Who is this One Dog Clapping Person anyway?
Well, he wears glasses, has a beard, a big nose, man boobs and a pot belly, and long hair.. He has two children and works in a library which he would like you to know is nowhere near as boring as some people would like you to believe. And when you've worked in warehouses, woodyards, food packing factories, mental hospitals, and countless demeaning temp jobs, then you are qualified to know about boring. Okay, the mental hospital wasn't always boring.
Like that's a good description to distinguish he. You can do better than that
Oh, ok. One Dog Clapping is Flipdog, now a 50-something musician with a little home recording set up which produces denserock, a neologism which he uses to describe his music and which, like all genre names, is essentially meaningless. Whereas he used to say he wrote songs, he now conceives it as more of a channelling exercise, and refuses to try to explain it.
His home recording history began in 1994 when he borrowed his dad's Tascam 4-track machine for a weekend, along with his (then) girlfriends bass guitar and her brothers Yamaha DD-6 drum machine. He was immediately hooked, even though the results of that weekends work sound laughable today (by laughable, read shit).
Over the next 6 years, Flipdog used his dads machine more and more frequently, and even compiled 6 'albums' of material. These were never published, though acquaintances were heard to say they "quite liked the 'accident' song..." I might put that up at some point actually, for all of its ineptitude.*
In 2000, Flipdog finally paid money for a machine of his own, a Roland 8-track digital recorder. This allowed him to make recordings of increasing quality which have ultimately led to this website.
In 2001, under the name One Dog Clapping, the album Puppy Spanners appeared on the peoplesound website. The world was resolutely not set on fire - at least, not by that album. No further recordings appeared on there, although some other tracks appeared via the Vitaminic website. More recent recordings have, up to 2010, been the exclusive pleasure of his mates, due to the impossibility of getting any replies from the admin on the above websites, and disillusionment that these sites actually achieve anything. They are now long dead, which is why I haven't linked to them. But the recordings are now available again, via Bandcamp.
For nearly 2 years, One Dog Clapping became a full blown live band which played mostly in Leicester, which came to an amicable end in November 2005. However, Flipdog has continued using the name for home recordings. I once heard him say that he should have changed his name once he began his post Sons Of Itto recording spree, the Adventures in Entropy House. I told him that it was a bit late for that now. And anyway, he makes little enough sense as it is, especially as he puts his internal monologue for the world to see as if it is an actual conversation with an objectively different being. At this point, he would like to call into question the very notion of objectivity, and if I'm being honest, I'm not sure I'd argue with him.
If he's such an ordinary 'bloke' then, why call himself One Dog Clapping?
He just did. But that question presupposes that ordinary people aren't allowed to use imaginative names, and I put it to you that that's rot, nonsense and rot. Also, define an ordinary person. No such thing.
Not good enough. Me want explanation.
oh all right then, feisty... the first few years of his four track recording saw him using the name Somebody Else's Problem, a name he got from the Douglas Adams famous trilogy. Many people didn't like this, and even Flippy thought it was a bit cumbersome, but couldn't think of anything better. So anyway, he and his bro, they sitting on a bus one day going into town for to drink beer and get drunk and play pool, and they talking about this game on the Atari ST called Player Manager (this was 1998 or 1999, by the way). Flipdog saying to Bro how he can't understand why Bro doesn't change the names of the teams, I mean, ain't it boring having Bristol play Aldershot when you could have The Raving Dangs playing against The Arse Destroyers, or Calling Planet Earth playing 86% Snake? Bro replies that not everybody has, and I quote, an 'acid-head imagination like you.' Indignantly, Flipdog replies that he does not have an acid-head imagination, just cos he can come up with names like Wee Willy Wanker or One Dog Clapping.... 'That'd be a good name for a band,' interjects Bro.
So blame Bro. Although Flipdog has never done acid, so the accusation was worthy of the indignant response.
Flipdog did consider the notion of changing the name recently. Despite some comments received†, he likes the name One Dog Clapping. So he decided to keep it.
