Flip­per Cel­e­brate 30 Years of Punk with New Albums and Tour

by David Chiu

If it had not been for the immi­nent demise of CBGB, the reunion of Flip­per may have never hap­pened. For 10 years, the influ­en­tial San Francisco-based punk band was pretty much inac­tive, when it got a call in 2005 from the leg­endary New York City rock club’s owner Hilly Kristal (who passed away in 2007).

“He informed me that CB was being evicted,” drum­mer Steve DePace tells Spin­ner, “and they were mount­ing some ben­e­fit con­certs to try to fight the evic­tion. They picked and chose dif­fer­ent bands to invite to come out and play. So that was the impe­tus for us get­ting back together again. And we did and kind of car­ried on.”

Flip­per, whose found­ing mem­bers include DePace, bassist/singer Bruce Loose and gui­tarist Ted Fal­coni, are cel­e­brat­ing their 30th anniver­sary this year. The band is releas­ing not one but two records simul­ta­ne­ously on May 19. One of them, ‘Love,’ is the group’s first new stu­dio album in 16 years; the other release, ‘Fight,’ is a live record.

‘Love’ fea­tures con­tri­bu­tions from for­mer Nir­vana bassist Krist Novoselic, who joined Flip­per in 2006 to become the third musi­cian to han­dle the duties of orig­i­nal bassist/singer Will Shat­ter, who died in 1987. Work on the album hap­pened at Novoselic’s place and was pro­duced by Jack Endino, whose cred­its included Nirvana’s first album, ‘Bleach.’ “We’ve always been able to main­tain that Flip­per sound some­how,” says DePace. “It’s so inter­est­ing that dif­fer­ent bass play­ers can come to the band … and it still sounds like Flipper.”

It was announced recently that Novoselic departed from Flip­per over his con­cern about tour­ing. In his place now is Rachel Thoele, for­merly of the band Frightwig. “My opin­ion is that [Krist] just sort of real­ized that going away for long peri­ods of time wasn’t some­thing he wanted to do any­more,” says DePace. “The tour grind can wear you out and could be pretty tough.”

As part of the San Fran­cisco punk rock scene, the band devel­oped its audi­ence by play­ing at The Sound of Music, a trans­ves­tite strip club that would turn into a punk venue on the week­ends. After­ward, Flip­per started per­form­ing at famed punk club the Mabuhay Gar­dens. “We had a home­com­ing show at the Mabuhay,” says DePace. “There was a line around the block. The first time that they fed us din­ner was like a big deal. ‘Wow, we have arrived: They’re feed­ing us.’”

Flip­per devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion as, in DePace’s words, “the band you love to hate.” He con­tin­ues, “The hard­core kids really loved the may­hem at a Flip­per show, but didn’t nec­es­sar­ily love the songs. But yet a Flip­per show was always fun. It was always mad, crazy and out of con­trol, and the vibe was always great.”

The band is most famous for 1982’s ‘Sex Bomb,’ a nearly eight-minute rocker with Shat­ter singing sev­eral times the song’s sin­gle lyric: “Sex bomb baby, yeah!” DePace recalls a time when a Boston radio sta­tion invited lis­ten­ers to sub­mit their own ver­sions of the song. “They got so many sub­mis­sions,” he says, “that what started as an idea to do a two-hour show ended up being a week­end marathon.

“[’Sex Bomb’] was the ‘Stair­way to Heaven’ of our gen­er­a­tion,” DePace con­tin­ues. “That was the song that so many kids learned how to play. I read a story about Nir­vana hav­ing played that song at a house party when they were first start­ing out. It really did have an impact.”

Among many nota­bles, pro­ducer Rick Rubin and Jane’s Addic­tion bassist Eric Avery are appar­ently admir­ers of Flip­per, and R.E.M. have recorded a ver­sion of ‘Sex Bomb.’ “All I can say is that we stood out amongst the crowd,” says DePace. “And I guess that’s a good les­son for anybody…not to try to fit in, and not to try to sound like every other band.”

As of now, Flip­per are sched­uled to per­form sev­eral dates in Aus­tralia and New Zealand in June, fol­lowed by some Warped Tour appear­ances in Cal­i­for­nia. DePace says he has thought a lot about the band’s 30th anniver­sary: “It’s like, ‘Here we are. Let’s get out and play, and go do things we haven’t’ done before.’”

We can only imag­ine what that means.