scream at the pressing plant to make another 5,000 in record time to fill the demand”. After “Generic”, sales of Flipper slowly declined over time, each release selling about half of what the previous did.
Steve spent a lot of time with Will, even outside of recording. “He’d come over to the Subterranean storefront on Valencia to work on the game cards for the live album” or to hang out. “He was somewhere between total, tear-your-hair-out screwup and total genius, in some ways unpredictable and in others totally predictable”. Steve also wrote that Will was “almost always very relaxed and friendly. He seldom took offense at anything though he could also easily just sneer at a person or situation he considered contemptible for one reason or another.” Will sneered a lot, but not necessarily in anger.
“One thing though is that he did think quite deeply about what he was doing and how it fit into life in general; he just neglected to follow his own advice.”
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
RE/Search Visit With V.Vale
Met V.Vale, RE/Search Publications' publisher at the office in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco (right across from City Lights bookstore) The apartment building at Romolo Street was covered with black plastic sheeting so I wasn't quite sure it was the right place. Vale buzzed me in and met me at his door.
Right away he remarked that he was glad I looked like a librarian/writer type. He offered me a chair at his dining room table. His flat was one connected room -- living room, dining room, kitchen, all kind of hooked together. There were RE/Search's books lining the walls on bookshelves. It was cluttered yet tidy and organized.
Vale pulled out a large ledger book and had me sign it. When I told him I had no tape recorder or camera, that I just wanted to meet him and maybe interview him later, he remarked that he may not be around then. Then he laughed, but he was also serious, "you never know what could happen". We started chatting and he said, "you know what, I could tape this and send you the tape" and I was very grateful he offered to do so. He then started talking about Will, who was not his friend at all. "Will didn't like me", Vale said flatly. He went on to talk about Will's apparent discipleship to a guy named John Zerzan, an anarchist philosopher who fashioned himself into a sort of guru to Will. Will was shy and humble around Zerzan, but Vale raised Will's punk ire because Vale was a "journalist" ("Search & Destroy" fanzine). This was back when Will was in Negative Trend and was only around 19 at the time.
While Vale and I talked, we sipped some really good tea. He was such a gracious host I felt very comfortable. It was apparent he didn't really have much us for Will, either, as Will had come along in the second wave of punks (1978 or so) whereas V.Vale first saw a punk show in 1976. Will seemed to him just a middle-class kid posing as a punk yet not embracing the open-minded spirit of true punk.
While I was visiting, a couple more people showed up, including a guy from Oklahoma. By that time I felt it was time to leave, but Vale insisted I at least finish my tea.
After I left his place I walked upstairs to see the apt. (or at least the door to) where Will died. #5 or #6? I don't know. I felt a little voyeuristic yet fascinated at the same time. (Quotes attributed to V.Vale were how I remembered what he said, not actual verbatim).
Right away he remarked that he was glad I looked like a librarian/writer type. He offered me a chair at his dining room table. His flat was one connected room -- living room, dining room, kitchen, all kind of hooked together. There were RE/Search's books lining the walls on bookshelves. It was cluttered yet tidy and organized.
Vale pulled out a large ledger book and had me sign it. When I told him I had no tape recorder or camera, that I just wanted to meet him and maybe interview him later, he remarked that he may not be around then. Then he laughed, but he was also serious, "you never know what could happen". We started chatting and he said, "you know what, I could tape this and send you the tape" and I was very grateful he offered to do so. He then started talking about Will, who was not his friend at all. "Will didn't like me", Vale said flatly. He went on to talk about Will's apparent discipleship to a guy named John Zerzan, an anarchist philosopher who fashioned himself into a sort of guru to Will. Will was shy and humble around Zerzan, but Vale raised Will's punk ire because Vale was a "journalist" ("Search & Destroy" fanzine). This was back when Will was in Negative Trend and was only around 19 at the time.
While Vale and I talked, we sipped some really good tea. He was such a gracious host I felt very comfortable. It was apparent he didn't really have much us for Will, either, as Will had come along in the second wave of punks (1978 or so) whereas V.Vale first saw a punk show in 1976. Will seemed to him just a middle-class kid posing as a punk yet not embracing the open-minded spirit of true punk.
While I was visiting, a couple more people showed up, including a guy from Oklahoma. By that time I felt it was time to leave, but Vale insisted I at least finish my tea.
After I left his place I walked upstairs to see the apt. (or at least the door to) where Will died. #5 or #6? I don't know. I felt a little voyeuristic yet fascinated at the same time. (Quotes attributed to V.Vale were how I remembered what he said, not actual verbatim).
Monday, January 18, 2010
My Visit To Subterranean Records
Behind a black iron gate at the dead end of a street, in a nondescript building next to a highway, lies Subterranean Records. Steve Tupper, the owner/operator, meets me at the gate and lets me in. The warehouse itself is a controlled chaos of boxes, papers, records, dvds, cds, and old files. There is a layer of dust on almost every un-used surface, and even the cobwebs have baby cobwebs. There are flyers on the walls, and an old computer sits on Steve's desk. Next to the desk is a scanner/copier, a printer, all well-used. When Steve makes me a copy of something, he remarks at how well it turns out, surprised that the old gal works so well.
I admit that I am flustered, but Steve's demeaner is calm, retiring almost. I want him to feel at ease so don't take many notes or actually interview him. I ask some questions,but not a whole lot, as I'm more interested in what he has to show me. Everything he unearths from his filing cabinet and from under the large shelves (he had to use a flashlight to find the right stuff) is like diamonds to me. I don't think he realizes this.
He shows me the "Will" file. It includes clippings from when Will died, letters people wrote about that, checks from Will and his partner Janette that were never cashed, "I knew they didn't have the money in their account", and a business card from the woman who wrote a profile of Will after his death for the San Francisco Examiner.
Steve also shows me a file of A3I stuff. It is fairly thin, just a few flyers, photos of the band, and copies of lyrics for the unreleased ("there are test-pressings floating around") A3I album, "Ruins Of America".
Steve and I head over to the "archives" where a lot of photos are stored, and he needs the flashlight to find the right ones. He finds the one for Flipper and it turns out to be a treasure trove of pictures of the band. I want to take them with me and copy them, but don't want to ask to do that -- it's not like Steve knows me. Instead I write down the respective photographers' info.
I wonder if Steve even realizes what he has in his dusty warehouse. He holds some real history there. I wonder if the stuff will just molder forever in the warehouse, or will anything more be done with it? And I wonder where else Flipper's legacy hides -- what other basements or attics in this city and others?
