Last weekend , I was at a fun party at the Oakland Museum, celebrating the East Bay Express (newspaper) annual “Best of the East Bay” issue. There were six stages of live music, lots of crafts merchants, various food vendors, and an open museum, which included some really cool exhibits, including a “California Cool” show that celebrated 1950’s jazz, architecture, and animation.<\/p>\n
The group really tweaked my interest for attending this event was Flipper<\/strong>, an old punk rock band I used to see in San Francisco back in the early days. I remember seeing them at the Mabuhay Gardens, and really enjoying their schtick. They did a song called “Sex Bomb” that I thought was pretty rocking. Truth be told, for the infamous KFJC Maximum LOUIE LOUIE marathon<\/a>, I actually recorded a version of LOUIE LOUIE that borrowed heavily from that song, calling it “LOUIE WASH.” Yes, I was actually a “musician,”if you could call it that. No, I’m not telling you the name of the band I created. At least, not today….<\/p>\n So, I was excited to hear that Flipper<\/strong> had reunited. I knew that a couple of band members had passed away, but surviving members Bruce Loose, Ted Falconi<\/strong>, and Steve DePace<\/strong> had reformed the band, bringing in Krist Novoselic<\/strong>, formerly of Nirvana<\/strong>, to play bass. So on July 11 (7\/11 to you), I invited my pal, the artist known as “Laurelish Nisch<\/strong>” (star of her own Flipper-inspired video<\/a>) to join me to see these guys.<\/p>\n Like so many shows I see these days, I was happy to see an abundance of cameras at this event, mostly little cell phones from folks that wanted to capture a little bit of history. So I pull out my little Panasonic-Leica-Lumix still camera, and shoot a little bit of video for the hell of it. The show was stopped midway through a song as the event was scheduled to end a few minutes before midnight. I think the band came on at 11:40 pm, and played for maybe 10 minutes.<\/p>\n What was kind of cool as the P.A. was turned off, was that Krist Novoselic continued to noodle away on bass, playing a little bit of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and and even some LOUIE LOUIE. Check out this video that I shot, and pay close attention to the bass plaing at 1:33.<\/p>\n