Flipper have not cleaned up their sound for anyone since 1979, and they are not starting now. The San Francisco noise-punk originators — who gave Kurt Cobain a touchstone record and wound up on Rick Rubin’s Def American label for their 1993 album — are coming through Rochester this November for one of just two East Coast dates on their fall 2026 run. The other is Brooklyn. If you are in the Finger Lakes and this is your genre, this is the one.
About the Show
Flipper emerged in 1979 from members of San Francisco punk acts Sleepers and Negative Trend. Their debut studio album, Generic Flipper, came out in 1982 on Subterranean Records and became a foundational document for noise-punk: deliberately slow, deliberately shambolic, and built to unsettle rather than to satisfy. Cobain’s championing of the record introduced it to a generation that came up after the fact. In 1993, the band reformed and recorded American Grafishy for Rubin’s Def American label.
The current touring lineup carries genuine lineage. Original drummer Stephen DePace is behind the kit. Justin Pearson — whose work with The Locust and Deaf Club has kept him in the harder, noisier corners of punk for years — handles vocals. Jon Kelly plays guitar. Flipper’s live shows have always been participatory: the band invites audience members on stage and welcomes horn players into the mix, and what starts as a set tends to become something more chaotic and shared than what the people who walked in were prepared for. Support from 95 Bulls and Perilous. Ages 16 and up.
The band played Total Bummer Fest at the Knockdown Center in Queens this past spring, then spent September and October on West Coast dates with the Dead Kennedys. A Brooklyn stop at Saint Vitus Bar on November 6 leads directly into Rochester two days later. With just a handful of East Coast dates on the fall run, Rochester is not a stop that appears by accident.
Venue & Logistics
Photo City Music Hall is at 543 Atlantic Ave in Rochester, a 400-capacity club in the Finger Lakes region. At 400 capacity, you are not watching Flipper from a safe distance. There is no safe distance. Doors open at 6:00 p.m.
Tickets
Tickets are $30. No refunds. Available through Eventbrite or at the box office. Buy tickets