I admit that I am flustered, but Steve's demeaner is calm, retiring almost. I want him to feel at ease so don't take many notes or actually interview him. I ask some questions,but not a whole lot, as I'm more interested in what he has to show me. Everything he unearths from his filing cabinet and from under the large shelves (he had to use a flashlight to find the right stuff) is like diamonds to me. I don't think he realizes this.
He shows me the "Will" file. It includes clippings from when Will died, letters people wrote about that, checks from Will and his partner Janette that were never cashed, "I knew they didn't have the money in their account", and a business card from the woman who wrote a profile of Will after his death for the San Francisco Examiner.
Steve also shows me a file of A3I stuff. It is fairly thin, just a few flyers, photos of the band, and copies of lyrics for the unreleased ("there are test-pressings floating around") A3I album, "Ruins Of America".
Steve and I head over to the "archives" where a lot of photos are stored, and he needs the flashlight to find the right ones. He finds the one for Flipper and it turns out to be a treasure trove of pictures of the band. I want to take them with me and copy them, but don't want to ask to do that -- it's not like Steve knows me. Instead I write down the respective photographers' info.
I wonder if Steve even realizes what he has in his dusty warehouse. He holds some real history there. I wonder if the stuff will just molder forever in the warehouse, or will anything more be done with it? And I wonder where else Flipper's legacy hides -- what other basements or attics in this city and others?
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Slightly Chagrined, But Not Ashamed (RE: Interview)
I was pretty much a nervous wreck when I did the interview with Flipper in 2006. In spite of the fairly mundane questions I asked, the Flipper guys were great and had worthwhile stuff to say. So I'm not ashamed of this interview at all, even if I do feel a bit of chagrin because I don't come off sounding very good. Oh well. I am not a professional. Enjoy it.
Flipper Interview From 2006
FLIPPER INTERVIEWS
Dec. 1, 2006
El Corazon, Seattle,WA
These interviews were conducted backstage at El Corazon by Verna Doherty (Me) and Carlene Heitman. Carlene also took photos during the interview. Steve (DePace) was gracious enough to sit down first, though the interview went nowhere quickly. My questions didn’t engage him and I was overly nervous. After he abruptly left due to needing to do show stuff, Ted batted the whole thing out of the park. Bruce sat down after Ted had blown my mind and blew me away some more – leaving me laughing hysterically—what a relief.
(I was having a hard time with my tape recorder and being completely nerve-wracked, so Carlene stepped in to ask Steve some stuff. Unfortunately, he had to leave shortly, so that's why it's a short interview.)
Me: This is cool of you to do.
Carlene: DePace, what is that, is that French?
Steve: It’s actually Italian.
Ted(Falconi) walks in wearing a baseball cap that says Oakland.
Steve: Here comes Oakland.
Me: Uh-oh.
Steve: Oakland’s in the house.
Me: Hiz-ouse.
Steve: These white guys want to interview you for the Oakland Tribune. What’s it like to live in Oakland?
Me: What’s it like to live in Oakland?
Steve: Uh, three drive-bys, two murders, one shooting, four stabbings.
Ted: I’ve got four churches and two gangs on my street.
Me: Well that’s cool.
Ted: From corner to corner.
Me: That’s a good mix.
Ted: Three liquor stores…
Steve: Three liquor stores, four churches, two gangs. Nice.
Me: Nice…cool.
Ted: And we’ve only had two people dead this year – yet.
Me: So far. The year’s almost over though. Carlene, this is Ted.
Carlene: Hi Ted.
Ted: Hi.
Me: She’s taking pictures. I’m trying to interview, but um…
Steve: Ask Ted a question.
Ted: The only way you can do interviews with Flipper is to get ‘em one question at a time wherever they’re at. Trying to get us all together, focused…
Me: Here, I’ll hand you the questions I wrote for you. I wrote separate questions. Or I could give you Bruce’s questions.
Steve: Yeah, ask Ted Bruce’s questions. ‘What’s it like to be the singer of Flipper?’
(laughter all around) ‘Except for everybody being pissed off at me all the time.’
That would be actually pretty cool, is to ask each of us questions for different people and have us answer in their persona.
Me: Oh, that would be – here’s the Bruce questions. (laugh) This is sounding really great on tape. This is a tape of people reading questions.
Silence.
Me: Here’s your questions (hands to Ted).
Carlene (to Steve): Did you know that Paul Hood fella, he’s from Seattle?
Steve: Paul Hood?
Carlene: And I think he was in Toiling Midgets.
Steve: Oh, Paul Hood, yeah yeah he was the drummer – no that’s Tim, Tim Moony, Paul Hood was the bass player. Bass player?
Carlene: Was he the guitar player maybe?
Steve: Guitar player?
Carlene: I was thinking he might have been in Negative Trend as well as Toiling Midgets.
( I am all stressed out so Carlene and Steve make small talk until he has to leave.)
(Later)
Me: Ted would you please answer those questions or make fun of ‘em or something?
Ted: Ok, I’ll say something. (Author’s Note: Thank God!) Uh, guitar sound. Um, I spent a lot of time building my guitar. Um, the guitar’s been re-worked. I’m lucky that the effects that I have are able to work with Krist (Novoselic)’s amps. These are his. Mine are still where I don’t need effects (laughs). They scream.
Me: That’s cool.
Ted: ‘Cuz that’s the hard part, how do you, you know, ‘Oh man I really like your sound. What kind of guitar you got?’ Well, what kind of bass do I have, what kind of pick-ups do I have, who built my pick-ups, what kind of speakers do I have. The same amp but different speakers. My piano teacher always gave me shit about keepin’ my foot on the loud pedal (laughs).
Me: (laughing) That’s funny.
Ted: ‘Cuz I like the big chord, big sound. I like how it kind of runs together a little bit rather than stopping and then you have to start all over again.
Me: Yeah, yeah, like the little reverb…that’s cool. A friend of mine, Mark (Bowen), he used to be in the Pop O Pies. He told me about sharing a practice space with you guys. And he talked about your whole amp set-up.
