What Goes Flip Must Go Flop

Album: Guadalcanal Diary, Flip-Flop, 1989

Best Tracks: "Always Saturday" and "Ten Laws"

Lasting Memory: I saw Guadalcanal Diary play live at Norfolk's Boathouse on three separate occassions. The first time was in 1987, I think. I know that a band from my very neighborhood, The Velvet Paws, opened. I also know that both the Paws and the Diarists did covers of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song." Why? I don't know.

The last time I saw the Diarists in concert was in 1990, when the band was touring to support what would turn out to be their final studio album. Flip-Flop spawned a minor video hit in the MTV Buzz Bin-approved "Always Saturday." The real highlight of the album and its related tour, though, was probably "... Vista." When the band played "... Vista," the lead singer, Murray Attaway, made a big deal about it being the only song in the Diarist's entire catalog that had bassist Rhett Crowe singing a lead part. For no real reason, that has always stuck with me.

Something else that is impossible to get out of one's head is the chorus to "... Vista":

Koomalada koomalada koomalada vista
Hey, na na na nahnee beesta
Eeenie meenie exameenie
Oop wanna nee
Hey diddley awp dop
Di-dop a wop bop

You're welcome. I figure I should respond now for when you thank me for getting that stuck in your head. You will thank me. Or curse me. You say "toe-may-toe," I say "salmonella."

The past two posts have gotten a lot of verbiage out of how Guadalcanal Diary's songs were at one extreme or another of spirtuality or profaness. The band must have been playing with that thematic theme when naming this album Flip-Flop. Ironically, however, the songs on Flip-Flop all fall pretty far to the spiritual side of the divide. "Always Saturday," with its damning of American suburban materialism, really isn't that much different from "Ten Laws," with its damning of folks who have "Ten laws to break/ Ten laws broken."

So the Diarrists confound me again. I guess I'll just have to go on enjoying Guadalcanal Diary's music without knowing for sure what they were up to while making it. I can live with that happy ignorance.

I will, however, find out what "koomalada" means if it kills me.

Up Next: John Wesley Harding, Here Comes the Groom, 1990