Caught in the Crossfire

Hipsters, prepare to squirm! The year, 1982, and, most likely after reading about them in Sounds, I picked up Flipper‘s “Love Canal/Ha Ha Ha” 7″ from Subway Records in Brighton. I dug the band name, and the cover looked sick. I wanted in!

But then I got home, and after a couple of spins I was just not connecting at all with the twisted discordant grind. I took the 7″ around to my friend Martin to see what he thought. His eclectic musical taste was gaining at pace, as was his appetite for opiates. Of course he locked right in to Flipper’s groove. I told him to keep the 7″, and returned to more accessible sounds.

Domino Records have reissued a bunch of Flipper’s early releases, with “Generic“, their ’82 debut LP being the obvious starting point, and easily their most crucial release. And, funnily enough, Krist Novoselic, in his chipper liner notes, recalls a similar non-plussed experience when he first heard Flipper, on a beat up tape lent by his buddy Buzz Osbourne … but closes with the advice that “if it does not grab you straight away, give it a few spins and it could very well creep up on you and knock you off your feet”. It certainly worked for me. As time past by I grew to appreciate what Flipper was about, rocking out to their explosive and challenging psychotic jams that had their sights set firmly on blowing our tiny minds and beating us in to submission, eventually.

Flipper Rules… Ok? Ok!!

Pete Craven.