FLIPP'S BIT IN GARAGE A BIG HIT
Minneapolis band plays for 14-year-old essay-contest winner.

Surrounded by friends, family and a handful of unfamiliar music fans, Jon Theis waited in his driveway for the evening's entertainment to arrive. "Typical Axl Rose style," said Theis, a 14-year- old Apollo High School freshman. Minutes later, the four members of the Minneapolis band Flipp-Freaky Useless (formerly of St. Cloud), Brynn Arens, Kilo Bale and Chia Karaoke Arens-strolled up Theis' driveway and picked up their instruments. Formed in the mid-90s, Flipp has graced the stage at Woodstock '99 and appeared in MTV videos.

On Sunday evening, the band played for Theis and a ton of friends to make good on a contest run on the group's Web site, flippcentral.com. The group's last performance was at the Mississippi Music Fest in May. Jon Theis won a one-paragraph essay contest asking Flipp fans to explain why the band should bring its mix of punk and rock to his garage in north St. Cloud. He doesn't quite remember what he wrote. Something about how good their last St. Cloud show was, and that they should do another. And so they did. Wearing fluorescent hairdos and pajamas, Flipp played for more than an hour and a half Sunday. As teens gathered against the garage, neighbors sat in lawn chairs across the street, and the band playfully performed a set of songs from its current and up-coming albums.

"After this, we're going to roof the house," Arens quipped to the crowd. To finish the evening, Jon Theis' band, StaleFish, which includes drummer Andy Keller and guitarist Luke Uran, played a four-song, 20-minute set.

"I wasn't used to the big powerful amps and stuff, so when I first turned on my guitar, I was like...'wow'," Jon Theis said. As Flipp performed, singer Brynn Arens made his way into the crowd, serenading a fan one minute, inciting everyone to jump around the next. Jon Theis and others crowd surfed. Members of Flipp tossed fans the group's trading cards. About midway through the performance, StaleFish members climbed on the roof and poured boxes for cereal on the crowd below.

Flipp's use of cereal in its performances is infamous. In 1997, the band gained national attention on the TV's "Hard Copy" for renting a helicopter to dump a half-ton of cereal on fans during the Edgefest outdoor concert in Wisconsin. Tama and Greg weren't concerned.

"People say, 'Are you nuts, or what?,' but my kid is so excited. There is no way I could say no," said Tama Theis. In preparation for Sunday's performance, the Theis family gathered neighbor's signatures on a petition for police to block off the street. Jon Theis distributed fliers around the neighborhood, advising the block a noisy night was approaching, and to come check it out. One officer gave the family his beeper number. Two neighbors sitting across the street form the performance said they had no problem with the show.

"It's something to do on a Sunday afternoon," was a common response. Greg Theis borrowed a neighbor's Huffy bike to cruise around the block and check out the sound. Loud, he said later, although not as loud as he thought it would be. Bret Wieseler, a student at St. Cloud State, attended both Flipp's Saturday night show at the Red Carpet in downtown St. Cloud and the garage show Sunday. One year, he recalled, the band pulled up to the Minneapolis post office on tax day and played a midnight show.

"They get pretty wacky," he said. Flipp usually plays two garage shows a year, said Katie Dunham, who was selling the band's merchandise.

"We've been to garage shows where they've played two songs and the cops will come and shut them down," she said. The St. Cloud show never seemed to be in danger of ending early.

"These guys are great. They were fun," said Greg Theis, who visited with the group after the performance. Flipp signed autographs and listened to StaleFish, while one of Theis's neighbors treated the crew to a round of hamburgers and bratwurst.

"I expected a lot of them, and they came through just like they always do," Jon Theis said.