Ira

Saturday, February 23, 2002

p0ps replies,

In the very late '70's, if you told someone in SF that you liked Flipper, it was like saying you liked to eat raw liver. That look of disgust was a bonus for being a "Flipperoid". Flipper played many times late at a small, former transvestite bar, "Sound of Music", in the Tenderloin. After major shows at other venues ended, I could see Flipper's last hour of white noise and chaos. Their shows had teenagers slamming smack in the corners of the filthy club and the audience was either swarming the stage or rolling on the floor on top of each other in a pile. These shows epitomized Flipper's "low life" joke.

At other venues, Flipper sets were usually ended by the club management pulling the plug, often after Ted bashed some poor kid's head with his guitar. New York saw them as a band, listened to Flipper records.

I was at more than a dozen Flipper shows in SF, but it was at their 1982 NY debut at Mudd Club that I realized that they actually had songs. After playing their songs to an unresponsive audience, they ended their show by inviting a volunteer from the audience to play the bass line of "Super Freak" for 20 minutes, while Bruce and Will screamed out lines which may or may not have been similar to the pop song which was then current. Guitarist, Ted continued the same screeching he had been doing all night, oblivious.

They were the most sarcastic, mocking, band, I know. They were the opposite of Ian and his straight edge sincerity. Flipper had played DC a few nights previous to their NY debut and they joked with me before the show about how completely out of place they felt in DC with all the straight edge skins.

Ten years later, back in San Fran, I saw, what turned out to be, the last Flipper show (IBeam). The set ended, Will Shatter continued to play bass, would not leave the stage, Steve stayed on drums, trying repeated crescendos to urge Will to stop. Will would not take a hint, became more insistent, his 3 note pattern like unrelenting torture. A few weeks later he passed out after injecting Mexican brown, fell, choked, and died, his head against the radiator.