![]() ![]() Their relentless enthusiasm for fresh sounds and Wayne Coyne’s lyrical concerns about life on this big-blue-rock-floating-in-space make for a captivating listening experience. On record, the Lips deftly balance the whimsical with the existential. I’m a grown-ass adult with grown-ass adult problems and my patience for twee is thin. ![]() I worried too that I had moved beyond the ability to fully enjoy the Lips’ live experience. Even for a band known for outlandish ideas, this seemed desperate. It didn’t help that a couple days before the Eugene show, it was announced that the band wanted to release an album pressed with Cyrus’ urine. The Lips’ schtick in the Miley Cyrus-era seems to be tilting towards “wild” and “edgy” bullshit rather than the inspired insanity of previous eras what seemed like a one-off goof with a pop star has gone on uncomfortably long. When I mentioned to a friend that I would finally get to see them live, he mused, “It might be too late.” The same thought had crossed my mind. Video of the performances are readily available online, but like most sound-art they don't quite do the work justice.The Flaming Lips have long been one of my white whale live bands, i.e., a band that I love that still tours that I have never seen in concert. Soon after, the band began staging " Parking Lot Experiments," passing out cassettes to first Oklahoma City locals, then SXSW patrons who would then broadcast the tape's contents from their own cars as Coyne conducted them. The story as reported by Jukee is that the idea came to Wayne Coyne around the time the band was starting to get big: Leaving one night after a show, he was struck by the sound of the band's music being broadcast by an entire parking lot full of cars. Instructions even encouraged omitting discs to further tailor the listening experience.īut the prelude to "Zaireeka" was even more interesting. What interested the band, apart from forced communal listening, was the fact that each play-through would be somewhat out of sync, and therefore wholly unique. And though his instrument was reportedly unplugged for the performance, Timberlake was still committed enough to not only spend the week studying his part but also give himself blood-blisters during the actual taping.Ī precursor to the band's later surround sound releases, "Zaireeka" came on four CDs to be played by four stereo systems (for a total of eight output channels - more than what most films utilize) synchronized by four friends pressing play at the same time (as reviewed by CNET). For Timberlake however, hot off his first foray into being a serious solo artist (via BBC music), the move was a first step in showing listeners he also had a hip and fun side. Marking The Flaming Lips' first brush with music royalty (though they'd previously also been joined by Ted Dansen), audiences on both sides of the Atlantic were stunned when an anonymous plush dolphin removed its head to reveal an actual pop-star inside.įor Lips fans, the stunt simply added a new dimension to the band's care-free persona. The two got to talking, as Timberlake is a big fan, so naturally Coyne invited him to join them for a live tape performance later that week. In the aftermath, Donahue amicably split with Coyne and company, but his short stint with them left an impression lasting well into the present.Īccording to Rolling Stone, Justin Timberlake and Coyne met while waiting for separate interviews at the same London radio station. During those sessions, while The Flaming Lips took the day shift (except on "There You Are," allegedly recorded in the middle of the night on an empty freeway), Donahue took the night shift to record Mercury Rev's debut, "Yerself is Steam."īetween "In a Priest Driven Ambulance" and its follow up (also featuring Donahue, as per AllMusic), Mercury Rev blew-up overnight, initiating a bidding war that ultimately ended in a short contract with Columbia Records. That meant first running sound for them before becoming their second guitarist, then engineering the demos for what would eventually become "In a Priest Driven Ambulance." That album would later be recorded at SUNY Fredonia in upstate New York, made possible through a friendship between Donahue and Dave Fridmann who worked for the university. Like George Salisbury, Donahue was a fan of the band who wanted to help out. ![]()
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