Who says that rock and roll music has to be so serious and dark and angst-ridden all the time? Where is it written that if a band likes to play loud and have fan that they're too pop to be punk? From out of the middle of the country comes a band with all the smart-ass altitude and fun-loving pranks of now defunkt groups like LA's Celebrity Skin (which featured Don Bolles of the Germs on drums) or NY's Deans of Discipline (which featured Nick Marden of the Stimulators on bass). "All that's left to scare your parents with is rap," laments founding frontman "Schizo-Boy" Brynn Arens. "Your parents all got KISS posters in their room. How do you scare 'em?"

Arens had a few thoughts swirling around his brainpan that had begun taking form and shape from the time he was just a wee lad with a loud guitar. "By the time I was in the 6th grade I had already formed a full-fledged band and we had played our grade school," he laughs. "And then by the time I was in middle school I had played all the middle school things--kind of like a Johnny Lang kind of thing. I turned into this little hotshot kid guitar player. It was definitely big-ass white-trash rock and roll shit. You know what I mean? The stuff that really turned me on when I was in fifth grade was when my brother brought home the first New York Dolls record and I took one look at that thing and I was hooked. That was the end of it. And I was really lucky. My brother was into really cool obscure shit, so we got the Dolls, KISS' Dressed To Kill right when it came out, and then The Sensational Alice Harvey Band..." [Alex Harvey, not Alice. Uncle Flipp]

"Then, by the time I was in 11th, no, actually, It was 10th grade, that band broke up." says Arens matter of factly. "We were together from the time I was in the 5th grade until the time I was in 10th grade, so that's what, 4 or 5 years? We were fucking good. And that shows a lot of dedication for four punk ass kids from white trash North St. Paul, you know what I mean? But that band broke up. My heart was broken. And I didn't give up. Got in another band called Obsession. Graduated high school. Moved to New York City."

Arens took up residence in the Lower East Side of NYC, well-known as an incestuous breeding ground for all things loud and offbeat. The time was right around '89 or '90. For those of you who aren't familiar with the scene, it was a time when everything was getting signed in NY. He ended up in a metallic rock group called Rattlin' Bones that, via the influence of the legendary music impresario David Krebs, ended up doing a record for Sony. But. they lost their deal in '95 when Krebs' label fell apart. And that's when things started to get interesting.

"I was way more into playing guitar and drums than I was singing," continues Arens. "I wasn't actually—this is the first band I've ever sang in and it came as a fluke. I was hired to write songs for this dude at RCA Records and the kid kind of flaked out on me. I brought him to Minneapolis to do the demos. I had written like, 20 songs and he didn't finish singing them so I just did so I could bring back the tunes to RCA as I promised them. And they offered me a fucking deal."

Those recorded demos were to become the first Flipp songs. Now Arens had the material, but he needed a band. And that even kind of fell into his lap, as fate would have it.

"Kilo, the drummer, was the guy who ran the rehearsal studio, recording studio where we recorded the demo for this singer guy from RCA." laughs Arens. "So that was a natural ka-boomo ka-boomo."

While recording a friend's light show and messing around with a video camera, Kilo and Schizo-Boy found themselves with an awesome video for their take on The Who's "My Generation".

Finding other members that were as sick and twisted as they were seemed to be quite easy. With brother Chia Karaoke Arens on every instrument he can get his hands on, including Flipp cereal, and space-punk Freaky Useless on bass, Flipp was complete.

"Freaky, the bass player, is actually our second bass player," says Brynn. "The original guy. Cherry Forever, was the bass player in my band Obsession, my high school band. He was in with me through the whole trip from the 5th grade. But he quit. It was kind of a weird thing. He wanted to be, have a normal life. You know, he reached 27 years old and whatever and he wanted to settle down. So it was like, I don't know. It just happened. And when he came, I remember he came to rehearsal after we had just done a tour with Cheap Trick, you know, they're like desert island band for me. top five— And he came to rehearsal one day and said he wanted to quit. And I just looked at him and said, 'Cool, dude, whatever you want to do', and he was shaking he was so nervous because me and his link is so strong. And it's so strong that when he said he wanted to quit I didn't want to put up a fight. 'I'm with ya brother. It's best for the long haul. Whatever you want to do. I'm your friend', was kind of what I was thinking and feeling. And he kind of looked at me like. 'Well, aren't you gonna just beg me to stay at least?'. Freaky was actually my guitar tech at the time, and good friend, and once again, very of like mind. So, it was just like, within ten minutes of Cherry quitting and leaving that rehearsal I called Freaky on the phone to see if he wanted to come jam. And he said, 'Yeah, I'll come down and jam'. And he came down and jammed and I didn't tell him whal was up. And we got done and it sounded really good—."

One of the first gigs that the band ever played was the Edgefest rock festival in Canada. The band appeared on MTV News after inciting a mud throwing war where Arens "mooned" the crowd causing thousands to throw mud at his digitally blurred out ass. Since then, the band has played every Edgefest concert and is always a big hit.

But getting back to the historical timeline-on the strength of that video for "My Generation", in 1996 Flipp won MTV's "unsigned" band contest judged by MTV staffers and Rob Zombie. That year they were flown to Detroit to open a concert featuring The Ramones. The Misfits, and White Zombie. With the video frequently airing on MTV's 120 Minutes, they signed a major label deal with Hollywood Records.

