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Added: November 4, 2006

During the final financially struggling years of the fanzine, the fanzine's archives were either lost or sold off to support the zine. I do not have ANY pictures that appeared in Flipside fanzine, NOR any old issues of Flipsides to provide you with, Nor any hardcopies or cassette tapes of interviews, etc. I have nothing, zero, zip, nada so please don't ask. However, if you would like to use an image that appeared in an early issue of Flipside, AND you have the copy of that issue in your possession, you are welcome to use the image. All that I ask is that Flipside is credited in your bibliography or final rolling credits. And please let us know if you plan to use an image in a book, documentary, etc. We always like to know we've been of some help to people who are continuing to document the punk scene.

Added: November 4, 2006

Unfortunately, I just don't have the time to research all the requests for copies of a letter, etc. that you may have gotten published in a past issue. And remember, I don't even have many of the old issues. As for interviews that appeared, (ie, easy to find), unfortunately I've tried scanning them for people and in order for the full pages to be readable, the files come out too big for me to even email. Until I am able to convert the old zines to PDF files (and have the time to do so), it just won't be possible to accommodate requests for full scans of interviews. Therefore, I highly suggest that people look for past issues when the come up for auction on Ebay, or you can put up a want ad on the buy/sell section of this website, if you'd like.

Added: December 24, 2005

The demise of Flipside was a financial one and had to do with the distributor, Rotz. Rotz did not pay Flipside for a year so finally Al Flipside decided to sue them.  Years of legal wrangling, countersuits, threats from Rotz, depositions, court costs, lawyers fees, etc. completely drained Al Flipside of all financial resources.  After finally getting a judgment against them, Rotz declared bankruptcy, and fled to Germany with what they could of all the money.   Al was unable to financially continue with the zine. A benefit that was thrown together by Brendan Mullen and held at the El Rey Theater, unfortunately didn't garner enough money for FS to continue.  Therefore, the last issue which was ready for press, never actually went to press. I do not have the last date of publication or the last issue number but when I can verify this information I will ad it to this FAQ. It was reportedly sometime in the year 2000 or 2001 when Flipside's last issue was released.

There are many rumors about FS's demise. I really can't verify whether they are true or not, since I simply was not there in the last few years. The paragraph above is the facts of the matter and why the zine is not in publication any longer.

Added: January 2006

Probably not. We can't republish the old issues because the archives are gone. All that exists at this point are text files of some of the old issues. I do not even have complete text files and I have NO photos. During the financial debacle with Rotz, much of the archives which had been in various storage facilities over the years, was reportedly lost, stolen or sold to generate income for Flipside. The alternative, is to put the issues up on this website in downloadable PDF format. That is a project that I hope to do sometime soon in the future. In the meantime, Operation Phoenix Records is a great resource to see old Flipside Fanzines. Please visit my links page to find a link to them. The Flipsides are part of an ongoing zine database they've started and is free to the public. But as for republishing, unless a publisher stepped forward and was willing to foot the bills, I don't think we will ever see these old issues republished. I really don't see that it's possible since the photos and original page lay-outs, etc are lost.

Added: January 2006

That is probably even more doubtful than re-publishing the earlier issues. The staff has scattered to the wind and the zine has not published in over five years. It takes someone with the will and know-how to run a zine like Flipside and the only person who could do that is Al, himself. I guess it is possible, if Al were to ever come out of retirement (see below). For now, I can safely say "no", I don't think Flipside Fanzine will ever come back again as a bonafide zine in active circulation. The world of music has changed a lot since the demise of Flipside; it was hard for me to come back and write about the music scene in the early 1990s when I had been gone for nearly 10 years.. Of course we could probably find willing knowledgeable writers who are presently participating in the current Los Angeles punk music scene.... Again, it would be up to Al to resurrect Flipside and I don't think he is interested at this point.

Added: January 2006

Well needless to say after doing this one thing for many years (publishing Flipside Fanzine), Al is now retired. Since that time, he's had a lot of time to reflect on everything. He's very happy that this website is up and giving people somewhere to go, but he is also happy to not have the responsibility of publishing Flipside Fanzine. He says it was a tremendous amount of work with a lot of hard long hours. He's officially retired from the music scene for now… I say for now because you never know what can happen, right? For now he lives a fairly normal life in Southern California, has a normal job, and likes it that way with no fanzine-publishing/record producing or website-running headaches.

Added: January 2006

If you are an old friend of his, I can forward the email to his email address, but I respect his privacy and do not give out his email address. Ironically, for all the time he spent on computers running Flipside Fanzine, he is hardly on the computer these days so you should expect a long wait for a reply.

Added: January 2006

Those videos are not available new anymore. Anything out is being sold as "new" is a store or distributor's old stock or someone selling a second-hand copy on Ebay or something like that.

A video/DVD distributor called MVD has been working with Al Flipside to release some of the old Flipside videos on DVD. Unfortunately, Al does not have possession of most of the old master tapes, so it is doubtful most of the old videos will ever be released. Even so, there are issues with securing permissions from the bands that appeared on the tapes, working out financial arrangements with old bands, technical and artistic demands, etc. In short, it is a big headache. But he's trying to at least put out things that are feasible to put out that he still has master tapes of. There already is one "Government Issue" DVD which should be out soon and after that (hopefully) a Samhain DVD.

If people want to get Flipside videos, there are some that are available legit. People don't need to buy from eBay! All that stuff still goes through Music Video Distributors, (MVD POB 280, Oaks PA 19456). They have tons of other stuff, lots of punk stuff.

Added: January 2006

I wish! We'd all like to complete our collections. As mentioned, there is no archives and all of my personal old pre-1992 issues were lost in a moving debacle. If you are wanting to collect the back issues, the best source is either Ebay or my newly added bulletin board section. Since most of the traffic to this website concerns Flipside and is often old-timers, there is a possibility if the price is right, you might be able to persuade a visitor to part with some of their old issues. If you would like to place a want ad to the bulletin board, just send me an email.

Added: January 2006

According to Al: A long time ago Flipside had a Bulletin Board online. That would have been interesting to resurrect! There was a Flipside website up for about a year. It was on a server run out of Bomp called Indienet (or IndieWeb?). Anyway, they never really expanded it (no audio, very little memory available, hard to update, etc.) and I just gave up on it. The goal for our next site was to have all the back issues online, as well as the full catalog with music downloads. That's when I really started learning HTML, XML etc... Since we never got all the back issues into digital format, it never went any further.