This past weekend I went to, by my count, my 10th Flaming Lips show. This has been ten shows over 16 years and in that time I've come to realize that The Flaming Lips provide me with all the religion I need. Their shows have evolved into an event wherein the charismatic man on stage rids you of your problems, instills you with peace, happiness and a goodwill toward your fellow man through song, strange dancing creatures and confetti. You leave a Flaming Lips show smiling, walking on air, with perspective on your place in the world and a certain contentment with your own mortality -- and that's more than I can say for any religion with a federal tax break.
The first show was the infamous Polish American Beach Club show out in Gardner, Massachusetts that resulted in a lawsuit due to a guy getting some Stone Temple Pilot's bass in his face. That was back in 1993, before the Lips reached their full potential but were embarking on one of the most important chapters of their lives, the She Don't Use Jelly years. They were endearingly rough around the edges in those days; with a wild, thunderous drummer (Steven Drozd), a stoically perma-sunglassed bassist (Michael Ivins) who would often play sitting comfortably in his chair, an exotic guitarist (with the vanilla name of Ronald Jones) who could strangle unheard-of sounds from his guitar, and a grinning, amiable singer (Wayne Coyne) who sounded like Neil Young's twisted brother. They came across as otherworldly long before Christmas on Mars.
A couple years later, after only kinda-sorta seeing them at the '94 Lollapalooza, I would catch a two night stint at Slim's in San Francisco's Mission District and have my first honest to goodness Lips "experience". I was nearly penniless at the time and not yet 21, so even if I could get a beer, or had a decent connection at the time, I was destined to stay sober that night. With the lights in the venue nearly completely off, they came on stage and went into the first notes of the Clouds Taste Metallic album. It's a substantial intro -- I hadn't heard the album yet and just as my eyes were starting to adjust, the tiny club erupts with a wall of soaring music and Christmas lights -- everywhere. There was a big mechanical pinwheel of lights spinning behind Drozd, who I swear was hitting the cymbals with a whiskey bottle at one point during the night. In my mind I picture my hair getting thrown back from the wall of sound a lights coming at me like that guy in the Memorex ad. Instantaneously, I didn't care that I was broke, alone in San Francisco and spending money on a show that should be going towards food. In fact, on my way back to my shitty apartment, I made up my mind I'd be heading back there the next night for the second show. Even though the music had an undercurrent of booze and hallucinogenics behind it, there was something about Wayne that was honest and pure and somehow profound even when singing about giraffes or a "watermelon gun".
That second night was a little different. Towards the end they started taking requests (including "Jesus Shooting Heroin") and you got the impression that this might be the last time you'd be hearing some of these songs for a while. And sure enough, after the tour wrapped up, Ronald left the band. The Lips had been a three piece before, heck -- they'd been down to just two before, but this was different. Transmissions From the Satellite Heart and Clouds were two big steps forward for the band. They were on Warner Brothers Records now and they weren't about to start from step one with another guitarist. In fact, they had a pretty good guitarist in Drozd who, in defiance of every drummer cliché, has a way with pretty much any instrument you put in front of him. While embracing the three-piece line-up would result in some challenges for live gigs, they went into the studio with unhinged ambition.
The Boombox Experiments tour was the result of Zaireeka, a 4 CD album meant to be played on four different stereos. I think I got three going once. Anyway, coming out of the studio with an album designed not to be listened to on headphones is perversely awesome for a band that basically was a studio band during this period and is known for producing sonically lush albums. So to tour in support of this oddity of theirs, they went around the country pulling people from the audience and sitting them down with a boombox containing a tape. There would be 20 people on the right side of the stage and 20 people on the left, Wayne and Steven, in yellow raincoats, would each conduct a side (Michael would man the boards), and with dramatic flourish they would signal for one group to crank the volume, another to slowly lower theirs... I think there was fading involved as well. I caught one show, on my own again, somewhere up in the North Beach area of San Francisco during one of the darker periods of my life. I had no idea what to expect, but after witnessing this amazing audience participatory spectacle in this tiny club, I felt alive again. The creativity on display was inspiring and comforting.
