Flip-Side

This That and the Other Thing (Mutiny)
by Jamie Kiffel

With paycheck in hand and hot on the trail of a Klondike Bar, you stroll gleefully through town. Although you are not much of a radio listener, a song comes into your head suddenly, and without thinking much about it, you start to quietly sing what parts of it you remember. Joy upon joys, you realize that you know every word, and although you cannot place the song’s title or who sings it, you discover that your vocal cords are in prime shape, so you let it rip, loud and clear. With a horrified chill, and precisely at the moment when you notice that you are receiving strange looks from everyone around you, you realize that you have been belting the theme song to The Golden Girls . Flip-Side offers music that is as thematically and musically simplistic as the theme to any sitcom, but can be sung without the danger of revealing your television preferences to strangers. Excepting a token appearance of “The F Word” in a rhymed couplet rant about bad luck, this could be Brady talent contest material. Guitarist Mark Eckerson punctuates his extended-vowelled love declarations with a generous helping of “yeah”s and few confusing chord changes. Drinking Yoo-Hoo, because “it’s chocolatey,” is given as an alternative to depression or drugs, as are hiking and listening to Beatles records. Eckerson vows that, to avoid parting from a good-night kiss, he would “pay big bills.” He also “might kill,” but only because it rhymes. Although it probably won’t expand your gray matter, it may fool those cells that now automatically command you to switch on the television whenever prime-time viewing slots begin, to feel equally satisfied with this saccharin ear candy. With all the silly ideas but none of the corrupting imagery, Flip-Side may be the new television lite.