Jump to content

The Flaming Lips

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 210.50.189.14 (talk) at 05:16, 11 July 2007 (→‎Artistic breakthrough (''The Soft Bulletin'' and ''Yoshimi''): Fixed caption.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Flaming Lips

The Flaming Lips (formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1983) are a Grammy-award winning[1] American alternative rock band.

The band is known for their lush, multi-layered, psychedelic arrangements, spacey lyrics and bizarre song and album titles (for example, "Pilot Can at the Queer of God", "Free Radicals (A Hallucination of the Christmas Skeleton Pleading with A Suicide Bomber)" or "Yeah, I Know It's A Drag... But Wastin' Pigs Is Still Radical"). They are also acclaimed for their elaborate live shows featuring fursuits, balloons, puppets, video projections, complex stage light configurations, giant hands and large amounts of confetti. In 2002, Q magazine named The Flaming Lips one of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die".

The group recorded several albums and EPs on an indie label in the 1980s and early 1990s. After signing to Warner Brothers, they scored a hit in 1993 with "She Don’t Use Jelly". Although it has been their only hit single in the U.S., the band has maintained critical respect and, to a lesser extent, commercial viability through albums such as 1999’s The Soft Bulletin and 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. They have also had more hit singles in the UK and Europe than in the U.S.

Despite press coverage for the band being quiet in comparison to recent years, they were nominated for a BRIT Award in February 2007 for the "Best International Act" category.

History

Early history and releases (Debut EP to Priest Driven Ambulance)

The Flaming Lips formed in Oklahoma City in 1983 with Wayne Coyne's brother Mark singing lead vocals and Michael Ivins on bass guitar. The band debuted at Oklahoma City's own Blue Note Lounge. After going through a host of different drummers, Richard English joined the band in 1984. That same year they recorded their only release with Mark Coyne singing lead vocals - The Flaming Lips.

After his brother's departure, Wayne assumed the vocal duties and the band released their first full-length album, Hear It Is, on the small independent label Restless Records in 1986. This line-up recorded two more albums; 1987's Oh My Gawd!!! and 1988's Telepathic Surgery, the latter originally planned to be a thirty minute sound collage.

Nathan Roberts replaced English and Jonathan Donahue (also a member of the alternative rock band Mercury Rev) joined in 1989. In a Priest Driven Ambulance, their first album with producer Dave Fridmann, was recorded at the State University of New York in Fredonia for $5 an hour on a $10,000 budget.[2] The album was host to a marked expansion in the band's sound and their previous experiments in tape loops and effects were given a more prominent role. This was also the period of the band in which Coyne made his transition to a higher, more strained vocal style akin to Neil Young, which he first utilized on Telepathic Surgery's "Chrome Plated Suicide" and has employed ever since.

In 1990 the band caught the attention of Warner Bros. Records and were signed promptly after a representative of the label witnessed a show at which the band almost burned down the venue (American Legion Hall in Norman, OK) with the use of pyrotechnics.[3]

Signed to majors (Hit to Death through Zaireeka)

In 1992, the band released their major label debut Hit to Death in the Future Head after the recording of which Donahue left the band to concentrate on Mercury Rev. Roberts left the band as well, citing creative differences. They were replaced by Ronald Jones and Steven Drozd respectively.

Template:Sound sample box align left Template:Sample box end

In 1993, they released Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. This was the only studio album since In a Priest Driven Ambulance to date in which Dave Fridmann has not been involved. Due to it - as well as the success of the single "She Don't Use Jelly", the band was featured on two popular television series Beverly Hills 90210 and Beavis and Butt-head. The success of this record led to long stints of touring, opening for bands including the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Candlebox.

Clouds Taste Metallic was released to much critical fanfare in late 1995, though it did not achieve the commercial success of its predecessor. The strain of the year-long Clouds tour added to the stress from the three years touring in support of Transmissions was a major factor in the departure of Ronald Jones in late 1996. He was said to be suffering from a severe case of agoraphobia, although the documentary Fearless Freaks states that he left due to growing paranoia over Drozd's drug use.

The departure of Jones and a general dissatisfaction with standard "rock" music led to the three remaining members of the group to redefine the direction of the band with the experimental Zaireeka (1997), a four-CD album which is intended to be heard by playing all four CDs in four separate CD players simultaneously. The music incorporated both traditional musical elements and "found" sounds (as in musique concrete), often heavily manipulated with recording studio electronics.

