The Fifth Annual Flipside Company Picnic Desert Show

(Flipside)
by Joshua Brown

Eight bands on the Flipside label are recorded live at the company desert party. The bands are Chromemoly Violets, Anus the Menace, Kryptonite Nixon, Paper Tulips, TVTV$, Popdefect, Dirtclodfight, and Babyland. There’s also a surprise appearance by the Neptunas at the beginning. While Flipside mag covers a wide variety of fun and sometimes esoteric punk rock and their compilations of bands not on their label are good, I’ve always felt that the groups Flipside signed were generally lacking. The bands who held my attention, for what it’s worth, were Babyland (garage-land’s answer to Ministry); Kryptonite Nixon, who have unusual but effectual guitar licks; Paper Tulips, who are like a less inventive Sonic Youth with kinda blach vocals; and the Neptunas, who play sloppy-girl surf music. The rest range from boring to blasé, limp punk. The highlight of the CD is the drunken talk between sets.