| Caught On the Flipside by Mr. Bali Hai (with pithy quotes and recollections from X-8, Al, Pooch, and Michele Flipside) |
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| This
is the story of Flipside Magazine, at least it's the story as I
remember it. Hey, it was a long time ago, and a lot of the brain cells
I had back then have since died and been condemned to Brain Cell Hell. I attended high school in Whittier, California with 3 of the original contributors in the first issue: X-8, Tory, and Larry Lash. We all graduated in 1977. Their yearbook pictures appear below. I'll let you figure out who's who. No, I won't tell you their real names. Piss off. |
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| The
other two original staffers were Al and Pooch who
were "a 2-for-1 deal", according to X-8.
They'd also gone to Whittier High and graduated in 1973. Al was
studying to be a marine biologist. Pooch was working on an english
degree. Al was a few years older than we were...23...but his sister was in our class. I think she was cute, but it was hard to tell because she hung out with the lowrider girls (we called them "raccoons" because of the really heavy eye makeup they wore). Al bought all the beer, so he was critical to the success of the whole operation in the early days, since everyone else was a minor. Pooch seemed like kind of a hippy (think Neil on The Young Ones) to us, and since we fancied ourselves true punks, we liked to bitch about his long hair, conveniently disregarding the fact that ours was almost as long as his. He also had a very happy and innocent personality, which bugged us since we were trying to be cool, serious, and snotty. Pooch was enthusiastic about the music, and could write well, plus he was a musician and had some connections to the local scene. Like Tory, he was a guitarist. He was in a prog-rock band at first, then went on to join "Blow Up" after Flipside first went to press. X-8 and Tory knew each other from the school stage band. X-8 played trumpet, Tory played guitar. Long before anyone in professional sports thought of doing it, they started playing "Blitzkrieg Bop" at basketball games. It was pretty funny to hear everyone in the bleachers chanting, "Ay Oh, Let's Go!" when most of them hated punk music with a passion. I met X-8 when I joined the staff of our high-school newspaper, where he was the feature-page editor. I think Larry was a member of the newstaff too. He and I starred in a one-act school musical assembly performance called "The Young Plutonians". I wore green face paint, a silver jumpsuit, and played one of the titular Plutonians. Larry did a hell of a Bowie impersonation. He also had a thing for checkered shirts and pants which made him look like a walking tablecloth from an Italian restaurant. He was voted "cutest smile" in our senior class. X-8 and I listened to all the usual proto-punk suspects: Bowie, Lou Reed, the Stooges, the New York Dolls, and the Stones. We read CREEM magazine, got high a lot at the house of some hypnotist named Ralph, tried to get laid, and camped out in the desert , where we got stoned some more and rode around in dune buggies. Occasionally, when we couldn't score pot, we'd drink Nyquil for a cheap, nasty buzz. We were bored with corporate rock and looking for something new, so when Lester Bangs started ranting and raving about The Ramones, we sat up and took notice. At the same time, Rodney on the ROQ offered us a glimpse of an exciting alternative music scene springing up outside of our safe little suburban existence. Eventually, we found ourselves making regular pilgrimages down to Hollywood, and hanging out at the Whisky where we were inspired by bands like Devo, The Quick, Weirdos, Germs, Runaways, Blondie and Television. We took the punk DIY ethic to heart, and started our own band, Low Budget. X-8 played bass and Tory played guitar, another guy from Whittier High, Jim Prado (who was a friend of Pooch and Tory), played drums and wore skinny ties. I roadied and sang occasional lead vocals. I think we had a grand total of 3 gigs. We played at the hypnotist's house one night and got busted by the cops. Then we played at some high-school party and got busted by the cops. Finally, we made it onstage at the Whiskey for our requisite 15 minutes of Warholian fame playing on the same bill with the Dils and the Weirdos, but the band didn't go on to bigger and better things afterwards. At least we didn't get busted by the cops. After the Whisky gig, I quit hanging with the band. I'd had a falling out with Tory; he stiffed me on my share of the proceeds from playing the Whisky (some incredibly paltry sum...like $15). I think he wanted to be the lead singer, and resented the fact that I had tried to step into that role, so he'd forced me to rehearse without a microphone, then tried to boot me out of the band because I'd lost my voice. He apparently felt pretty bad about it later, because the first thing he