As part of the development of this project, the band conducted a series of "parking lot experiments" and then later, "boombox experiments". In the parking lot experiments up to 40 volunteers were given cassettes created by the band to be played at a parking lot in their cars' stereo systems simultaneously. In the "boom box experiments" an orchestra comprised of up to 40 volunteers with modified "boombox"-type tape players was "conducted" - directed to vary the volume, speed or tone of the tape they were playing (again composed by the band) - by Wayne Coyne.[4]

In the meanwhile, a series of strange incidents (recounted in the 1999 song “The Spiderbite Song”) beset the band. Drozd's arm was almost amputated needlessly due to what he claimed was a spider bite (it turned out to be abscessed as a result of Drozd's heroin use), Ivins was trapped in his car for several hours after the wheel spun off of another vehicle into his windshield, and Coyne's father died after a long battle with cancer.

Artistic breakthrough (The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi)

Though their experimental endeavors received some press coverage, their real breakthrough came with the massively acclaimed 1999 release, The Soft Bulletin. Marrying more traditional catchy melodies with languid synthetic strings, hypnotic, carefully manipulated beats, booming cymbals and oddball but philosophical lyrics (sung much more strongly than on earlier releases), the album quickly became one of the underground hits of the year, even widely considered to be one of the best albums of the entire decade.

File:SoftBulletinPoster.jpg
A Soft Bulletin promo poster.

Compared by many to The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds due to the addition of harmonies and orchestrated sounds, The Soft Bulletin also featured greater use of synthesizers, drum machines, sound effects and more studio manipulation. After this album was released, Coyne stated that, "if someone was to ask me what instrument do I play, I would say the recording studio." Realizing that an attempt to recreate this complex album live solely with additional musicians would be prohibitively complex and expensive, the group decided to tour as a three-piece and make extensive use of pre-recorded music to fill out the parts not being performed live by the members of the band. Perhaps most notably, this led to the decision to have Drozd (ostensibly the drummer, but a talented multi-instrumentalist) play primarily keyboards and guitar live instead of the drums. This, in turn, led to a decision to utilize video recordings and projections of Steven playing the drums for some of their older, more "standard rock" songs.

Wayne Coyne in concert in January 2004.

In a further attempt to enhance the live experience for the audience and to more accurately reproduce the sound of The Soft Bulletin live, the Lips devised the concept of the "Headphone Concert". A low-powered FM transmitter was set up at shows, and the concert was simultaneously broadcast to small Walkman-style receivers and headphones available for free to audience members. This would, in theory, allow the audiences greater sonic clarity while still feeling the power of a full live P.A.. This concept was debuted in Dallas, Texas and at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas in March of 1999, and was subsequently used on the International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue tour.

Three years later, in the summer of 2002, The Flaming Lips joined bands Cake and Modest Mouse on the Unlimited Sunshine Tour. They also released the full-length Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots to much critical acclaim. Demonstrating more use of electronic instruments and computer manipulation than The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi is widely considered to be The Flaming Lips' first critical and commercial success after nearly twenty years of existing as a band. The final track on the album, "Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)" earned a 2002 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, and the album was certified gold on April 10 2006. In March 2007, the band revealed that they have recently teamed up with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to produce a Broadway musical based on the album.

Both The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots have been released on DVD-Audio for an enhanced listening experience.

Recent activity (At War with the Mystics and beyond)

After Yoshimi, The Flaming Lips released two EPs in the same vein of their previous album's robotic theme and containing remixed songs from Yoshimi, Fight Test and Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell. They also appeared on the track "Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun)" on the Thievery Corporation album The Cosmic Game. In addition to their EPs, The Lips have been working for several years on a feature film entitled Christmas on Mars. Filming for the movie ended in late September 2005 and it is now in post-production. [1]

File:ZooAmpitheatre.png
Advertisement for The Flaming Lips' performance at Zoo Amphitheatre, Oklahoma.

In 2002, they performed as the opening act, as well as the backup band for singer Beck on his Sea Change tour. In the summer of 2004, it was announced that The Flaming Lips would appear among the headliners on the 2004 Lollapalooza tour, alongside such legendary artists as Sonic Youth and Morrissey; however, the tour was canceled due to lack of revenue. Following the concerts' cancellation, the band entered Tarbox Road Studio with producer Dave Fridmann and began work on their eleventh album, the more organic-sounding At War with the Mystics. The record, aimed to be a more guitar-based and heavier effort than recent albums, featured more politically-conscious lyrics than any of their previous releases, and was released in April 2006 to a mixed yet mostly positive reception. Also in 2004, the band recorded the song "SpongeBob and Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy" for the soundtrack of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.