Their self-titled debut album was released on April 15, 1997. The band celebrated the release by loading their gear onto a flat bed truck and driving it through downtown Minneapolis in 30 degree weather at 10:00pm. ' Parking the truck directly in front of the main doors of the Minneapolis Posi Office on the busiest day of the year-Tax Day. The band played for 20 minutes before the police arrived. Even with the police present, and after someone cut the cords from the generators, the band played another song before making a clean getaway.

The summer of '97 found Flipp on tour supporting Cheap Trick. They got to hang out with their heroes every night. But they were also very savvy in figuring out how to win over the notoriously hard to impress Trick fans. At the beginning of me tour, at the Taste of Chicago Festival, during the band's performance, they pulled a stunt that has become legendary. Arens had this friend who was a helicopter pilot. The guy went to General Mills and somehow got them to give him some cereal. And not just a small amount, either, but enough to dump on the crowd of 50,000 as the copter circled overhead.

"He just filled up giant garbage bags full of the shit." he tells me. "and there was only room for him and one other guy in the helicopter. They strapped themselves to the side of the helicopter, and then they just grabbed inside and kept grabbig bags at a rapid pace and ripping them open and dumping them and circling in the helicopter. It was slightly over a half ton."

The pilot later got arrested for littering, and the story found it's way onto the show "Hard Copy".

At that point it seemed like Ftipp was on its way up, but problems at label Hollywood Records had other things in store for bands like them and NY Loose. The president of the label got fired and all the bands that he dealt with got "put under the desk" as Arens puts it.

Not to be deterred, the band had their song "I Don't Care" in the film 'Chasing Amy. They made a cameo appearance in the Troma films release Terror Firmer. They played the 1999 Woodstock festival. Then in 2001 they found themselves invited to open for Evcrclear by the band's singer Art Alexakis.

"It wasn't like a business deal that was sought out like a math equation," explains Arens when asked how it all came about, "He saw a video, liked the band, and you know, it was all really simple. It wasn't like he was solicited or anything."

"He asked us to do five shows," he continues. "They were in 'Christiantown' in upstate NY— Christian colleges and shit around that area up east --and by the second show we had already started getting phone calls about the next show, about people being worried about our behavior. These Christian alleges were like, 'Oh, this Flipp band. We heard this, this. this and this..,,' and we had only done one show. And Art came to me and said, 'Something's right here. You guys are already gettin' complaints'. So the second show we went running around and tried to get nurse [uniforms], nun's habits and shit. We tried to find anything we could in the college that we were gonna wear, catholic girl outfits--we went and talked to the football team who happened to becoming in at the time and asked them if we could wear their uniforms-"

At the time, Alexakis had recently started his own record label, Popularity Recordings. A bond was formed and Flipp became Popularity's first signing. Their new album, Volume, was produced by Alexakis and Brynn and features the single "Freak" (which was also remixed by Tom Lord-Alge). Says Alexakis, "Flipp embodies everything I love about rock and roll. It's flashy. It's in your face. They are snot-nosed punk-ass brats who love loud guitars and rock and roll. It's the epitome of the American dream of the new century: twisted, fan, sexy, and hard."

The group has a definte soft spot for getting the crowd going with a good prank. So how do they come up with their ideas? It is just a matter of massive bong hits and a wanderimg imagination?

"I hate to tell ya, but that is so much closer to the truth than anything really interesting." laughs Arens. "The proverbial case of beer comes to rehearsal, Kilo lights up the big fat one, and then it turns into a 'wouldn't it be cool if...', and, you know, bam, you just do it. You know, 'wouldn't it be cool, like, when N'Sync were big, and we did another Edgefest and N'Sync were onstage and say we couldn't show up and they had to take our place, and then we got there in time and beat them up?' So then we just do it."

At the particular Edgefest where they did the N'Sync prank, the crowd went ballistic. To this day there are still fans who were there that swear it
really was N'sync and that Flipp really did kick their asses!

"It's harder for us to not do something than it is to do something." relates Arens. "Like, you know, the record is coming out, so we have to do something, You do a record release show, you know? You start talking about, 'well, where should we do it?' 'Well, let's not do it at First Avenue'. 'I know, everybody does that'. We called a radio station, and they do a contest and somebody will get to play in their garage, and we call another radio station and they do a constest, and we call a radio station in a neighboring town and they do a contest, and we're doing three garage shows in one day. Then. at 9 o'clock at night—there's a club in St. Cloud that we play-we go there at midnight, offer the band that's playin' to buy a bunch of booze for them, they get off the stage, we go up there and play out the last hour of the night. I mean, it's just like that. So then we just do it.We're a very hyperactive, sugar fueled group."

Arens has no idea who they will be touring with to support this new record, but he thinks it will probably be the festival circuit. He's really psyched get out on the road.

"I really have it in my heart to deliver, for lack of a better term, some frickin' rock and roll that's gonna just really crunch some ribs. you know what I mean?" he states with conviction. "It's time for somebody to get hit over the head with a guitar, you know? I totally want to be the guy to do it. It's just like, it's just—we need it. Everything is so bland and so—they're screaming, tuned so low to the key of D minor that it's devoid of any melody at all. Do not confuse noise with rockin'. Just because you can scream and just because you can tune your guitar really low, you're not pulling the wool over my eyes for one second. I wanna hear the crunch of a great big A chord, you know what I mean? Rip somebody's head off. That's what I want."

For more info, and song and video clips, go to their website,
www.flippcentral.com.