Flickerstick has long been one of my favorite bands. I was instantly hooked on the 'stick after watching the first episode of Bands on the Run on VH1.
Their brand of short, sweet alt-pop with a sweet slice psychedelia captured my ears and Rex's insane live stunts along with the band's total bad-ass attitude brought it all together. I still remember thinking of how pissed off the other bands must have been since the guys in Flickerstick skipped most of the competitions, came in late to shows then kicked ass in every Battle of the Bands, thus granting them immunity.
The only negative thing I have to say about those early Flickerstick days was that they effectively broke the model VH1 put into place, thus ending Bands on the Run after one short season. The show wasn't supposed to let the drunken slackers win but they were just that much better than the competition. They broke all the rules and still came out on top - what's not to love about that?
Of course, Bands on the Run was just the beginning. After winning the competition Flickerstick was signed to Epic records where they re-recorded their debut album, Welcoming Home the Astronauts. The record took quite a while to see a release which ended up effectively crippling the album sales. Most of the public had already forgotten about the guys by the time they were ready to rock, so the short term popularity gained by Bands on the Run was more or less lost due to delays getting the re-done music out the doors. Due to the poor sales of the album, Flickerstick was cut and they've been flying solo every since.
A few years later they released Tarantula, another fantastic outing with less-then-stellar sales. They've also released 2 live CDs, Causing a Catastrophe and Live From Atlanta and an EP prior to Tarantula, To Madagascar and Back.
At the end of 2007 Flickerstick announced that they'd be taking a break for the first part of 2008 (until around May). Needless to say, this has me a little antsy. After two lackluster outings (sales-wise) a lot of bands would have called it quits. I'm hoping this isn't the case, I'll keep one ear to the ground and let you know what I find.
For now, I have 4 studio tracks/demos of new(ish) songs. These were all written and recorded after their last studio album (Tarantula) and 3 of the 4 songs were recorded live and released on the Live from Atlanta album. The fourth was also included as a bonus track on the same album. Hopefully this will give you the fix you need until more music heads our way.
[mp3] Contract Killers (Demo)
[mp3] Helicopter
2 comments:
hey. i just heard about flickerstick breaking up! this sucks!
can you please re upload those new songs? i would love to hear them! thank you!
They put on the best Live show I have ever been to in my 30 years of living in Tallhassee, Florida at Floyds!!!! That was 10 years ago and we still talk about it to this day. They were great and I miss them.
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