Minneapolis glam/punk/rock band, Flipp, teams up with Bill Aucoin

Kiss fans know the name Aucoin as well as Simmons, Frehley, Stanley, or Criss. The often called "Fifth" member or Kiss was pivotal in the band's early success. Now, Kiss fans will get to know the name Flipp. These four guys from Minneapolis, Kiss fans themselves, have recently put out their second album, "Blow It Out Your Ass!". The album is on a newly formed label, Rock Steady, and name also familiar to the Kiss Army. Aucoin has been a part of the Flipp team for about the last two years. The band has been compared to The Sex Pistols meets Cheap Trick meets Kiss meets the Phantom. The fact that the lead singer, Brynn Arens, wears face make-up, and the band's notorious stage presentation, has lead to comparisons to Kiss. Arens explains. "Everybody compares everyone else to someone/something. We just do what we do man. There are parallels with us and Kiss but it's not like we sit there and go, 'Hey Kiss did this, let's do it too'. We grew up with Kiss and there's going to be some similarities but mostly I'd say we stand out as ourselves. When people do point these similarities out, they think it's because of Bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the time, we're informing Bill about these things and he's like, 'Oh yeah, I remember that now'. I've known Bill a long time and a couple years back we both, Flipp and Bill, happened to hook up and have been working together ever since. We recorded "Blow It Out Your Ass!" literally a couple miles from Bill's house. If nothing else, he's great for sitting around getting drunk and telling old Kiss stories. Of course, we don't believe any of them." Laughs. "We played a show with Lit in Vegas last year and our bassist, Freaky and their bass player were comparing their Kiss collections, verbally of course, until Freaky yelled across the venue for Bill to come over. He introduced Lit's bass player to Bill and the guy totally freaked out! 'He's your manager? You're their manager?' Freaky put his arm around Bill and told the Lit guy, 'See, I told you I collect Kiss stuff'. Flipp is notorious for such concert stunts as dropping a ton of "Flipp" cereal, via helicopter, on the crowd at Taste of Chicago as well as stopping all business and warranting police presence at the Minneapolis downtown Post Office on none other than Tax Day, and getting banned from all of Milwaukee after narrowly escaping police arrest following their set at Rockfest where they committed many supposed crimes including public nudity, public obscenity, littering (the band had a feather pillow fight on stage that sent feathers into the next state) and finally supplying to minors. Arens. "I threw a couple beers into the crowd. Gimme a break!" All this before Aucoin's membership into Flipp. Imagine what they have in store now? Flipp is putting together a tour now to promote their new album. Check them out at www.flippcentral.com. Tell them Kissonline.com sent you.