



Always defying both cultural and counter-cultural conventions, San Francisco’s Flipper were one of the more sonically caustic bands of the early ‘80s West Coast punk scene. Mostly on the pop consciousness radar for being “on Kurt Cobain’s T-shirt,” Flipper is the dirging sound of boredom, depression, and nihilism—ugly music for people with ugly feelings, and their long-lasting influence reaches throughout punk, grunge, sludge, and noise rock.





Infamous band/famous T-shirt.



Some internet saint has uploaded an entire unreleased Flipper studio session from 1982. This recording would have come between their Generic Flipper and Gone Fishin’ records. Indeed, many of the songs on this were re-recorded for Gone Fishin’.

In this excellent article on sfbg.com, Flipper’s Bruce Loose makes mention of an unreleased album:

Luckily, he hasn’t lost his sense of humor, either. He has some hilarious stories, and it’s a joy to hear his voice perk up when he tells them. For example, there was the time he crawled under the stage at a Dead Kennedys show and yelled through a hidden, plugged-in microphone, “I might be ‘too drunk to fuck,’ but I can sure lick some pussy!” He also mentioned a scrapped plan to issue a still-unreleased studio album from the mid-‘80s under the title Flipper’s Greatest Misses, with artwork depicting a dartboard decorated by errantly thrown syringes instead of darts. “Will would have thought it was hilarious,” he maintained.

Loose is referring to bassist/vocalist Will Shatter who died in 1987 of a heroin overdose.







The album remains unreleased to this day, but has appeared as a bootleg CD entitled The Light, The Sound, The Rhythm, The Noise, and—at least for now—you can hear it, in its entirety, on You Tube. It’s absolutely incredible, and if you’re a fan or even have a casual interest in the band , you need to hear this right now.

Tracks included:

Sacrifice

In Your Arms

You Naught Me

Survivors of the Plague

In Life, My Friends

One by One

Now is the Time

On & On

In the Garden

First the Heart

I Want to Talk

Flipper Blues

Get Away

Talk’s Cheap

The Light, the Sound, the Rhythm, the Noise

Kali

Here you go, you can thank us later:

