Flipp wants to party all the time
Madcap quartet once used a copter to dump a half-ton of cereal on their fans in Chicago.

Flipp may go into the studio and record albums, but for the outlandish Minneapolis rock quartet, cutting songs is mainly just a side gig.

“Like any real rock band worth its salt, the stage show is where it starts,” says lead singer Brynn Arens. An album is just the “proverbial invitation to the party. The live thing is everything to us.”

For Flipp, performing Saturday at radio station Q102’s “Happy Flippn’ Christmas” show at the Juke Joint Music Club, partying is part of the job description.

Band members have made headlines in their hometown and on MTV for starting mud fights at shows, performing uninvited on a flatbed truck in front of the Minneapolis post office on Tax Day, and for dumping a half-ton of cereal on its fans from a helicopter in Chicago.

Arens insists the stunts are just a byproduct of the music, which is a hard-driving brand of guitar-driven, fun-loving rock. The group’s newest album, a self-titled release from Artemis Records, was produced by Everclear frontman Art Alexakis. He saw the group’s homemade video for its song “When I Was a Rock-N-Roll Star” and invited them on a five-show tour. After the short tour, Alexakis asked Flipp to go on a more extended outing last year.

Since then, Arens and Alexakis have struck up a friendship and a songwriting partnership.

The Saturday show will also feature happyendings, and two groups from St. Louis: pop punk trio Parkridge and Village Idiot, a Tenacious-D style comedic duo. The latter group scores laughs using a guitar, a cheap Casio keyboard and offbeat lyrics, jokes member Joe Baker.

“I think the key for us is just having the worst songs possible,” he says. “They’re played well and then we take it very seriously, so that’s where the humor comes from.”

Arens says the energy and drive of Flipp’s music, which he writes much of, comes purely from instinct.

“The minute it comes from my brain, I’ve been working on it way too long,” he says.