In 2005 the band was the subject of a documentary called Fearless Freaks, featuring appearances by other artists and celebrities such as The White Stripes, Beck, Christina Ricci, Liz Phair, Juliette Lewis, Steve Burns, and Adam Goldberg. In that same year, The Flaming Lips contributed a version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" to the album Killer Queen: A Tribute to Queen. Also in this year, The Flaming Lips released the DVD VOID (Video Overview in Deceleration), which chronicles all of their ventures into music video that have been produced since they signed with Warner Bros. in 1991. In October 2005, The Flaming Lips recorded a cover of "If I Only Had a Brain" for the soundtrack of the video game Stubbs the Zombie, which features modern rock bands covering songs from the 1950s and 1960s. Additionally, the band released one new song, "Mr. Ambulance Driver", for the soundtrack of the 2005 film Wedding Crashers (a slighly edited version of the song found its way on the new record). In October of 2005, the band performed a concert with several other acts, including Medeski Martin & Wood, Particle, and G Love & Special Sauce onboard a Carnival cruise ship in the Pacific Ocean in a music festival called Xingolati.

The band released two singles from At War With the Mystics: "The W.A.N.D.", which was originally put out as a download-only single in early 2006, and "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song", which became their highest-charting single on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at #16. A 4-track EP, entitled It Overtakes Me, was released later in the UK that year. The only instrumental on the album, "The Wizard Turns On... The Giant Silver Flashlight and Puts on His Werewolf Moccasins," earned a 2006 Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance [5], making it twice in a row the Lips have been nominated in that category and won.

Following the April 4, 2006 release of At War with the Mystics, the band began a tour to support the album in the United Kingdom, including a finale at the Royal Albert Hall and performances at the 02 Wireless Festival. At the Leeds England date of the festival, the band opened for The Who, whom they are long standing fans of. A tour of the US with Sonic Youth, Ween, and other artists followed. They also played at the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival in Lawrence, Kansas in June 2006, the Hedgpeth festival in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, Chicago's Lollapalooza festival, Austin City Limits Music Festival in September 2006 and Voodoo Music Fest in New Orleans in late October. In November 2006, they returned to the UK for a short tour.

The band continued to tour throughout the fall of 2006 stopping in Montreal, Atlantic City's House of Blues, The University of Vermont in Burlington, their hometown Oklahoma City, Austin, Texas, and New York City, NY as well as several other cities. The homecoming show in Oklahoma City was performed at the Zoo Amphitheater and included the unveiling of a new UFO stage prop, and would provide footage for the U.F.O.s at the Zoo concert DVD.

On December 5, 2006, Oklahoma City honored the band with a downtown alley named after the band. Vince Gill and Charlie Christian were also given street names by the city.

In the spring of 2007, The Flaming Lips went on a tour of the southeast, specifically Florida. Cities played were Pompano Beach, Orlando, St. Petersburg (Janus Landing), and a free show in Gainesville (University of Florida) in which over 4,000 students attended. On April 18, 2007 they performed to a sell-out crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina and outdoors at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island on April 21, 2007 along with other veteran rockers Mission of Burma and Yo La Tengo.

Their most recent festival appearance was at Bonnaroo 2007 in Manchester, Tennessee on June 17, 2007 (where they played a full-version War Pigs 90 minutes prior to their midnight show, which they told the audience was "just a sound test" but was seen as a continuance of their oddity and love of their audiences). They are scheduled to play the Cactus Festival in Brugge, Belgium on July 9, 2007 and the Monolith Festival at Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Denver, Colorado on September 15, 2007.

Awards

  • Nominated: (2007) for Best International Act.

Members

  • Current
  • Former
  • Mark Coyne – vocals (1983-1985)
  • Dave Kostka – drums (1983-1984)
  • Richard English – drums, vocals, piano (1984-1988)
  • Jonathan Donahue – guitars (1988-1991)
  • Nathan Roberts – drums (1988-1991)
  • John Mooneyham – guitars (one month in 1991)
  • Ronald Jones – guitars (1991-1996)

Discography

Main article: The Flaming Lips discography

Footnotes and references

  1. ^ "Flaming Lips Grammy Page". Retrieved 2007-03-21.
  2. ^ DeRogatis, Jim. Staring at Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma’s Fabulous Flaming Lips. Broadway Books, 2006. ISBN-13 978-0-7679-2140-4
  3. ^ Part 4: Exploiting the major label, retrieved 8-2006
  4. ^ flaminglips.com; retrieved 8-2006
  5. ^ "Flaming Lips Win Two Grammies!". Retrieved 2007-03-04.

Official sites

Photo galleries

News

Interviews

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Flaming_Lips&oldid=143902218"