†Anecdote: I recently bought a pedal from a music shop in Leicester, and the chap asked me for an email address, so I gave him the one that's associated with this website (ie flipdog ...at... this domain...dot...com). The bloke was very taken aback by the name 'flipdog.' Now, this leads me to wonder - why is it so odd that a musician may use a name for his email that isn't the prosaic name given to he at birth? Are musicians in Leicester so unimaginative that no one else does it? Or was it the name 'flipdog' itself? That's one subtle name. Think about it. I was using it for 10 years before I realised the implications. Update: the name Flipdog has not brought any other negative reactions since going back out in public, so the musical public of Leicester are resolutely not unimaginative. It was probably just this bloke who sold me that duff pedal.
*Why is there a * higher up?
That is to indicate a continuation of that thought. There is a compilation cd of 4-track material called Please Wait Here While We Apologise for the Delay. Said 'Accident song' is on there. However, as I type this updated addition in Feb 2023, I have a side-project going on which is aimed at re-recording a bunch of those 4-track songs. Therefore that compilation CD will soon be no longer available.
So what's he been up to until now?
On the performance side of things, Flipdog played bass in Sons
Of Itto between 2005 and 2010. Sons of Itto happened almost by accident, when Milo asked him if
he fancied playing his very occasional bass skills in the aid of getting
Milo's project off the ground. Then there was that thing called musical chemistry which happened once drummer Purps signed up. So he stuck around for a bit.
As it happens, they've started jamming again. Occasional gigs may happen, likely in Nottingham.
However, there seems to be no remaining web presence, apart from a page at Last FM that I think the chap who recorded our album 'We Sing for you, Ben Rimba' put up. Milo has added the music to Spotify, though.
Flipdog also played bass in the electric version of Blueswamp Southern, and did so between 2006 and 2016. Essentially, it was a blues covers band, although they make the songs they play their own, at least for the duration of the song. And the band features Daddy Flipdog too, though he calls himself Bob Dayfield.
Between 2009-16, the original Adventures in Entropy House series was recorded. 2017-18 saw the recording and release of the Meeting the Changing Landscape series.
Pre-pandemic, Flipdog started performing with an acoustic guitar at open mic evenings around Leicester. This went quite well. People were heard to comment positively and repeatedly so. Also, a couple of proper feature slots came off the back of this. Post pandemic has yet to see a resumption of this sort of thing, though. Don't rule it out, but don't hold your breath. The current focus is on three parallel projects.
Starting in 2019 but mostly during the pandemic, and because reasons, the entire Adventures in Entropy House series was re-recorded. You can now no longer hear the originals, unless you're one of the very few people who has a CD. There is a weird mystical story to it though I'm doubtful I will ever tell it. Two new albums were also done in that time. For a post-pandemic update, see the latest news page.
I've noticed a creeping mysticism over the years - tell me just one thing: why?
The word 'mysticism' is a crap word and explains nothing, being used as a dismissive term by some to denote world views that aren't exclusively materialistic, or even obvious. Flipdog holds an ever-changing worldview that changes with experience and with thoughts and ideas, some of which are his own, and invites you to know that he doesn't give a fuck whether or not you agree with him, and he sincerely hopes that you return the favour. You always have the option of listening to The Killers, or reading Richard Dawkins. Never forget that, though I'm gratified to note that fewer and fewer seem to be doing the latter. Of the former, I have no idea. My finger and the pulse have been estranged for so long now that neither has any memory of the other.
However, words have way more power than you may think, although they are far from the only methods of communication. They're not even the most important, though in some instances they are the most practical. I would urge you to always read between words, especially those that you yourself have not written, and maybe ask a question or some, especially of 'explanations' that don't actually explain anything (e.g. 'it's just a coincidence!'). Our problem as a culture isn't that we worship the wrong Gods. Gods are currently used as an explanation. Our problem comes from worshipping explanations. Our culture deifies explanation. I think I may have mentioned that, once or twice.
Any last thoughts?
I always have thoughts, though I've been trying to give them up. Along with opinions. I cannot tell you how hard that is, especially the latter. (Notice how I managed to disguise a page full of my opinions as a bio?)
If you genuinely feel the urge to contact me, send an email to flipdog, as the name, with the domain onedogclapping followed by a dot which then precedes a com (I'm sure you can translate that).
And if you want to know why this website isn't more interactive, more web 2.0... look at it! Do I look like I have the web design chops? I reserve the right to be ugly, although I reverse the right to be ignorant.