Ted: When we played with PIL, I had a guitar amp…PIL came up here and Cherry Sound did the sound, you know like a mega-company in LA, so they had more sound monitors and stuff on stage than most clubs have for a total front P.A. I mean, it was just exquisite. And I had like a little amplifier that didn’t have a head in it, just had the speaker, and I built a box on top part, just nailed some wood onto the side of it and put another speaker into it. Then I had this other cabinet that looked like it was built by kids in a Cub Scout group when their parents were away at the golf course (laughs)
Me: (laughs)
Ted: Then I had these horns up on top so it was just, looked like two mini p.a. stacks. Echo P.A. had little amplifiers for it. Then I ran all that off of this like a one speaker ghetto blaster, with a microphone input and a speaker output. Okay, so I just rigged that together. Then the distortion box and stuff like that. And they (PIL) were just totally blown out that the thing even worked let alone sounded like it did.(laughs). Yeah, guitar amps are fun. Okay… ‘You designed Flipper covers’ Yeah.
Me: Yeah, those are great covers – great concepts. Steve from Subterranean said you were the one that came up with the cover concepts.
Ted: Yeah I drew some pictures out and he says, ‘Yeah, they look like hell. I’ll get my guy to re-do it for you.’ The Generic (ALBUM) was pretty much like it was, American Grafishy was pretty cool.
Me: Did you do the painting on that?
Ted: Mm-hmm. Actually, I did that one, and on the back I re-did a Jasper Johns, a rip-off of his with the American flag… ‘During VietNam – musically,aesthetically’…After I got out of Viet Nam I was in college for ten years studying, doing artwork, which is full out aesthetics. Then I went to start working on a Masters in music and ran out of money, and I was teaching sculpting for a while. We got fired for organizing the students to start a student union. To apply pressure to the school for facilities and, um, before they didn’t have a voice. It was like one to one. Like one person to the President. So as a student body as a group they could enforce or sue the school for misrepresentation.
Steve (in doorway): Ted, here’s your (inaudible). You’ve got the intellectual of the band.
Me: Right on.
Steve: Just interview him to death.
(laughter)
Steve: You won’t know anything about Flipper, but you’ll know about the Theory of Relativity. You’ll know about how to build a spaceship, you’ll know about…
Me: (to Ted) How do you build a spaceship?
Ted: Where do you want to go?
Me: Like that car in Repo Man.
Ted: Then when we all got fired from that, the National Labor Relations Board fought the case for us – we won the case. People who were under long term contracts were hired back for the duration. People who were semester-to-semester – that was their last semester. Then a friend of mine that was over at Target Video and I got plugged into electric guitar. I’d never played electric guitar before. I’d been playing synthesizers and doing sound, performing sound stuff…I actually got my Master’s from Berkeley. After I started playing, got plugged in to an electric guitar – a week later I had an electric guitar, an amplifier, and was starting a band. (laughs) – 360 degrees do not look back, I’d never had that much sound at my fingertips before. Synthesizers,you run around with patch cords, it takes you 15minutes to get a sound.Then you can modulate it either with other synthesizers or … Moog, though, was one of the first synthesizers that had a keyboard. There were people building computers and
designing programs to go ‘beep, beep, beep, beep, beep’. It was a whole new thing back then.
(In the background Bruce, Krist and possibly Steve are singing, “That’s the way of the world” loudly)
Me: Yeah, when was that like 1979. 78-79?
Ted: Yeah, late ‘70s. OK, uh, ‘What did you do after Flipper broke up?’ The first time, after the break and within the 2nd version I wound up with about 8 Camaros.
Me: Wow.
Ted: And they would beat anything within a two-mile radius(laughs).
Me: (laughs)
Ted: I couldn’t afford a fast car but I could build one.
Me: And did you have eight at one time, or…
Ted: The most I had at one time was four. And one in parts. I was trying to put three of them together as a package. I was gonna sell ‘em as a package – three Camaros for ten grand.
Me:(laughs) That’s cool. That’s pretty cool.
Ted: That’s the first time. The second time I went back to school. Studying animation.
Me: Did you live in your van?T hat’s what I heard.
Ted: I lived in the van, I lived in my car, I lived in our RV. I was the odd guy out as far as everyone else had girlfriends and breakin’ up and this, that and the other thing, whatever. I had a girlfriend too, but my life was already a wreck, I didn’t need a girlfriend to wreck it any more. Although it did happen.
Me: Do you care to elaborate?
Ted: (laughs) Well, I came back from one tour and my landlord said ‘bye’. We went in to do American Grafishy and came back and my girlfriend was pissed off that I didn’t take her with us. Because all the other girlfriends went that day. I got pissed off at the band. We’re in there for three days, we’re in a lockdown – no girlfriends. Let’s just do the band thing, get it over and done with. Okay so they all bring their fuckin’ girlfriends in. John (Dougherty) and his girlfriend had a fight the first night. He’s walkin’ down the street, you know, chasing her. She’s walkin’ actually down the freeway, leaving, and this off-duty cop pulls over, searches John, finds an empty bag of speed in his bag and the next thing John’s in jail. .. And that was American Grafishy… (my girlfriend) was kind of pissed off that she was the only girl that didn’t go and started taking the electrical boxes and stuff from the hallway apart sayin’ like, ‘You’re either gonna take me or we’re gonna not have electricity”, but then the landlord walked in same time all this was happening and I got an eviction notice…
Me: Nice
Ted: I’ve lived in vans off and on for a bunch of years. I lived in the RV. It was either pay for rent or buy a p.a. So we had our own p.a. for a long time.
Me: Putting money into the band instead of into your living…
Ted: Have a girlfriend buy him a bass amplifier or something. ‘What did I do besides (Flipper), well I was building hot rods. And a lot of other illegal stuff that I don’t want to mention. (laughs)
Me: (laughs) On tape.
Ted: ‘Do I have a spiritual practice?’ Um, I took a bunch of classes in psychology that had to do with art and art-related things. Like studying mythology – the underlying story of mythology is all the same.
Carlene: Yeah.
Ted: You know, different names, different places, different cultures using that same form of social control. Once you get a whole lot of people together, I mean, somebody’s gotta take care of the garbage, somebody’s gotta take care of the food, somebody’s gotta take care of this and that and you have this whole hierarchy in society form. And then you have all these problems, ‘I want this, you have it, I’m gonna take it from you or I’m gonna kill you or I’m gonna, so you have these social walls that are set up and the whole thing with religion is (it’s) more powerful than people and so, ‘God will spite you, bring plagues on your children’ and all that kind of stuff. So it’s like social enforcement. Um, there’s the thing – ‘antogyny recapitulates philogeny’ (?- author’s note). The individual is the summation of the state of the species. So the psychological thing is as you grow you grow up into different stages in the whole evolution of society. And religion is a way of naming the events so that you can have a personal identity to these different –
Carlene: Archetypal kind of experiences.
