Flop - "Anne" 7"

Flop – “Anne” 7”

Frontier/Insipid, 1993

Acquired: Love Garden Shotgun Room, Used, 2008

Price: $.25

 

One of my favorite DJs at KJHK was a guy named Justin Brown. I ended up taking over Alternative Flashback for him when he graduated. I remember him playing this song “Anne” and raving about Flop’s album The Fall of the Mopsqueezer. Something about that album title stuck in my head (probably because it’s a fucking great album title). SO, I heard that song and I was like “Hey alright this song is pretty groovy!” and then months later I found it on 7” in the Love Garden Shotgun Room! Sitting down with the track, I became obsessed and played it on probably half of my Alternative Flashback shows. It just so perfectly encapsulates everything that was good and holy about that early 90s alternative rock. Hailing from Seattle, it’s amazing that their sound isn’t more mired in grunge. I didn’t think I could love this band more than I already do until I read this bit on their Wikipedia page: “Never intending to actually become a real band, they toyed with many self-deprecating names including ‘Butt Sweat and Tears’ and ‘The Value Village People.’ Eventually however they lied their way into a show and needed an official name and inspired by a headline for a review of a local play in the newspaper ‘Resounding Flop” was shortened to ‘Flop’ and the band was born.” Mythmaking at its finest! They’re like the Undertones with a greater reverence for pop bliss. “I Told a Lie” sounds like an Exploding Hearts b-side, if that helps to convey the sense of glee these guys exude (frontman Rusty Willoughby’s other band was called Pure Joy, so it all makes sense). These guys are just a lot of fun, but I’m partial to bands who start out as a joke and not giving a shit, discover they really have something going, and end up channeling that not-giving-a-shit attitude into pure, perfect, and more than a little ramshackle pop songs.

The amazing video for "Anne" has that same VHS sheen as my memories of the early 90s.