At Axis the Germs’ 55-minute, 22-song buzzsaw blur of a set was a constant crash-and-burn, with West all over the stage. Smear kept a fierce, maniacal grin on his face, Doom a gentler one. True to Crash form, the lyrics were all but indecipherable. Near they end, they raised a champagne birthday toast to drummer Don Bolles. Nobody asked his age.
BACK IN THE DAY: Nasty, caustic, sarcastic, and messed-up were all part of the Flipper ideal |
Formed in 1979, the San Francisco quartet Flipper were both part of the loud, fast hardcore scene and almost completely its antithesis. Their songs — “Sex Bomb,” “Ha Ha Ha,” “Way of the World” — were one- or two-chord constructions that would trudge on and on at glacial speed, with both guitar and bass darkly distorted to create a fat rumbling sound. And they just loved repetition. The lyrics to the seven-plus minute “Sex Bomb”: “She’s a sex bomb, my baby, yeah.” Nasty, caustic, sarcastic, and messed-up were all part of the Flipper ideal. Or as founding drummer Steve DePace puts it over the phone from the Bay Area, there was “a lot of irony and contradiction.” Like the Germs, Flipper nailed it with their classic debut, 1982’s Album: Generic Flipper. But they stumbled on until Shatter’s heroin overdose, breaking up in ’87 only to reunite briefly in ’93 at the behest of Rick Rubin to record the subpar American Gravishy for Rubin’s American Recordings label.“We had the initial run, a real magical time,” DePace remembers. He calls the band’s current incarnation, with founding guitarist Ted Falconi and founding bassist/singer Bruce Loose, “the third evolution. Good or bad, time will tell. We feel the opportunity has presented itself: there’s still no one out there like Flipper.”
True enough. Flipper were a shambolic, distorted, slow-moving train wreck, a seeming intentional affront to the audience. “It just developed,” says Loose of early Flipper. “It evolved; I had this little bass rig with three different amps running different signals. An incredible sound. Punk-rocky and anti-that. A very different groove from what anyone else had. Also, Will had more advanced philosophical sarcasm; I had a kid’s.”
DePace concurs: “Bruce and Will were one heart and soul together.” So why return without Shatter? “Because I’m allowing it to, if we’re gonna be that bold,” says Loose. “I don’t know . . . because it’s fun? Without me, it’s not Flipper. There’s nobody to carry on the spirit Will and I carried.”
And is he concerned about the effect reuniting will have on the Flipper legacy? “I really don’t know. But we do put on a good show.”
FLIPPER + BLACKTAIL + MURDER MILE | Middle East downstairs, 480 Mass Ave, Cambridge | August 25 | 617.864.EAST
On the Web
The Germs: //www.germsreturn.com/
The Adolescents: //www.theadolescents.net/
