Those early singles enticed Drag City Records to offer a deal for a full-length album by the soon-to-be-infamous Hamburger. His crank call album Great Phone Calls for the imprint became an underground hit and led to several singles featuring his obnoxious comedian character Neil Hamburger. After being born in Australia and growing up in Phoenix, Turkington moved with his father after his parents split and immersed himself in San Francisco's burgeoning punk scene.Īn obsessive fan of Flipper (he would eventually compile shows he recorded into the live document Public Flipper Limited, Live 1980 – 1985), Turkington co-edited the zine "Breakfast Without Meat" and befriended enough bands and musicians to be able to start the independent label Amarillo Records. The character went from an appearance on a cult prank phone call album to featuring on his own faked live comedy recordings for an indie-rock label before actually taking the stage. Self-proclaimed "America's funnyman" Hamburger is the creation of actor, musician and punk-rock enthusiast Gregg Turkington. The shows included appearances at a number of festivals on both sides of the Atlantic, with sets at the Rebellion Festival in Blackpool, England, Levitation 2019 in Austin, TX, and Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas that featured Flipper supporting fellow punk renegades Killing Joke. With the arrival of the band's 40th anniversary in 2019, DePace and Falconi returned to activity, taking to the road for Flipper's most extensive run of live concerts in years with Yow again fronting the band and previous collaborator Rachel Thoele (of the SF bands Frightwig and Mudwimin) on bass. Flipper with David Yow (Credit Nick Sternberg) and Italy, including a pair of blistering shows at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. With longtime singer Calderwood sidelined due to a back injury, in 2015 the band recruited Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard to front the band for a series of successful dates in the U.S. Flipper has been more active since the turn of the millennium, reuniting during the 2000s to tour and record a new album with former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic in 2009. When the band should have been capitalizing on its newfound cache thanks to the vocal praise of fan and Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain, it instead returned to dormancy for much of the decade. Rubin would issue their 1992 album American Grafishy on his Def American imprint, but the band suffered another setback when Dougherty suffered a fatal overdose after the record's release.ĪLSO READ: CBS SF Talks To Flipper Drummer Steve DePace (July 2019) They were prodded to more activity by another admirer, record producer Rick Rubin (who had led his own Flipper-inspired noise band Hose in New York before co-founding Def Jam Records). Flipper would resurface in 1990 with a new bassist - John Dougherty- and a new single for Subterranean.
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