Oh no. They’re coming! (Poster courtesy of Sarah Faulkner)
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THE ORIGINAL BLOG ENTRY FROM 2011 FOLLOWS BELOW
Flipper, San Francisco’s sludge rock contrarian refuseniks, come to town one month after that Beat/R.E.M. show from April of 1983. An evening of debauchery and over-indulgence ensues for myself and crew of people on that night, with Flipper — both as persons and performers — interweaving with us at various points of our night (and their lining up to see Return of the Jedi, too).
Tune in for missing persons, dangerous fire escapes, hostile groupies, and massed stimulant consumption.
Next On Stage –> June was bustin’ out all over when The Velvet Underground’s John Cale came to Fryfogle’s and played an intense, extraordinary set.
It was particularly extraordinary for me that I finally got to see him at this point in time, not only because I was way deep in Velvets-mania in the early 80s — with all the original Velvets albums finally being widely and easily available — but because I ended up sitting cross-legged on the stage about three feet in front of Cale as he performed.
Tune in next time for a disciplined bladder, a set list of my dreams, and being able to see the pores on John Cale’s face.
Click below to read the original 2011 blog entry.
(EP 26, no.18) John Cale: I Keep A Close Watch, Fryfolge’s, London, Ontario, Canada, Monday June 13, 1983
THE ORIGINAL BLOG ENTRY FROM 2011
You know, I never much cared for Flipper. I’m not talking about TV’s slimy, lovable SuperDolphin from the ‘60s but instead the confrontational, contrarian refuseniks that rose from San Francisco’s late ‘70s punk scene.
I liked — and still like — their “Sex Bomb” 45: catchy, irritating, and really, really funny in all the right ways. Similarly, I also don’t mind its predecessor, “Ha Ha Ha,” with both slabs of clangorous cynical angst regularly appearing as toe tappin’ party tunes back in the day, most easily enjoyed in conjunction with a massively inebriated group of revellers.
That was about it for me, though. Neither their debut album from 1982, Generic Flipper, nor the group’s overall approach of hardcore-played-at-16 rpm — widely, and accurately, praised as an influence on and forerunner to the sludgier, pre-commercial-landslide grunge acts (see: Melvins, TAD, early Soundgarden, etc. as well as Nirvana — Kurt was oft photographed wearing his Flipper t-shirt) — gained much aesthetic traction with yours truly.
Flipper, Generic Flipper (1982)
Still, in my alternaworld, Generic Flipper was a Popular Favourite among many I was hanging with and it was a given that most would be making the scene at Fryfogle’s that night (I’ll be writing more about Frys in my next installment, on John Cale). Since Flipper’s lumbering noise-blitz is possibly best appreciated when twinned with that aforementioned inebriation, it made sense for all of us to rise to the occasion and completely overdo the party spirit. This turned out to be one long night of excess that started early, ended late, and found Flipper — either as a performing unit or as persons — intersecting with us over the course of the evening.
Things got off to an early, disorderly start at Thing 1 and 2’s apartment. I briefly mentioned these two in my Gang of Four piece, she working at a downtown clothing store and moonlighting as a part-time punk stripper while he was a college student. We were never close or chums but they had a basement apartment underneath a business that closed on evenings and weekends, making their pad a drop-in centre of sorts, with the added bonus of not having to worry about noise as there were no nabes to disrupt.
I showed up with MZ and Lady Bump for some pre-gig partying although MZ says she has only a vague recollection of this first part of the evening. A few others may have been there as well, but what I most remember is this: us arriving and having Thing 2 tell us that he had recently scored some absolutely blotto weed. We sat around listening to music, copiously partaking in the lovely green while the Things detailed just how whompingly powerful this current score of pot was.
No kidding. To say that this particular batch was Industrial Strength Wallhammer Shrubbery was an understatement.
Methinks in retrospect that it was laced with something besides plain ‘ol Maryjane sweetness. I remember being concerned about how, at some point within the upcoming hour, I would need to find a way to successfully eject myself from the couch which I was now becoming one with. Not only would I actually have to stand up on my two feet, but actually put one foot in front of the other and walk the dozen or so blocks from Chez Thing to the bar. Good luck with that one, Various.
A nice buzz is a splendid thing, but being zombiefied and incapacitated aren’t necessarily my idea of a good time … not that this exactly kept my partytime impulses in check that night. In fact, things were simply getting started (The other moment that’s bizarrely fresh in my mind from that night relates to a catatonic me sitting mesmerized by a recurring electronic echo in Devo’s “Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy” which was playing at the time. I had never noticed it before and to this day, whenever I hear that song, I still zero in on that very production tick).
Somewhere around 9 p.m. or so, the time had come for myself and the rest of us to confront the then-intimidating dual beasts of standing and walking. We were all in pretty nasty shape as we shambled out the door (of course we’d had a spliff for the road and brought along more for later) for our extended stumble from the House of Things to Fryfogle’s. Thing 2 had started getting his shine on earlier than the rest of us and was already a wreck by the time we were just starting, leaving him in the worst shape of all. This was underscored when it suddenly dawned on our cheerily degenerate pack of Good Time Charlies that we had lost him at some point during the walk.
Yes, you read that right: we lost someone while walking somewhere. And just to be clear: we weren’t making our way through dark busy streets packed with human throngs. We were slow-mo moseying down quiet streets in the residential part of downtown at a still light time of the late May mid-evening with absolutely zero other people around us. There was only a few of us, so someone going missing from a group that small should have been instantly conspicuous.
(Poster courtesy of Sarah Faulkner)
We were probably half way there when it sunk in that T2 had vanished. “Thing 2?! Thing 2?! Where are you?” we called, but to no avail. We backtracked a block or two, but there was no one. Spontaneous combustion, perhaps?
Given our absolutely polluted state, it didn’t seem massively unusual that one of us should simply disappear and so we continued on, figuring that it would all wash out in the rinse later on.
As it turns out, had we retreated back one block further we would have indeed discovered Thing 2 passed out in someone’s front lawn hedge. While we may have overlooked T2, the keen eyes of the municipal constabulary were far more successful in locating Mr. Thing, thoughtfully assisting him out of the hedge and into the drunk tank for the night in order to sleep it off.
MLIC>PUNK-GARAGE-ALT etc Part 3: Punk, Post-Punk, New Wave, Alt, & more 1980-84 is a playlist that corresponds with the time frame of this episode and includes Flipper’s “Sexbomb.” Featuring The Birthday Party, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cramps, Rough Trade, Black Flag, Lords of the New Church, The Fall, The Jesus and Mary Chain and more.
It is one of six Spotify playlists + a Master playlist featuring many of my favourite tunes from various types of proto/punk, garage and various strains of the spikier left-field/type rock, from 1963 until 2022. Great for driving, cooking, baking, annoying the grumpy, working out or anything else where energy is needed. Makes for fun shuffles.
For all the playlists, click here.
Unbowed by a vanishing human, we continued on until we arrived at the bar, joining up with many friends there including Le Château who had dropped in after working his evening shift nearby. It was still fairly early in the evening and I was already in a shape that tended to be more frequently observed at a nights’ end — an excessive night’s end at that. I was so out of it that I could hardly stand up and, with the club packed to the rafters, there was little room to do so anyway, let alone anywhere to sit. Needing physical stability, I ended up literally propping myself up against one of Flipper’s huge speaker cabinets on the right side of the stage in between continued drinking and effort-heavy forays outside for further giggle weed.
I have no idea who opened the show and only shards of memory about Flipper’s actual set. Mostly I recall them being enormously loud, alternating plodding, ten minute numbers with what seemed like ultimately pointless twelve minute tune-up breaks wherein frontman Bruce Loose would try to push the audience’s buttons and vice versa. One of the local Amazonian punkettes stood at centre stage, teasing the band members about having looked out her apartment window earlier that day only to see them lined up at the cinema across the street for an matinée showing of the newly released Return of the Jedi.
