Flop (band)
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Flop was an early-1990s pop punk band from Seattle, Washington. The band gained some exposure as a result of a brief appearance in Doug Pray's motion picture documentary Hype!.
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[edit] History
[edit] The Beginning (1990-1991)
Flop's original four members consisted of lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Rusty Willoughby, guitarist Bill Campbell, bassist Paul Schurr and drummer Nate Johnson. Willoughby, Campbell and Schurr lived together with a few other friends in a large craftsman-style house in Seattle's U District near the University of Washington campus.
Willoughby, Campbell and Schurr began jamming together during the declines of their respective bands Pure Joy, Chemistry Set and Seers of Bavaria. Johnson, drummer for seminal Seattle punk band The Fastbacks, frequented the many parties at the U District house and eventually joined them, completing the foursome. Never intending to actually become a real band, Flop toyed with many self-depreciating names until noticing the headline of a review of a local play. "Resounding Flop" was shortened to "Flop" just prior to their first gig.
The band's first live performance was opening for Game Theory at the University of Washington's HUB ballroom. The promoters originally booked Willoughby's band Pure Joy for the show, and Willoughby played with Flop instead, thus notifying his former bandmates of Pure Joy's demise. Pure Joy was still listed as the supporting act on fliers and advertisements.
Flop's live performances over its first two years were marked with near fall-down drunkenness, numerous pitchers of beer poured on band members and audiences alike, and many broken instruments (both theirs and others). Flop was banned from two clubs, one in Vancouver and one in Bellingham during this period.
The band's debut record, Losing End, was released in 1990 as a 45-RPM 7" EP, and contained four tracks of Flop's earliest material: "The Losing End", "Somehow", "Dissipate" and "Fucking Thing" (shortened to "Ucking" on the sleeve and "F* Thing" on the vinyl artwork at the demand of the religious record-pressing plant owners). The record was released on the Lucky Records recording label, with cover art provided by Willoughby's brother Randy Willoughby.
Shortly after Losing End, Flop released its first single, Drugs, featuring a cover version of "Action" by The Sweet. Willoughby has openly expressed disapproval of the record, along with apologies to the record label Dashboard Hula Girl Records, citing unsatisfactory editing and the poor quality of the songs themselves. The sleeve art contains two photos of cadavers in mid-autopsy, taken from one of Schurr's pre-med manuals.
Following the release of Drugs, Johnson left on an Alaska vacation (i.e., gutting fish in a fish-canning boat), putting the band on a year-long hiatus. After Johnson's return to Seattle, the band came back to the studio to record their 1992 debut album, Flop and the Fall of the Mopsqueezer.
[edit] Flop and the Fall of the Mopsqueezer (1992-1993)
Flop and the Fall of the Mopsqueezer was recorded primarily at Egg Studios in Seattle by Kurt Bloch, and was released by Lisa Fancher's Frontier Records. Four of the album's sixteen tracks, "I Told A Lie", "Anne," "Tomato Paste" and "Hello," would later be included on the band's Munster Records 7" EP, We Are You. (The publicity photo from that record's gatefold cover is the band's official avatar on MySpace.com.)
According to Rusty Willoughby, the album's basic tracks were recorded hours after a Flop performance in Vancouver, and it was Johnson's return to Seattle that "energized" the band into creating the record.
[edit] Whenever You're Ready (1993-1994)
Flop and the Fall of the Mopsqueezer drew the attention of young A&R man Stuart Meyer of Epic Records, who offered the band a recording contract. Flop recorded its first major label release, Whenever You're Ready, with The Fastbacks' Kurt Bloch. The record was then mixed by Martin Rushent, and was released in 1993 on Sony 550, an imprint label of Epic Records headed by now music mogul Polly Anthony. The record was not commercially successful, however, and the band was dropped by the label.
Following several national and regional club tours, some headlining, others supporting acts like The Lemonheads and The Screaming Trees, Schurr left the band. He was replaced by former Posies bassist Dave Fox following Flop's month-long European tour with The Posies.
[edit] World of Today (1995)
Having already recorded another album's worth of music, Flop returned to Frontier Records to release its fourth and final LP, World of Today, a pounding, crunching, unapologetic selection of songs with themes ranging from the death of Kurt Cobain to life stories of arsonists. Shortly after its release, Johnson, arguably the heart of the band, left for Europe. Flop disbanded shortly thereafter.
[edit] Discography
[edit] Albums
- Flop and the Fall of the Mopsqueezer (Frontier Records, 1992)
- Whenever You're Ready (Sony 550, 1993)
- World of Today (Frontier Records, 1995)
[edit] EPs and Singles
- Losing End (Lucky Records, 1990)
- Drugs (Dashboard Hula Girl Records, 1990)
- Anne (1993)
- We Are You (Munster Records, 1993)
- Regrets (Sony 550, 1993)
- The Great Valediction (Sony 550, 1993)
- Act 1 Scene 1 (Super Electro, 1995)
- Place I Love (1995)
[edit] Compilations
- Another Damned Seattle Compilation (Dashboard Hula Girl Records, 1990)
[edit] References
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