did when I got back in touch with him a few years ago was apologize. Hell, I'm not going to hold a lifetime grudge over $15 bucks. Fanzines had been around LA for a couple of years already, in the form of publications like Back Door Man (and Slash barely beat Flipside to press); they were popping up in the UK as well. One day, while hanging around Tory's swimming pool, everyone decided that it would be a good idea to start their own. But what to name it? As X-8 recalls: "Flipside was originally gonna be called "B-Side" because we (as you(Pooch adds that somebody had written a letter to the Whittier High school newspaper signed, "The Flipped Side" and suggested that would be a better name than "B-Side") The first issue came together slowly with X-8 drawing on his school paper experience to do most of the artwork and layout. He got the cover image from a magazine article about ESP research. The back cover was a collage featuring Kim Fowley, who had made a big (mostly negative) impression on us when we met him at the Whisky, which he was managing at the time. The quality of the photographs is terrible because nobody knew anything about using halftone printing at that point. Subsequent issues remedied that. X-8 and Tory did the "Nooze" section. I think they made a lot of it up. Does it matter? If Joey Ramone didn't really say "We're a lot like Queen, we don't use any synthesizers, " he definitely should've. The group record reviews consisted of a bunch of free association by the staff, done under the influence of alcohol. X-8 tape-recorded the proceedings and transcribed them later. Pooch wrote a couple of concert reviews. The interview with Eulogy seems like a strange choice in retrospect, but they were a very popular local act who'd opened for the Runaways, and Pooch knew the band's guitarist, Rusty Anderson (who's since gone on to join Paul McCartney's band). Being prog-rockers who were clearly clueless about punk, they come off like a bunch of pompous glam weiners, so the interview doesn't really fit with the rest of the magazine, but it's good for an ironic laugh. When the first issue finally went to press, it was hand-distributed by the staff at local clubs like the Golden West Ballroom, and sold to punks hanging out in the parking lot of Licorice Pizza record store in Hollywood. They gave Rodney a couple of issues as well, and he plugged it on his show. Eventually, they cut a distribution deal and took the mag nationwide. They also formed a recording division. If you've ever bought a Beck CD, you can thank (or curse) Flipside for being the first to sign him. In the interim, I'd enrolled in junior college and was pursuing a career in graphic arts and broadcasting. I was still interested in the local music scene and looking for ways to participate that didn't involve dealing with music-biz weasels, so a couple months after the first issue came out, I talked Al into letting me take pictures at Brendan Mullen's club, the Masque. I got drunk and forgot to wind the film in my camera, so my career as staff photographer was short and unproductive. I left LA in 1979, and lost contact with everyone until Metal Mike of the Angry Samoans ran across my old website and put me back in touch with X-8 in 2003. Flipside eventually evolved into a half-glossy, semi-professional publication that you could find on the shelves of big chain outlets like Tower Records and Borders. I even recall seeing it on the magazine rack of the Kinokuniya Bookstore in Tokyo back in 1988. They consistently covered every aspect of the alternative music scene in LA, and had a rabid, faithful following. After a 23-year run, Al finally had to stop publication in 2000 due to financial problems brought on via a protracted legal battle with their distributor, Rotz Records. He's pursuing a new career these days that doesn't involve journalism, and wishes to maintain a low profile. I like to think of him as a Howard Hughes-like recluse, wandering around naked in a Vegas casino suite with Kleenex boxes on his feet, because it's more fun that way. I saw Larry Lash at my 20th high-school reunion, he was running a music store in Whittier for a while, but I don't know what happened to him after that. Tory went on to earn a Ph.D in musicology from Cornell University, and is an assistant professor at a private university in Pennsylvania. Pooch is playing in a band called The Condors these days. X-8 is still producing art and music. If you want to know what he's up to, read his bio. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it until I decide to change it again. If you want to read Al's version, you can find it here at Michele's fantastic Flipside Fanzine Memorial website. Some of the former LA punk in-crowders are blogging these days and telling their stories in words and pictures: Alice Bag, Theresa Kereakes, and Jenny Lens. Here's issue Numero Uno in all its Xeroxed glory: |
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