Ted: Yeah.
Me: It gives you a kind of story for all your experiences or something.
Ted: So you know it’s like I don’t believe in a lot of religion as imagery. But the concept of what it does to social structure – you can’t deny it. It doesn’t matter what religion you say you are. They all deal with the same social events. What you should or shouldn’t do.
Me: Well, that’s about it.
Carlene (to Ted): When’s your birthday?
Ted: September… yeah, I’m a Virgo.
Me: (laughs) Right on. So I wanted to ask you about Will. I don’t know if that’s off limits to ask about, but… I was just wondering if there was anything that you felt about him that you would like people to know about him…there’s a whole chapter on him and I…
Ted: When we started Flipper I was jamming over at Target Video. And this guy showed up over at Target from Hungary, first generation. Brought his mother over here, had a big warehouse, had a broken airplane in front of the warehouse. Drove a Cadillac El Dorado. He looked like a cross between David Bowie and Sid Vicious –
Me: (laughs).
Ted: So he was like a metal worker and worked and worked and brought his mother over, worked and worked, bought a guitar, worked and worked bought more guitars, more amplifiers and he had all this shit and nobody to play with. He lived out in Fremont which is south of Oakland, about 20 miles – just far enough that you’re in no man’s land kind of thing. Anyway he ended up at Target one time. He and I started jammin’ together and it was fun and then needed a bass player – got Will. And we never did locate a permanent drummer until after the first show. And then Bruce started singing for us, Will brought Bruce in. Bruce got into a thing with his girlfriend and headed to Portland, left the band – another break-up behind a girl.
Me: (laughs)
Ted: That’s always the way it seems like. Then Ricky Williams was singing –
Carlene: Ricky Williams, he sang for Flipper?
Me: He was in the Sleepers.
Ted: And then Ricky went through two o.d.s and one night he didn’t show up so we just put the mike up there and said, “anybody wanna sing for Flipper come up and try out.” (laughs) And Bruce came back into town within that same time. And being some of the songs we’d been playing he’d already rehearsed – so he stepped up – and we’ve been with him ever since.
(Loud music ends the interview)
Me: Thanks Ted.
Bruce (reading his own questions): Intim – what?!
Me: Intimidated (laughter)
Bruce: ‘Intimidated because of your e-mail.’ What the fuck do you mean by that?
Me: The one you wrote that was really –
Bruce: What! You kept writing me ‘I wanna write a book about Flipper’. DO IT. ‘I wanna interview you guys’ Well show up at the club. Do it. What’s next? ‘Would you prefer to do this by e-mail rather than right now?’ Well, I’m doin’ it right now, ok?
‘You said in an interview that you had tried to commit suicide a couple of times (laughs) but you’re still here. Do you feel blessed or cursed?’ Fuck that shit! Blessed, that’s like fuckin’ higher ego shit – like God stuff.
‘In a column in Lookout you were blamed for –
Me: uh-oh.
Bruce: ‘abandoning Subterranean for Def America and specifically named you as the culprit. What do you think about that?/ What really happened?’ I think that whole thing was fucked up and everything really got distorted that’s what happened.
‘How are you doing physically?’ I’m doing much better than I was. I’ve been doing these wonderful anti-inflammatory shots and they’re doing me pretty good. I might last a few more years before I have to go through surgery, so…
Me: Right on.
Bruce: Right on. ‘Do you have a spiritual practice and what is it?’ Yeah, I masturbate. Ok.
‘Um, if you could do this again what would you have done differently?’ I’d probably stroke harder to the left than I would to the right.
I love all of you people out there that are beautiful and heartfelt and soul-filled and when you come to our shows I’m just like so warmed to the bottom jowls of the tip of my tiny little petrified heart. Thank you.
‘If Flipper covered a Christmas song which one would it be or would you write your own – what would it be called?’ I don’t know. Ted would get into that kind of shit but I don’t care. You know, I like “Santa Dog” by the Residents. That’s a good song.
‘Which of your songs would Tony Bennett sing?’ Turn it off for a second or pause it…he’d probably be best doing “Shine”. Cuz those are like killer lyrics and like that song could be made into a lounge song. Cool melody.
‘When you covered “Sad But True” was it a comment on your relationship with Rick Rubin or just a deep appreciation of Metallica?’ No, they told me, they said, ‘oh yeah we got together and we recorded this stuff. ‘ I said, ‘You fuckers better not put that out without me damnit or it’s not Flipper!’ So I ran down at the last minute and put my vocals on the stupid song. I’ve never even heard the thing I think I maybe heard it on a cd maybe.
Ok, ‘What is the best thing that has happened to you?’ Being born. ‘What’s the worst?’
Me: Besides this interview.
Bruce: Uh, what is the worst? Uh, Flipper.
Me: What about the – (author’s note: I think I was going to ask about his nightmare Amtrak charter bus trip, but didn’t)
Bruce: ‘What’s your biggest fear?’ Ted buttfucking me in the middle of the night when we have to share the same room.
(laughter)
‘What are you obsessed with?’ Ted buttfucking me when we have to share a room.
(Much laughter. Ted comes over to sit on Bruce!)
‘Who are you influenced by musically, artistically, spiritually, intellectually, philo-soph-i-cal-ly?’
Me: That’s supposed to be the whole band answering that.
Bruce: Oh, the whole band. You couldn’t even get a single answer out of any one of us with that one. Man, you’re really, you’re trying too hard here.
Me: I’m sorry.
Bruce: ‘Who would you want to play in Flipper’ – what!?
Me: No, who would you want to play you in a Flipper movie, if they did a Flipper movie?
Bruce: There’s obviously four of us. I’d have Steve McQueen play Will Shatter. I’d have Robert DeNiro play Ted. I’d have – hang on—Jim Belushi playing Steve and we still, what did I say for Will?
Me: Steve McQueen.
Bruce: Steve McQueen for Will. And for me? I’d choose Sting. (laughs) That’s like the worst insult I could say. Okay.
Ted: Him doing what?
Bruce: Sting to play me in a movie.
Me: A movie about you guys.’
Ted: The guy that was in that science fiction movie.
Bruce: Yeah, yeah, Sting.
