ArtistInfo

flapping, Flapping
Montgomery Street

Album 1996 on Household Ink Records label
Rock

flapping, Flapping unleashes "Montgomery Street," its second CD Because life is short and ideas must make their way in the world, the Santa Barbara-based extra-pop group flapping, Flapping has just released Montgomery Street, its second CD in its less-than-two year history. For this chapter in the unit’s evolutionary saga, the personnel includes guitarist-vocalist Glen Phillips (Toad the Wet Sprocket), bassist-vocalist Bruce Winter (Wasted Tape), guitarist-vocalist Joe Woodard and drummer-non-vocalist Tom Lackner (both are also in Headless Household and Dudley). Welcome to Montgomery Street: 11 tunes and an attitude you can’t put your finger on. Phillips joined the band last December, whilst on hiatus from his globally renowned group, and decided to act locally. Rather quickly, new material and a new collective feeling were conjured up as the combo did giggery in such cozy dens as the restaurant/haven Roy. Starting on April Fool’s Day, they hunkered down in Lackner Studios, a bunker-like suburban laboratory, a 24-track in tow and a bunch of songs to make music out of. Phillips is now back in Toadland, but the new CD documents a righteous little adventure in flapping. The result is a succulent eclectic porridge, ready to consume. It’s a rock-pop-folk-funk-Liverpudlian thing, alternative with a lower case a. Phillips gets down, funkily, on his tunes “Positively Double Negative” and “Eye Wannabe Likes Lye,” swirls around the pop wordplayful maze of “Sort This Out,” and belts out the quirky rave-up, “Doubly Doubting Thomas,” an anthem for skeptics and/or journalists. Winter courts weird, haunting beauty on his song, “The Frogs Are Alive” and the oblique ballad “Lazy Susan,” and gets deceptively rock-ish on “Back to the Station.” When not adding to the guitaruckus, Woodard swoons with envy about “My Favorite Guitar” and ponders materialism on the closing mini-epic, “Without.” Beneath and around it all, Lackner takes left turns towards inner logic on the drums. In October, 1994, flapping, Flapping, FLAPPING was formed with Lackner, Winter, Woodard, and guitarist-vocalist Rob Taylor. That band released the album TEX in June of ’95. Taylor left to pursue a new muse, initiating the band’s rotating personnel pattern. The change also signalled a trim in the bandname, to flapping, Flapping. The title Montgomery Street-- and such site-specific tunes as “Burning House” and “Calling Matt--” honors the hometown legacy of a house, on said street, which hosted a few different compact studios, but which met with an untimely, incendiary fate. The house is a memory, but the creative energy flow that once called that address home is on an onward and outward trajectory. We can only hope.

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