Customer Reviews

Public Flipper Limited: Live 1980-1985

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
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Public Flipper Limited is amazing!! - put it this way if i was stuck on a remote Island and could only have one album with me to play this would be my choice - easy. The recording quality is good throughout and the dry relationship between the band and the audience makes me laugh. My personal favourite has to be "Hard Cold World" - it's brilliant and must be played super loud to be most effective. I own almost everything Flipper has to offer from the dvd to Generic , Blown Chunks , Sex Bomb Baby and Gone Fishin and i love them all BUT this x2 disc live release is my #1 -- 10/10 dirt perfection from the masters of dirt.

Daniel J Leonard

I think a time waster would be to categorize this. Hardcore? Post punk? Indie rock? Slowcore (whatever that means)? Who cares? Rather than define it just approach it with this perspective. Flipper took the loud, fast and sloppy approach of hardcore and massively slowed it down, repeatedly in a torturous but ear splitting Philip Glass style (it was part of a whole scene and some of the bands were closer to the avant-garde which Flipper clearly was not) but still enjoyable. Part of it was a reaction to the previous style but part of it was to actually appreciate the songs instead of the one minute incoherent blasts that some of hardcore (although there were clearly stand-outs in the genre)devolved into. And of course as any fan knows it still rocks. But it was also a reaction to some of post punk's pseudo-intellectualism. The title refers to P.I.L.'s self titled "Album" (or "Cassette" or "CD" depending on what you bought) lifting Flipper's concept of "Generic" as an album and obviously making fun of P.I.L.'s "album as a product concept". So basically it was a fresh break from anything that had occured before but influential on later more recognized bands.
Obvious "Generic" and "Sex Bomb Baby" would be starter album and this collection from live tours seems like "odd 'n' sods" by description but it has the immediate feel of a classic live show by Flipper, as if they were drunk and couldn't play from the way they come off with one liners but immediately go into a song and it immediately rocks, so the whole "they can hardly get their act together live" was just a stance against the elaborate shows that some bands at the time put on. Truthfully this was flipping the bird not just at the musical establishment but at others who pretended to challenge the musical establishment but yet totally influential on countless bands. Flipper were a force of nature live and this is an excellent way to hear their live experience. Thanks for the (very belated)reissues.

this is a great live album!
just dont try buying it from IMPORTCDS.COM.
this item showed up broken and importcds.com made it such a hassle i will never buy anything from them again.
they are shameful cd dealers!
do yourself a favor and avoid these greedy fools.
is an unbroken product at full price to much to ask for?
i dont think so.

Ever since i heard Generic and Gone Fishin', I've been a huge Flipper fan and this album is the best thing i've heard by them yet. I've always been a huge fan of crazy guitar feedback in songs too and this didn't disappoint! This album captures the true power of what Flipper is all about. I would highly recommend this to any fan of the band.

This LP, now CD, is as close to the Flipper experience as you will get until you actually catch a Flipper show. The band chatter between songs is hilarious. This is Situationist-Socialism, American style, at its finest. Confrontational performance art. Abbie Hoffman would have been proud. Flipper preaches the truth, as always, in every song....."there's nothing worse than southern California"....."$250 a month, I can't afford no speed or no junk"....."I saw you shine"....."Love Canal." In fact, the bass guitar tone on I SAW YOU SHINE is so brutal and distorted that you can barely distinguish the notes. A true thing of beauty, Flipper style!! And you get a reduced sized copy of the old LP jacket that folds out into the Flipper game. Its not quite as cool as the original LP jacket. But it is all there in its reduced, historic beauty. Buy this CD now!! See them!!! Learn what the fuss is all about!!

Flipper...

Its hard to describe these guys, but Flipper is one of those bands that don't really sound like anyone else, and they're totally a "Love it or Hate it" kinda thing.

No one successfully captured the feeling of your life falling apart like Flipper did. Have you ever started drinking when you were already sad, and so getting drunk only made you feel worse? So then you go to bed thinking that everything sucks and that the world is stupid and you close your eyes and you're angry and the rooms spinning and everything is pointless so why bother?

That's what Flipper SOUNDS like.

In the studio they best captured this with "Generic." Live, they best captured this with "Public Flipper Limited."

Give it a shot if you haven't. I assure you that you've never heard anything quite like it.

Released in 1986, this is a career spanding concert compliation. The obnoxious onstage patter only adds to the mind boggling raucous entertainment for a fine selection of tracks.

Yeah, they could play as heavily, as noisily, as sloppily, as passionately, as all their peers. But only they could do it with such style. How they can go from the grandeur of "We Don't Understand" to the nonsense of "Brainwash" to the frat-house abandon of "Sex Bomb", I think a thousand "alternative" bands of the nineties tried, and failed, to figure out. They are sludge rockers you would actually want to have over at your house, even if they made a mess, they don't mean anything by it, they're just so damn LOVABLE!!!! And the board game is a riot.