In another mood, I probably would have been amused by it all, but the combination of the band being annoying, the human wedge-in of a club, having to prop myself up against stadium-volume speakers that were giving me vibra-skull and a thundering headache, while bodies slammed, writhed, and hurled both dark slogans and themselves on Frys’ packed floor made me want this all over with asap. The set seemed endless.
A merciful conclusion eventually reared its pretty head, followed by a protracted period of trying to discern where the aftershow party was happening and who was going with who. M. Zeppelin had been promised an interview with the band to be aired on her CHRW radio show but they kept shirking every time she tried to track them down. Once word got around that there would be a bash at one of the studio spaces upstairs at The Clifton Arms, just a few blocks away, MZ decided to pile into the famed Flipper van with the band, tape recorder and mike in hand, to try and cajole them into finally giving that interview that their management/representative had promised. They kept avoiding the interview and instead she had a fun ride over with hostile and testy groupies.
I was recently back in London, Ontario, and took this photo of graffiti art on a downtown wall, mid-way between the Clifton Arms and where Fryfogle’s once stood. The figure of the woman on the left is pretty emblematic of what chunks of downtown London are like these days.
As for the rest of us, Lady Bump, myself, and probably a few others crammed into Chateau’s car for the brief ride over to the old bruiser of a building that housed The Arms, on the corner of Richmond and York. It was probably nearing 2 a.m. at this point and we arrived at the front of the building only to find everything locked. We knew that a party was going on up on the fourth floor — but how to get up there?
We clumsily skedaddled around to the back of the building and were happy to chance upon a fire escape leading up to a top floor open hallway window. The three of us began to scale this very rickety fire escape — no small task since Lady B and I could barely stand up straight (LC was driving that night, and therefore the sole face of sobriety). I probably crawled up the escape more than walked.
The back of the Clifton Arms, October 2011. I’m thinking that the fire escape could well be the same rickety one we climbed up and down in order to get to the Flipper afterparty, entering/exiting through that top floor window (all photos by VA).
Once through the window, it took us exactly zero seconds to deduce where the party was, its sound detritus echoing through the whole top floor. Walking into the small cramped two room space, I was instantly handed a beer and passed a joint amid just about every key substance being enthusiastically ingested around me. The band were indeed there, with our host perched on Bruce Loose’s lap.
By this point, I don’t think I was even communicating within a standard human spectrum. I now realized I had crossed the point of no return, feeling like death warmed over, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before cookie-heaving ensued. I decided that, after a dozen or twenty beers in concert with seemingly bushels of alphaweed and side orders of speed zooming through my plodding carcass, which was increasingly screeching “Yo! I’m Giving Up and Out On You Soon,” that now may — perhaps — just possibly be cut-off time for me.
I was feeling worse by the moment and soon deduced that being in a cramped, noisy, human-saturated box of a room, overly atomized with a strong swathe of Eau de Ashtray, may not have been the best environment for me at that time. I ditched the party, went back out to the fire escape and laid down on my back on the stoop outside the window. It made total, rational sense to me at that time that the best possible thing I could do would be to drag my sorry ass out onto the brittle, rickety fire escape several storeys above a hard, concrete pavement while in a state of incapacitated obliteration. Reasonable, don’tcha think?
“(Various) Artists’ (low budget/effort) Rendition” of my 20-yr-old self at the top of the fire escape, taking a break from an evening of hijinks and buffoonery.
I lay there looking up at the night sky, the stars spinning around like a flushing toilet. Somewhere around 4 a.m., MZ, Lady Bump, and Château emerged to grab me and finally head home. First, however, we had to navigate our way down a few flights of a decidedly ropey fire escape. Considering that the three partakers among us couldn’t have walked a straight line on solid ground even if it meant winning top-line real estate, implementing this exit strategy was undertaken with maximum concentration and frayed nerves.
While not generally afraid of heights, I do have an issue with unsecured heights, meaning that I will easily look out of the window on the top floor of the world’s tallest building with zero trepidation, yet I get nervous once I go beyond a few steps on a ladder. Seriously, which of those two am I most likely to sustain a fall and injury from? Suffice it to say, walking down this iron-grated contraption of questionable stability at the best of times would be deeply unpleasant to me. It took all the resolve I had … but, damn, I wanted to get home and to bed, preferably before the sun rose.