‘Robert Palmer (NY Times) said that Flipper was the heart and soul of the American punk scene. Do you see yourselves that way? What do you think of that remark’ I’ve never heard that remark. I don’t know who the fuck Robert Palmer is… the heart and soul of the American punk scene? I’ll accept that. That’s what I think of that remark. I’ll accept that.
Me: Okay.
Bruce: ‘Have you made up with Steve Tupper since the legal stuff? Do you regret any part of that?’ Yeah, Steve Tupper and us are all like cool. Do I regret any part of that? Yeah, things are fucked up, we should have done things properly. We all had the best intentions but like they say good intentions don’t lead to heaven they lead to hell.
‘What label are you on?’ Jamaica and Levi’s. And I’m wearing WigWam socks. Oh, what labels are on me – oh – I get it – Subterranean and American.
‘Your press release said that you’re going to be putting out some of your old and new stuff’ Whose press release?
Me: The one that Steve sent me.
Bruce: Well that’s Steve. He could be telling you stories for all I know.
‘If you could do it all over again what would you do differently?’ Ah, come on, what kind of question is that!?
(laughter)
Me: (lauging) I really, I really wanna know.
Bruce: You can’t. You can’t. What, I’m gonna sit here and tell you 26 years worth of regrets and 26 years worth of brilliant moments and then decide between the two? Gimme a break.
(laughing)
Me to Ted: What about you?
Ted: What? Number 6…
(Bruce is laughing in the background)
Me: If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?
Ted: Geology and paleontology.
Me: Ok, great.
Dec. 1, 2006
El Corazon, Seattle,WA
These interviews were conducted backstage at El Corazon by Verna Doherty (Me) and Carlene Heitman. Carlene also took photos during the interview. Steve (DePace) was gracious enough to sit down first, though the interview went nowhere quickly. My questions didn’t engage him and I was overly nervous. After he abruptly left due to needing to do show stuff, Ted batted the whole thing out of the park. Bruce sat down after Ted had blown my mind and blew me away some more – leaving me laughing hysterically—what a relief.
(I was having a hard time with my tape recorder and being completely nerve-wracked, so Carlene stepped in to ask Steve some stuff. Unfortunately, he had to leave shortly, so that's why it's a short interview.)
Me: This is cool of you to do.
Carlene: DePace, what is that, is that French?
Steve: It’s actually Italian.
Ted(Falconi) walks in wearing a baseball cap that says Oakland.
Steve: Here comes Oakland.
Me: Uh-oh.
Steve: Oakland’s in the house.
Me: Hiz-ouse.
Steve: These white guys want to interview you for the Oakland Tribune. What’s it like to live in Oakland?
Me: What’s it like to live in Oakland?
Steve: Uh, three drive-bys, two murders, one shooting, four stabbings.
Ted: I’ve got four churches and two gangs on my street.
Me: Well that’s cool.
Ted: From corner to corner.
Me: That’s a good mix.
Ted: Three liquor stores…
Steve: Three liquor stores, four churches, two gangs. Nice.
Me: Nice…cool.
Ted: And we’ve only had two people dead this year – yet.
Me: So far. The year’s almost over though. Carlene, this is Ted.
Carlene: Hi Ted.
Ted: Hi.
Me: She’s taking pictures. I’m trying to interview, but um…
Steve: Ask Ted a question.
Ted: The only way you can do interviews with Flipper is to get ‘em one question at a time wherever they’re at. Trying to get us all together, focused…
Me: Here, I’ll hand you the questions I wrote for you. I wrote separate questions. Or I could give you Bruce’s questions.
Steve: Yeah, ask Ted Bruce’s questions. ‘What’s it like to be the singer of Flipper?’
(laughter all around) ‘Except for everybody being pissed off at me all the time.’
That would be actually pretty cool, is to ask each of us questions for different people and have us answer in their persona.
Me: Oh, that would be – here’s the Bruce questions. (laugh) This is sounding really great on tape. This is a tape of people reading questions.
Silence.
Me: Here’s your questions (hands to Ted).
Carlene (to Steve): Did you know that Paul Hood fella, he’s from Seattle?
Steve: Paul Hood?
Carlene: And I think he was in Toiling Midgets.
Steve: Oh, Paul Hood, yeah yeah he was the drummer – no that’s Tim, Tim Moony, Paul Hood was the bass player. Bass player?
Carlene: Was he the guitar player maybe?
Steve: Guitar player?
Carlene: I was thinking he might have been in Negative Trend as well as Toiling Midgets.
( I am all stressed out so Carlene and Steve make small talk until he has to leave.)
(Later)
Me: Ted would you please answer those questions or make fun of ‘em or something?
Ted: Ok, I’ll say something. (Author’s Note: Thank God!) Uh, guitar sound. Um, I spent a lot of time building my guitar. Um, the guitar’s been re-worked. I’m lucky that the effects that I have are able to work with Krist (Novoselic)’s amps. These are his. Mine are still where I don’t need effects (laughs). They scream.
Me: That’s cool.
Ted: ‘Cuz that’s the hard part, how do you, you know, ‘Oh man I really like your sound. What kind of guitar you got?’ Well, what kind of bass do I have, what kind of pick-ups do I have, who built my pick-ups, what kind of speakers do I have. The same amp but different speakers. My piano teacher always gave me shit about keepin’ my foot on the loud pedal (laughs).
Me: (laughing) That’s funny.
Ted: ‘Cuz I like the big chord, big sound. I like how it kind of runs together a little bit rather than stopping and then you have to start all over again.
Me: Yeah, yeah, like the little reverb…that’s cool. A friend of mine, Mark (Bowen), he used to be in the Pop O Pies. He told me about sharing a practice space with you guys. And he talked about your whole amp set-up.
Ted: When we played with PIL, I had a guitar amp…PIL came up here and Cherry Sound did the sound, you know like a mega-company in LA, so they had more sound monitors and stuff on stage than most clubs have for a total front P.A. I mean, it was just exquisite. And I had like a little amplifier that didn’t have a head in it, just had the speaker, and I built a box on top part, just nailed some wood onto the side of it and put another speaker into it. Then I had this other cabinet that looked like it was built by kids in a Cub Scout group when their parents were away at the golf course (laughs)
Me: (laughs)
Ted: Then I had these horns up on top so it was just, looked like two mini p.a. stacks. Echo P.A. had little amplifiers for it. Then I ran all that off of this like a one speaker ghetto blaster, with a microphone input and a speaker output. Okay, so I just rigged that together. Then the distortion box and stuff like that. And they (PIL) were just totally blown out that the thing even worked let alone sounded like it did.(laughs). Yeah, guitar amps are fun. Okay… ‘You designed Flipper covers’ Yeah.
