PHOTOS: Flipper with David Yow (of The Jesus Lizard) Celebrates 40 Years of Noise, Punk, and Sludge in San Francisco

Photos by Mark Jayson Quines. Review by Ronny Kerr.

See photos of punk rock legends Flipper playing a sold out show with David Yow (of Jesus Lizard) at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on July 13, 2019.

If I had to sum up the Flipper live sound in two words, it could end up sounding generic. But it would be the most true two-word review one could write: Massive tone.

To elaborate: Massive, crisp, crunchy tone.

Flipper played at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco earlier this month, celebrating in the city where they formed 40 years earlier. Their last studio album, Love, came out in 2009, featuring Nirvana founding member Krist Novoselic, who served as the Flipper’s bassist between 2006 and 2009. It was released on the same day as Fight, a live album recorded in 2007 in Seattle and Portland.

Since the band’s longtime frontman Bruce “Loose” Calderwood retired in 2015, David Yow of the Jesus Lizard has been the band’s frontman—and the band sounds as alive as ever.

In San Francisco, Flipper kicked things off with “The Lights, The Sound, The Rhythm, The Noise” as Yow plowed right through the pit so he could sing, scream, and sweat in the venue’s dead center. Climbing back onstage, one song down, Yow proudly proclaimed this to be “the greatest band ever.” (Tell that to the Dwarves, who said the same thing about themselves at Burger Boogaloo a week earlier.)

Later on: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to do a Melvins song now, thank you,” joked drummer Steve DePace before launching into “Sacrifice.” It’s a Flipper original but one of Melvins’ favorite songs to play live. And at the end of the night, the band went out with the usual bang of “Sex Bomb,” partying for ten minutes as Yow relinquished the mic to a young white punk in a shirt that read “FUCK NAZIS.”

Overall, it was a night of nostalgia and unhinged punk rock, which is exactly what the gray-haired crowd came for. Supporting acts were SF-based garage rock band The Next and Frightwig, an originally all-female feminist punk band that also originated in San Francisco nearly 40 years ago.

See photos of the show below.