Flipp (w/ Chia Karaoke)

This was one of those interviews where parts of the tape should be destroyed so as to not incriminate anyone. If Art Alexakis was the well-spoken one, and The Mayfield Four were the nice ones, Flipp were the cool guys. After listening to a couple of their opening songs, and getting a cool picture (that didn’t turn out) of the guy in the jetpack spraying the sparks, we left, because our ears hurt. Make no mistake - these guys’ music is not great. Frankly, it’s not really even good. It is loud, and their music video for “Rockstar” is not only semi-musical, but well done also. As for their live show, it’s more of a performance thing than anything else - these guys are entertaining. And they might go far. The band is composed of Brynn Arens, lead singer, Chia Karoake (Brynn’s little brother) on guitar, Freaky Useless on bass, and Kilo Bales (just guess) on drums. Their new album, Blow it Out Your Ass!, is in stores now. They are doing for rock what Jackass did for MTV, and I think it might catch on. Just make sure to bring the earplugs.

Flipp comes from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and cruises the country in a decked out RV which has probably seen its fair share of drugs. As Troy (the photographer) and I walked up to the bus, which you could just tell was party central everywhere they went, we were a little, uh, hesitant. Okay, we weren’t sure we’d come out of there alive…or at least sober. As we were let in, Chia (the bald guy with the band-aid on his head) asked us if we wanted a beer. Hell yeah we did. Budweiser. Real man’s beer. We passed on the pot and Vikatin though…maybe next time.

Pharos: Minnesota huh?
Chia: Minnesoter.
Pharos: How’s Wes…
C: St. Paul!! I live in Minneapolis, wew!
C: Sorry, what was that question?
P: How does West Virginia compare?
C: Um, you know, we’ve been here for a very brief period of time, but I gotta say, we’ve driven around, up and down through hills saw, uh, I think it’s beautiful.
P: It is beautiful.
C: I think it’s beautiful. The weather’s definitely much better. I mean we’re dealing with all that rain and the flooding right now, the summers just suck ass, I mean the winters just suck ass. But uh, see, we were here, where’s Myrtle Beach?
P: South Carolina.
C: Oh. Sorry.
P: That’s cool. You go down there with Mayfield Four also?
C: No, we’re on this…we’re doing five dates with Everclear. They just got a copy of our video, which I’ll give you a copy [rummages around, can’t find it], when we’re done, and uh, they saw the video, and no one had to blow anybody, just they f**kin’ saw the video, said that they played it like every time they got in the van, and uh, that was it man. And they called us up and said would you like to come on the road and we’re like “Hell yeah!” So we got this bus, and took all the money we were gonna pay to stay in hotel rooms, and f**kin got a bus so we could make it look like we were doin’ it for real!
P: Saw this on your website, gotta ask: five foot bong?
C: It’s for real man.
P: Is it really?
C: It lights up, in more ways than one. We brought it out at Woodstock…and announced that we were going to give away free pot, and started throwing joints from the stage, and what we had in front of our stage was like 30,000 people turn into about 100,000 people like that. There was no bands playing, we were the first band…and Brynn [lead singer] goes, “Ladies and Gentlemen, you are now the majority, let’s smoke pot. So come to the front of the stage, our drummer Kilo Bale will be throwing out free pot.” So we started throwing out free pot and you know everybody’s like, whatever. So it was a beautiful day out. But yeah the five-foot bong is for real.
P: What’s up with your guys’ names?
C: There kind of just extensions of our own personalities. That kind of just happened naturally.
P: What’s up with your nickname “the worst guitar player.”
C: It’s so true. There’s no lying in that. When I joined the band, uh, it was kinda just out of fun, I could play a little bit and blah blah blah, and just kinda fun hangin out with the guys etcetera, and then I borrowed Kilo’s guitar for awhile, and ah, then I got my own guitar. And that’s pretty much how I’m the world’s worst guitar player. I just suck. I only know how to play Flipp songs. I don’t know the names of any of the chords, I knew where the bar chords were, AHHHH!!!! [girls outside yelling for autographs]
C: [randomly] It’s Flipp cereal.
P: You have your own cereal?
C: Yeah well we make it up, but yeah. Sometimes we drop it from helicopters, tons of it.
C: [manager walks in] And he cleans our underwear. He’s the other specialist in rock ‘n’ roll.
Mngr: Yeah, maybe girls underwear.
C: Oh is that it? Oh okay. [Chia goes out again to the screaming fans]
Mngr: Did he give you a pair of underwear?
P: [confused looks]
Mngr: Oh he’ll give it to you as you walk out the door.
P: Maybe we’ll crawl out the window then…
Mngr: They’ve gotta be around here somewhere…[searches while Chia entertains screaming girls]
P: Underwear and cereal huh?
Mngr: Yeah. Chia will know where that stuff is [underwear]…he keeps track of all that stuff.
Groupie: He can find ‘em. They might be out Bill [manager].
Mngr: Nah, they can’t be out of underwear [opens drawers and cabinets, finds nothing].
Grpe: They could be out.
C: [comes back] Yeah I don’t know where the underwear is. Will a video do? We have a new set of trading cards, they’re on their way here.
P: You guys have cards?
C: Yeah dude, we have many sets of trading cards.
P: So what’s up with the cereal?
C: We came out with our own ce…, well, truthfully, we were kinda jokin around one morning about how crunchy would sound on a mike.
P: Is that the best kind of cereal out there?
C: Well, it’s really good ‘cause it, um, it’s better than Smurfberry crunch. Smurfberry crunch has this thing where it can turn your s**t blue.
P: Oh yeah.
C: This’ll turn it bluer.
P: Really?
C: Yeah.
P: Now I haven’t seen it in stores…how do I get some?
C: Well we did a limited, um, run up in Minneapolis/ St. Paul where we’re from, which were just kinda startin’ to spread the Flipp word, and that’s where you could get it. Every once in a while you’ll see a box go on e-bay. And General Mills is from Minneapolis area, and we actually talked them into giving us an actual ton of Fruit Loops, at which point we dumped half a ton of Fruit Loops on the crowd. We play this thing called the Edge Fest and there’s like 35,000 people and we dumped half a ton of Fruit Loops on the crowd, and our pilot got thrown in jail.
P: For what?!
C: I don’t know what it was, it could have been air space issues. He ended up on the Jenny Jones show as a cereal bomber. This year we’re gonna drop, we’re gonna drop 500 pair of Flipp bo, under, Flipp pair, ah, Flipp underwear on a crowd. So you know, we sit around and go, “what can we do, what can we do?”
P: One of your verses was you wish you could be a planet. Which planet would you be?
C: Uh, I’m not gonna say the typical punch line, which would be __
P: Uranus.
C: Right. For me, I guess Neptune, because I don’t know, it’s just got this mystery about her, and I like blue. Somehow it’s always depicted as being blue, and it’s not all the way out there, but it’s out there enough to like, you know, you’re not alone, you still got Pluto. And I guess since I’m from Minnesota I can handle the extreme cold temperatures. My parka could probably withstand it, and my moon boots. Bringing back moon boots by the way.

We finished the interview and were escorted to the dressing room with Chia to pick up a copy of the video he promised, and for the first time got to see the rest of the band. Chia announced that girls outside were asking them to sign body parts, to which one of them piped up, “I got the spleen!”