Me: Yeah, those are great covers – great concepts. Steve from Subterranean said you were the one that came up with the cover concepts.
Ted: Yeah I drew some pictures out and he says, ‘Yeah, they look like hell. I’ll get my guy to re-do it for you.’ The Generic (ALBUM) was pretty much like it was, American Grafishy was pretty cool.
Me: Did you do the painting on that?
Ted: Mm-hmm. Actually, I did that one, and on the back I re-did a Jasper Johns, a rip-off of his with the American flag… ‘During VietNam – musically,aesthetically’…After I got out of Viet Nam I was in college for ten years studying, doing artwork, which is full out aesthetics. Then I went to start working on a Masters in music and ran out of money, and I was teaching sculpting for a while. We got fired for organizing the students to start a student union. To apply pressure to the school for facilities and, um, before they didn’t have a voice. It was like one to one. Like one person to the President. So as a student body as a group they could enforce or sue the school for misrepresentation.
Steve (in doorway): Ted, here’s your (inaudible). You’ve got the intellectual of the band.
Me: Right on.
Steve: Just interview him to death.
(laughter)
Steve: You won’t know anything about Flipper, but you’ll know about the Theory of Relativity. You’ll know about how to build a spaceship, you’ll know about…
Me: (to Ted) How do you build a spaceship?
Ted: Where do you want to go?
Me: Like that car in Repo Man.
Ted: Then when we all got fired from that, the National Labor Relations Board fought the case for us – we won the case. People who were under long term contracts were hired back for the duration. People who were semester-to-semester – that was their last semester. Then a friend of mine that was over at Target Video and I got plugged into electric guitar. I’d never played electric guitar before. I’d been playing synthesizers and doing sound, performing sound stuff…I actually got my Master’s from Berkeley. After I started playing, got plugged in to an electric guitar – a week later I had an electric guitar, an amplifier, and was starting a band. (laughs) – 360 degrees do not look back, I’d never had that much sound at my fingertips before. Synthesizers,you run around with patch cords, it takes you 15minutes to get a sound.Then you can modulate it either with other synthesizers or … Moog, though, was one of the first synthesizers that had a keyboard. There were people building computers and
designing programs to go ‘beep, beep, beep, beep, beep’. It was a whole new thing back then.
(In the background Bruce, Krist and possibly Steve are singing, “That’s the way of the world” loudly)
Me: Yeah, when was that like 1979. 78-79?
Ted: Yeah, late ‘70s. OK, uh, ‘What did you do after Flipper broke up?’ The first time, after the break and within the 2nd version I wound up with about 8 Camaros.
Me: Wow.
Ted: And they would beat anything within a two-mile radius(laughs).
Me: (laughs)
Ted: I couldn’t afford a fast car but I could build one.
Me: And did you have eight at one time, or…
Ted: The most I had at one time was four. And one in parts. I was trying to put three of them together as a package. I was gonna sell ‘em as a package – three Camaros for ten grand.
Me:(laughs) That’s cool. That’s pretty cool.
Ted: That’s the first time. The second time I went back to school. Studying animation.
Me: Did you live in your van?T hat’s what I heard.
Ted: I lived in the van, I lived in my car, I lived in our RV. I was the odd guy out as far as everyone else had girlfriends and breakin’ up and this, that and the other thing, whatever. I had a girlfriend too, but my life was already a wreck, I didn’t need a girlfriend to wreck it any more. Although it did happen.
Me: Do you care to elaborate?
Ted: (laughs) Well, I came back from one tour and my landlord said ‘bye’. We went in to do American Grafishy and came back and my girlfriend was pissed off that I didn’t take her with us. Because all the other girlfriends went that day. I got pissed off at the band. We’re in there for three days, we’re in a lockdown – no girlfriends. Let’s just do the band thing, get it over and done with. Okay so they all bring their fuckin’ girlfriends in. John (Dougherty) and his girlfriend had a fight the first night. He’s walkin’ down the street, you know, chasing her. She’s walkin’ actually down the freeway, leaving, and this off-duty cop pulls over, searches John, finds an empty bag of speed in his bag and the next thing John’s in jail. .. And that was American Grafishy… (my girlfriend) was kind of pissed off that she was the only girl that didn’t go and started taking the electrical boxes and stuff from the hallway apart sayin’ like, ‘You’re either gonna take me or we’re gonna not have electricity”, but then the landlord walked in same time all this was happening and I got an eviction notice…
Me: Nice
Ted: I’ve lived in vans off and on for a bunch of years. I lived in the RV. It was either pay for rent or buy a p.a. So we had our own p.a. for a long time.
Me: Putting money into the band instead of into your living…
Ted: Have a girlfriend buy him a bass amplifier or something. ‘What did I do besides (Flipper), well I was building hot rods. And a lot of other illegal stuff that I don’t want to mention. (laughs)
Me: (laughs) On tape.
Ted: ‘Do I have a spiritual practice?’ Um, I took a bunch of classes in psychology that had to do with art and art-related things. Like studying mythology – the underlying story of mythology is all the same.
Carlene: Yeah.
Ted: You know, different names, different places, different cultures using that same form of social control. Once you get a whole lot of people together, I mean, somebody’s gotta take care of the garbage, somebody’s gotta take care of the food, somebody’s gotta take care of this and that and you have this whole hierarchy in society form. And then you have all these problems, ‘I want this, you have it, I’m gonna take it from you or I’m gonna kill you or I’m gonna, so you have these social walls that are set up and the whole thing with religion is (it’s) more powerful than people and so, ‘God will spite you, bring plagues on your children’ and all that kind of stuff. So it’s like social enforcement. Um, there’s the thing – ‘antogyny recapitulates philogeny’ (?- author’s note). The individual is the summation of the state of the species. So the psychological thing is as you grow you grow up into different stages in the whole evolution of society. And religion is a way of naming the events so that you can have a personal identity to these different –
Carlene: Archetypal kind of experiences.
Ted: Yeah.
Me: It gives you a kind of story for all your experiences or something.
Ted: So you know it’s like I don’t believe in a lot of religion as imagery. But the concept of what it does to social structure – you can’t deny it. It doesn’t matter what religion you say you are. They all deal with the same social events. What you should or shouldn’t do.
