The Band

Left to right: Jesse, Tom, Mike, Joe.

Who does what then?

Joe plays piano & organ, sings backing vocals & writes, on average, about one song per album. He wears hats & his lips are easily stained when he drinks red wine, giving him a peculiar look when he’s been at the booze. He speaks rather quietly & moves through the world with carefree caution, if you can imagine such a condition. But on stage he’s an ivory & indeed ebony pounding monster. Unsurpisingly, he has a collection of vintage 1960s Italian made organs. Look out for some pictures of them on the pictures page somewhere. He’s also a stalwart of Neville Staple’s band, so he spends as much time playing Rat Race as he does Gravity Calling. Buy him a glass of red wine at one of Neville’s gigs…

He looks like this:

Joe

Then there’s Mike who plays the drums & whose presence on the Flipron stage is like a cloud of noxious Sarcasm Gas. Mike also collects stuff, much of which doesn’t work, & enjoys his spare moments in a Somerset field, enhancing the scenery with decaying caravans & tending with paternal care his vegetable plot. The whole thing is protected by a complex maze of lethal home-made electric fences, in case you get any ideas. He is very, very particular about his drums

& he looks like this:

Mike

Jesse sings, plays guitars & other things & writes most of the songs. A contemplative, pensive type who, nevertheless, given the meerest whiff of an opportunity, seems hopelessly drawn to shameless frontman-style showing off. He will also talk far too long between songs, unaware of other band members nodding off or undermining his utterances with mocking gestures of contempt. His house is a grotto of worthless, broken musical instruments.

This is what he looks like:

Jesse.

And who plays the bass?

Flipron get through bass players like Tolstoy got through paper. But in since August 2011 Tom Granville has played almost every gig with Flipron, & has been instrumental in hammering the new songs for the new album into shape. He has now made himself so utterly indispensible that the band have elected him full-time bass man.  Tom is a quiet man who travels, like some kind of assassin of the lower frequencies, with an enormous stacked bass rig, a deadly monolith of ground shaking, sphincter loosening, knee slackening profundity. At least it would be if the others let him turn it up that loud. A true Somerset man, he has an unswervable fondness for cider, & as the youngest Flipron, the others rely on him to take total responsibilty for anything resembling modern technology that foolishly crosses the bands path.

From time to time, when Tom is too busy with cider & gadgets to play, Flipron borrow their friend John Thompson from two-tone legends the Selecter to play bass. Easy to spot, he looks somewhat like the evil emperor of a space empire, the Lord of some distant solar system whose inhabitants are known for their barbarism, their cruelty & their colonial ambitions. He is known to some as the Emperor Mingus, & he played bass on ‘The Stupidest Face In Town’ & has toured with Flipron in the USA.

Others who have played bass include living bass wizard Nick Walking, who played loads of gigs & festivals with Flipron in 2010 & 2011, as well as Greg & Mark, who played on various Flipron albums.