So, with substantial trepidation, I began the white-knuckle odyssey of putting one foot down in front of the other, grabbing the railing so hard as if I was about to fuse with it. Owing to being sober and athletic, Château decided to have some “fun” with the situation, his evil self bounding down way ahead of us. Arriving back on earth, he grabbed the fire escape at its base — unsecured to the pavement — swinging it left to right, the swaying reverberations reverberating all the way to the top. Willing ourselves down this now-moving structure, one careful footstep at a time, made us feel like we were in The Poseidon Adventure or something.
“We are going to kill you when we get down there,” we threatened, all of us knowing full well that wasn’t in the cards as LC was our ticket home.
Le Château, standing at the bottom and swinging the fire escape from side to side, not pictured.
We did eventually reach solid ground, amid much faux-grimacing at Château, and slunk into his car. Alas, we may have been finished with the evening, but it wasn’t finished with us. Both MZ and I ended up having a chat with Ralph — not on the Big White Telephone in our homes, but instead pulled over to the side of the road (MZ: “I don’t remember too much after the party but I am told that I politely barfed at the side of a road when being chauffeured home in the wee hours”) and later with me hanging halfway out LC’s car window as it zoomed down Wharncliffe in the early morning hours.
Oh my. Fucked up once again.
Next On Stage –> June was bustin’ out all over when The Velvet Underground’s John Cale came to Fryfogle’s and played an intense, extraordinary set. It was particularly extraordinary for me that I finally got to see him at this point in time, not only because I was way deep in Velvets-mania in the early 80s — with all the original Velvets albums finally being widely and easily available — but because I ended up sitting cross-legged on the stage about three feet in front of Cale as he performed.
Tune in next time for a disciplined bladder, a set list of my dreams, and being able to see the pores on John Cale’s face.
© 2011/2022 Various Artists
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Scarlett: LOL re: the patterned carpet. Reminds me a bit of the story in Keith Richards’ book about finding John Lennon face down in his bathroom mesmerized by how beautiful the tiles were. I am damn sure our paths must have crossed at some time, even if we didn’t realize it at the same time.
Kevin: Knowing that you were part of the SF scene, I was particularly interested to hear what you had to say. Perhaps I should take a listen to Generic Flipper again myself, although I never owned the album myself. As I said, I still like “Sex Bomb” …. was just working out to it the other night, lol.
dirndl: I tell you, we had fun in those days — and the 80s are just getting started. Wait until I write about a bunch of us heading to NYC for a trip just a few months just after this. Oh dear. Thanks so much for the grammar correction — I am the worst at editing my own stuff.
I loved the “Flipper” TV show when I was a little kid in the 60s. “They call him Flipper, Flipper, Faster than lightning …”
Absolutely hilarious! I always did appreciate “Sex Bomb”s sludgy, un-punk 9 minute blasphemy against hardcore. Am I right that they used to be Negative Trend, who along with Penelope Houston, opened for the Sex Pistols in San Francisco in their legendary 70s US tour?
Oh and M. Zeppelin’s account was howlingly funny. “Barnacles on a putrid pirate ship”! Why didn’t those girls form their own hardcore band, The Putrid Barnacles?
Algis: Rocking times are good; rocking fire escapes, less so. 😉
ChillerPop: LOL!!! Re: The Putrid Barnacles as a hardcore band. Too funny. I wish they had. I’ll make sure MZ reads that.
I do believe that some of the members of Flipper were in Negative Trend. I’m pretty sure that The Avengers with Penelope Houston opened for the Sex Pistols in SF but not sure if Negative Trend did. Someone who I’m betting would know would be OS’s Kevin Army.
Hey Various! i FINALLY found my password for this site so that I could vote for your articles and make witty comments.
*witty comment*
Abra: Let’s all hail those rogue batches. Round 2 of a different kind is coming up in #19.
MZ: Glad you’re back … and Thank YOU so very much for your witty contributions to this entry (I’ll be hitting you up again in the new year).