Me: Well, that’s about it.
Carlene (to Ted): When’s your birthday?
Ted: September… yeah, I’m a Virgo.
Me: (laughs) Right on. So I wanted to ask you about Will. I don’t know if that’s off limits to ask about, but… I was just wondering if there was anything that you felt about him that you would like people to know about him…there’s a whole chapter on him and I…
Ted: When we started Flipper I was jamming over at Target Video. And this guy showed up over at Target from Hungary, first generation. Brought his mother over here, had a big warehouse, had a broken airplane in front of the warehouse. Drove a Cadillac El Dorado. He looked like a cross between David Bowie and Sid Vicious –
Me: (laughs).
Ted: So he was like a metal worker and worked and worked and brought his mother over, worked and worked, bought a guitar, worked and worked bought more guitars, more amplifiers and he had all this shit and nobody to play with. He lived out in Fremont which is south of Oakland, about 20 miles – just far enough that you’re in no man’s land kind of thing. Anyway he ended up at Target one time. He and I started jammin’ together and it was fun and then needed a bass player – got Will. And we never did locate a permanent drummer until after the first show. And then Bruce started singing for us, Will brought Bruce in. Bruce got into a thing with his girlfriend and headed to Portland, left the band – another break-up behind a girl.
Me: (laughs)
Ted: That’s always the way it seems like. Then Ricky Williams was singing –
Carlene: Ricky Williams, he sang for Flipper?
Me: He was in the Sleepers.
Ted: And then Ricky went through two o.d.s and one night he didn’t show up so we just put the mike up there and said, “anybody wanna sing for Flipper come up and try out.” (laughs) And Bruce came back into town within that same time. And being some of the songs we’d been playing he’d already rehearsed – so he stepped up – and we’ve been with him ever since.
(Loud music ends the interview)
Me: Thanks Ted.
Bruce (reading his own questions): Intim – what?!
Me: Intimidated (laughter)
Bruce: ‘Intimidated because of your e-mail.’ What the fuck do you mean by that?
Me: The one you wrote that was really –
Bruce: What! You kept writing me ‘I wanna write a book about Flipper’. DO IT. ‘I wanna interview you guys’ Well show up at the club. Do it. What’s next? ‘Would you prefer to do this by e-mail rather than right now?’ Well, I’m doin’ it right now, ok?
‘You said in an interview that you had tried to commit suicide a couple of times (laughs) but you’re still here. Do you feel blessed or cursed?’ Fuck that shit! Blessed, that’s like fuckin’ higher ego shit – like God stuff.
‘In a column in Lookout you were blamed for –
Me: uh-oh.
Bruce: ‘abandoning Subterranean for Def America and specifically named you as the culprit. What do you think about that?/ What really happened?’ I think that whole thing was fucked up and everything really got distorted that’s what happened.
‘How are you doing physically?’ I’m doing much better than I was. I’ve been doing these wonderful anti-inflammatory shots and they’re doing me pretty good. I might last a few more years before I have to go through surgery, so…
Me: Right on.
Bruce: Right on. ‘Do you have a spiritual practice and what is it?’ Yeah, I masturbate. Ok.
‘Um, if you could do this again what would you have done differently?’ I’d probably stroke harder to the left than I would to the right.
I love all of you people out there that are beautiful and heartfelt and soul-filled and when you come to our shows I’m just like so warmed to the bottom jowls of the tip of my tiny little petrified heart. Thank you.
‘If Flipper covered a Christmas song which one would it be or would you write your own – what would it be called?’ I don’t know. Ted would get into that kind of shit but I don’t care. You know, I like “Santa Dog” by the Residents. That’s a good song.
‘Which of your songs would Tony Bennett sing?’ Turn it off for a second or pause it…he’d probably be best doing “Shine”. Cuz those are like killer lyrics and like that song could be made into a lounge song. Cool melody.
‘When you covered “Sad But True” was it a comment on your relationship with Rick Rubin or just a deep appreciation of Metallica?’ No, they told me, they said, ‘oh yeah we got together and we recorded this stuff. ‘ I said, ‘You fuckers better not put that out without me damnit or it’s not Flipper!’ So I ran down at the last minute and put my vocals on the stupid song. I’ve never even heard the thing I think I maybe heard it on a cd maybe.
Ok, ‘What is the best thing that has happened to you?’ Being born. ‘What’s the worst?’
Me: Besides this interview.
Bruce: Uh, what is the worst? Uh, Flipper.
Me: What about the – (author’s note: I think I was going to ask about his nightmare Amtrak charter bus trip, but didn’t)
Bruce: ‘What’s your biggest fear?’ Ted buttfucking me in the middle of the night when we have to share the same room.
(laughter)
‘What are you obsessed with?’ Ted buttfucking me when we have to share a room.
(Much laughter. Ted comes over to sit on Bruce!)
‘Who are you influenced by musically, artistically, spiritually, intellectually, philo-soph-i-cal-ly?’
Me: That’s supposed to be the whole band answering that.
Bruce: Oh, the whole band. You couldn’t even get a single answer out of any one of us with that one. Man, you’re really, you’re trying too hard here.
Me: I’m sorry.
Bruce: ‘Who would you want to play in Flipper’ – what!?
Me: No, who would you want to play you in a Flipper movie, if they did a Flipper movie?
Bruce: There’s obviously four of us. I’d have Steve McQueen play Will Shatter. I’d have Robert DeNiro play Ted. I’d have – hang on—Jim Belushi playing Steve and we still, what did I say for Will?
Me: Steve McQueen.
Bruce: Steve McQueen for Will. And for me? I’d choose Sting. (laughs) That’s like the worst insult I could say. Okay.
Ted: Him doing what?
Bruce: Sting to play me in a movie.
Me: A movie about you guys.’
Ted: The guy that was in that science fiction movie.
Bruce: Yeah, yeah, Sting.
‘Robert Palmer (NY Times) said that Flipper was the heart and soul of the American punk scene. Do you see yourselves that way? What do you think of that remark’ I’ve never heard that remark. I don’t know who the fuck Robert Palmer is… the heart and soul of the American punk scene? I’ll accept that. That’s what I think of that remark. I’ll accept that.
Me: Okay.
Bruce: ‘Have you made up with Steve Tupper since the legal stuff? Do you regret any part of that?’ Yeah, Steve Tupper and us are all like cool. Do I regret any part of that? Yeah, things are fucked up, we should have done things properly. We all had the best intentions but like they say good intentions don’t lead to heaven they lead to hell.
