In Praise Of The Water Label, Part 2: FLIPPER!

The Water label reissued the crucial 1982 - 1987 Flipper catalogue on compact disc in the year 2009, in tandem w/ vinyl reissues on its sister/brother label, 4 Men With Beards. For myself, this was a big deal for several reasons. Firstly, I had been a huge fan of the band since the year 1986 when I first purchased their "Sex Bomb" 7" from Greville Records (thanks, Steve) - and their essential albums, Album Generic Flipper, Gone Fishin', Public Flipper Ltd. and the singles comp', Sex Bomb Baby, throughout 1987 - their grimy punk sludge being the soundtrack to my 15 year-old brain; secondly, I was then looking after both Water and 4 Men With Beards w/ their distribution needs Down Under; and thirdly, the band was touring Australia that year for the very first time, and I licensed their two recently-released albums, Love and Fight, as a special Oz tour 2CD pack for the local market (more on that later).

Flipper's catalogue and what had happened to it in the intervening years was something not without controversy. When grunge hit big in the early '90s and their name was being dropped by the biggest group on earth (take a wild guess), the band, so the story goes, broke into the offices of their label, the great Subterranean Records, and stole the masters, then selling (or licensing) them out to cashed-up Flipper megafan Rick Rubin to reissue on his Def American Records label. Rick even issued a NEW Flipper album, American Grafishy, on his label, which I studiously avoided for years, though have since come around to as a pretty solid slice of Flipper gunk which doesn't sully their rep as I had expected. By 2009, the band's catalogue had been AWOL for at least a good decade, so them being back in print c/o some quality labels like Water and 4MWB (though some will tell you the latter are NOT quality) was a big deal.

I never re-bought the LPs, coz I didn't need to, though graciously accepted promos of the CDs (they were very generous in quantities, given the tour), and I still have them right here. Nice packaging with extensive liner notes by suitable heads like Hank Rollins, King Buzzo and Kris Novoselic, lyrics, flyers, photos and the CDs sound fine to these tin ears. I was under the impression I would sell a LOT of these and over-ordered them for the local market, I guess momentarily forgetting that my excitement over their existence was ignoring their status as cult figures from a bygone age.

My fave studio album from the band remains, perhaps surprisingly, Gone Fishin'. The debut is, of course, the classic and there is a solid argument that it is their best, though the one I reach for most often is the 1984 follow-up. The guitars are turned down and it's very much based around the bass and drums, w/ the vocals being more upfront than the debut (and added xylophone and more sax), and it's less noise-punk and more, uh, post-punk, I guess, but I'm tying myself up in knots here. My favourite album by Flipper for many years was in fact their Public Flipper Ltd. 2LP live (1980 - 1985) collection, much of which was put together by a young Gregg Turkington (AKA Neil Hamburger). Gregg lived in Melbourne for about a year in the late '90s, and I befriended him at the time (this probably sounds like a horrendous slice of namedropping, but he was just a guy on the scene, a friend of friends, etc.). He came around to our place for dinner a few times and I would chew his ears off w/ a million questions about his background (I have a list of his top 10 fave albums here somewhere, which I should put up when located). As a teen, he was obsessed w/ Flipper and would go to any show of theirs he could, taping many of them, and also befriending Steve Tupper of Subterranean. The live set has some of their best songs which were never featured on any of the studio albums, such as"Southern California", "We Don't Understand", "If I Can't Be Drunk", "The Wheel" and "Flipper Blues". Really, I think that if you want a taste of what Flipper was all about, these live documents tell the story better than anything else.

So... the tour happened. I got to hang w/ the band a bit, go to dinner w/ them and hang out at all the Melbourne shows. At that stage, the band consisted of Ted Falconi, Steve DePace, Bruce Loose and Rachel Thoele (filling in for Will Shatter; she'd been in Frightwig, Mudwimin et al). I dealt mostly w/ Steve, who was the friendliest and most switched on. Ted seemed kinda cosmic but nice, Bruce a bit haggard and scary, and Rachel did her own thing. I asked Steve what the band's influences were, and I still remember his answer, because it wasn't what I expected: the Stooges, Led Zeppelin and Leonard Cohen. That was it, and it makes perfect sense.

I organised an instore signing for the group at Missing Link, my old place of work, and I finally had my Artie Fufkin moment. I hope I'm not opening up old wounds here, as I'm still friends w/ ALL parties involved, but it wound up being a disaster. Some of the Missing Link staff members were NOT a fan of the tour promoter and really weren't keen on helping out, so there was zero publicity and next to zero co-operation on the ground, and... absolutely no one turned up. Literally no one. After half an hour of hanging around and asking them to kick my ass, I abandoned my post and told the gents to go home.

The shows were fun and reasonably attended, and about two months afterwards, the promoter rang me to say he wanted to bring them out AGAIN the next year. I told him I thought that would be a mistake, as most attendees were really just ticking a box of having seen the legendary Flipper and wouldn't be back for more if they returned (and the 2CD I'd released had sold sweet FA and I'd had a few issues w/ the promoter myself), and they haven't been back. Since then, the band has had David Yow and, more recently, Mike Watt, in the fold, and I don't really know what to think about any of it. Coz I love Flipper, Yow and Watt and yet none of it excites me much. Said promoter was going to bring out the Watt-led version of the band just recently, though it seems to've fallen apart. Of course, I woulda been there, front and centre - and you know it.

Anyway, from what I can tell, the band's best recordings from the 1980s remain largely out of print at this stage once again. Looking up the catalogue of a European distributor I use for the shop, Public Flipper Ltd. appears to be nominally still 'available' to order, but that's it. I imagine they'd be quite demanding in what they want for their pound of flesh, so I wouldn't go within a country mile of such a deal, but I'm hoping someone else does, whether it's Matador (who just got the Buttholes out again) or the Numero Group or Light In The Attic or whoever. Just get 'em out there. Flipper melted my brain like few others, liberating my mind from lockstep hardcore so my ass could follow. Bless 'em.