Back in Massachusetts I caught the Boombox act one more time at the Middle East. Knowing what was going to happen, and it being a larger venue this time, made it a little less magical. But being in the know allowed me to get a lot of enjoyment from seeing the reaction the audience had to this experiment. Not only were they rewarding their fans with a spectacular presentation of a difficult album, but they were making 40 lifelong devotees with every stop they made. But soon, they'd be wining them over with one of the best albums of the decade.
In 1999 came The Soft Bulletin. A record I don't think anyone was quite expecting. Partly because by that time not many people were really able to fully grasp what was going on in Zaireeka. Now there are mixed down versions you can find on-line but it was never obvious that Zaireeka was going to be the transition album it is. They emerged on the other side as still ambitious but more focused and embracing the warm tones and majesty that producer Dave Fridmann has come to stand for. Over Bulletin and its predecessor Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots a more mature, albeit still quite playful, world-view came into focus.
Take these song titles for example: "What Is the Light?" ("An Untested Hypothesis Suggesting That the Chemical (In Our Brains) by Which We Are Able to Experience the Sensation of Being in Love Is the Same Chemical That Caused the "Big Bang" That Was the Birth of the Accelerating Universe") and "All We Have Is Now". The lyrics to "Do You Realize" bring these two titles together: Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die / And instead of saying all of your goodbyes / Let them know you realize that life goes fast / It's hard to make the good things last / You realize the sun doesn't go down / It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round
Through the entirety of the Bush administration's bleak 8 years, The Flaming Lips were like traveling goodwill ambassadors keeping hope alive and lifting the spirits of each city they visited. It would be four years until their next album, At War With the Mystics, an album that perhaps suffers a bit by the long break between records, sticking to close to the Yoshimi formula and being too precise in its rallying call against the powers that be at the time. But again, they stayed on point as is clear in songs such as: "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion (The Inner Life as Blazing Shield of Defiance and Optimism as Celestial Spear of Action)" and "It Overtakes Me / The Stars Are So Big... I Am So Small... Do I Stand a Chance?" Sometimes it all translates to, "We may be insignificant, the universe is vast, but there's only one you and there's only so much time we have on this mysterious rock, so let's use the time we have together to defeat the oppressors with our ruthless optimism and love." That's some dogma I can get behind.
Between Yoshimi and At War With the Mystics, The Flaming Lips mastered their live show. What started out with the three-piece using pre-recorded audio and visuals, puppets and fake blood has become a traveling circus type event of impressive magnitude (two percussionists nowadays!). There are always
dancing costumed people on the sidelines, huge balloons filled with confetti thrown out for the audience to pop, smoke cannons, confetti and streamer rockets, lights everywhere and more confetti and more balloons and fantastical images of golden naked dancing ladies -- anything to chase the bad vibes away. Wayne Coyne now presides over these festivities in a nice suit and, as always, his infectious smile.
To put it another way, The Flaming Lips aren't too different from the Wyld Stallyns, the band that would save the world through through rock n' roll and a simple message, "Be excellent to each other." The Lips are certainly proponents of that ideology but it's their embracing of the darkness that really satisfies the soul. Death is always in the margins of their work, if not being contemplated front and center, but it's always treated with understanding and as a way to help you through an inevitable grieving process or as a way to come to terms with your own mortality. Love can hurt as much as it can be the shining light that can destroy all evil -- and even though sometimes evil will prevail, you have to take the good with the bad and try to sleep late when you can because in dreams you can always have it your way. I don't think there's a band out there that better grapples with life's existential crises and puts all the weirdness of the world into perspective. I could go on about how the "Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saved the World" can be my Noah or how Jesus is chronicled in A Priest Driven Ambulance but the point is that, for me, each show is a booster shot of joy to get me through till the next show. And if I were a religious man, that's what I would want my church-going experience to do for me. Their shows and their music is reassurance that I'm not alone in this world, that there are freaks like me and we all just want to get along, get by and hear songs about a Japanese girl saving us from the pink robots. Hi-ya!