‘What label are you on?’ Jamaica and Levi’s. And I’m wearing WigWam socks. Oh, what labels are on me – oh – I get it – Subterranean and American.
‘Your press release said that you’re going to be putting out some of your old and new stuff’ Whose press release?
Me: The one that Steve sent me.
Bruce: Well that’s Steve. He could be telling you stories for all I know.
‘If you could do it all over again what would you do differently?’ Ah, come on, what kind of question is that!?
(laughter)
Me: (lauging) I really, I really wanna know.
Bruce: You can’t. You can’t. What, I’m gonna sit here and tell you 26 years worth of regrets and 26 years worth of brilliant moments and then decide between the two? Gimme a break.
(laughing)
Me to Ted: What about you?
Ted: What? Number 6…
(Bruce is laughing in the background)
Me: If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?
Ted: Geology and paleontology.
Me: Ok, great.
Friday, November 27, 2009
"Gone Fishin'" Out Now On CD! (A review of sorts)
“Gone Fishin’” (Subterranean, August of ’84) boasted another clever cover concept by Ted. This one featured cut-outs of the tour van – “Flipper Suffered For Their Music, Now It’s Your Turn” – spray-painted on the side, members of Flipper (my friend Bridget said, ‘Bruce looks kind of hot in that picture’), Steve’s drum kit, a guitar case, amp and amp head (w/cat). Though not a live album, some of the songs have a live feel, others sound slicker (i.e., “First The Heart”).
Both derided and praised as Flipper’s arty second album, there are many gems. One of my favorites, “Survivors Of The Plague” (Lyrics: Will, Music: Bruce) is a bombast of sound, triumphant and moving:
“Oh we are a mirror/ a distant mirror/when you look at us you will see/
all your hopes/ all your dreams/crushed upon the sea.”
The album opens with what could be Flipper’s Theme Song, “The Lights, The Sound, The Rhythm, The Noise” (Lyrics: Bruce, Music: Will):
“Hit my body like a thousand dances, everyone knows/ Where nothing is something”.
Next is a somewhat of a departure with “First The Heart” (Lyrics:Jeri Wilkinson, Music: Bruce and Steve). Featuring Will on vocals and great sax work by Kirk “Charles” Height, “First The Heart” is as poetic as it is emotive. It is similar to “In Your Arms” and “Shine” in that way.
“Hits outnumber, ten to nine/Missing/
A ravaged target”.
“In Life My Friends” (Lyrics: adapted by Bruce from a W.S. Harris poem , Music: Ted) gives rise to what some believe is Flipper’s credo:
“…so don’t look for future paradise/ take heaven now is my advice”
“Survivors…” is the outro of side one.
Side two finds “Sacrifice” (Lyrics and Music: Will):
“So the nation will live/ So the people will remain as cattle
They demand a sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice” is not just an anti-war song, but is an incisive look at how nationalism and hegemony defines and controls people. It is just as prescient today as it was twenty-odd years ago, perhaps even moreso.
“Talk’s Cheap” (Lyrics:Will, Music: Bruce) is next, followed by “You Nought Me”(Lyrics:Bruce, Music: Will) is as nihilistic as Flipper gets:
“I have nothing, sweet nothing how about you…
So you can go fuck or suck your thumb/ Or take more drugs and
Play ‘On The Run’”
“Gone Fishin’” ends with “One By One” (Lyrics: Will, Music: Ted):
“All prisons/Every bank/ Shall cease to exist”
The “Gone Fishin’” album must have been difficult for some hardcore punks to understand let alone enjoy. I love it as an example of how mind-and-heart-expanding a record can be. There are moments of brilliance in the songwriting and execution, moments of pure joy – the very essence of life. Pain and beauty combined in an intoxicating mixture that transcends the ordinary-joe-hardcore. Creatively mesmerizing, “Gone Fishin’” stands out, a blood red ruby in the rough.
Both derided and praised as Flipper’s arty second album, there are many gems. One of my favorites, “Survivors Of The Plague” (Lyrics: Will, Music: Bruce) is a bombast of sound, triumphant and moving:
“Oh we are a mirror/ a distant mirror/when you look at us you will see/
all your hopes/ all your dreams/crushed upon the sea.”
The album opens with what could be Flipper’s Theme Song, “The Lights, The Sound, The Rhythm, The Noise” (Lyrics: Bruce, Music: Will):
“Hit my body like a thousand dances, everyone knows/ Where nothing is something”.
Next is a somewhat of a departure with “First The Heart” (Lyrics:Jeri Wilkinson, Music: Bruce and Steve). Featuring Will on vocals and great sax work by Kirk “Charles” Height, “First The Heart” is as poetic as it is emotive. It is similar to “In Your Arms” and “Shine” in that way.
“Hits outnumber, ten to nine/Missing/
A ravaged target”.
“In Life My Friends” (Lyrics: adapted by Bruce from a W.S. Harris poem , Music: Ted) gives rise to what some believe is Flipper’s credo:
“…so don’t look for future paradise/ take heaven now is my advice”
“Survivors…” is the outro of side one.
Side two finds “Sacrifice” (Lyrics and Music: Will):
“So the nation will live/ So the people will remain as cattle
They demand a sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice” is not just an anti-war song, but is an incisive look at how nationalism and hegemony defines and controls people. It is just as prescient today as it was twenty-odd years ago, perhaps even moreso.
“Talk’s Cheap” (Lyrics:Will, Music: Bruce) is next, followed by “You Nought Me”(Lyrics:Bruce, Music: Will) is as nihilistic as Flipper gets:
“I have nothing, sweet nothing how about you…
So you can go fuck or suck your thumb/ Or take more drugs and
Play ‘On The Run’”
“Gone Fishin’” ends with “One By One” (Lyrics: Will, Music: Ted):
“All prisons/Every bank/ Shall cease to exist”
The “Gone Fishin’” album must have been difficult for some hardcore punks to understand let alone enjoy. I love it as an example of how mind-and-heart-expanding a record can be. There are moments of brilliance in the songwriting and execution, moments of pure joy – the very essence of life. Pain and beauty combined in an intoxicating mixture that transcends the ordinary-joe-hardcore. Creatively mesmerizing, “Gone Fishin’” stands out, a blood red ruby in the rough.
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.
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.
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