Hippies vs. Punks: Generic Flipper

After work I have to pick up a packet for a race I'm running Sunday morning. It involves a trip up to the Green Lake neighborhood. I don't know what time I will get home. So I am posting the weekly installment of Hippies vs. Punks this morning instead of tonight.

I mentioned in a Monday post on the SST Tour that my Hardcore bonafides boiled down to a love of the Minutemen. To add to that I would be remiss if I did not mention Album – Generic Flipper.

In the 1980s entertaining in the university city of Berkeley usually involved having friends over for beers, sometimes a meal, and then out into the night to go to a bar or a party. Sometimes we would stay all night in the apartment I shared with my girlfriend (who became my wife, and then my ex-wife) and just drink, talk and listen to music. At a certain point in the evening, after all the records had been played, usually sometime around midnight, one album would be placed on the turntable, an album irrefutable and dense, inky black, dark and deep, an album that said, "It is over." That album was Generic Flipper.

Listening to a song like "Life is Cheap" before trundling off to bed to sleep off the alcohol reminded one that the world is ruled by brute force wielded by alien forces -- an important lesson to imbibe along with one's liberal education.

Flipper was formed out of the wreckage of Negative Trend. It combined Negative Trend bassist Will Shatter and drummer Steve DePace with vocalist/bassist Bruce Loose and guitarist Ted Falconi. (A college buddy of mine lived next door to Ted.) The band was controversial in that their slow, bass-driven droning sound went against the speedy grain that dominated California Hardcore.

Generic Flipper -- recorded in 1980 and 1981, released in 1982 -- overlaps with and provides perfect sonic documentation of the "Reagan Recession." 

Nineteen-eighty-two was the first time I was living on my own as an adult. Nationwide unemployment hit 10.8% in November and December, higher than any time -- including the Great Recession of 2008 -- since the Great Depression. Attempting to cut inflation Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker took a meat ax to the economy, the prime interest rate hitting 21.5% in June of '82.

Though I was safely ensconced in the protective arms of the university, I remember the vibe of that time of high unemployment. I remember it was a cold fall and winter. Living in an urban environment for the first time I became aware of the shit and piss and broken beer bottle alleyways and the hatred, vomit, rage, junk, dread, squalor, hopelessness of life that Generic Flipper so accurately records.

Reaganism was definitely the end of the line for any Hippies who were still holding out in the early 1980s. Flower Power had been rendered juiceless. The Punks, who first appeared in the avant-garde at the same time as the stagflation of the 1970s, painted a picture of a future we are presently living.