Monday, June 30, 2008

PRM 2.0

Way back in the very early days of Punk Rock Monday I once featured the Flaming Lips. In the last few weeks, l'il wobs has to come fall in love with Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, so I just felt like revisiting some old friends here as well.

The Flaming Lips are by far the trippiest band I've ever gotten into. Not the most psychedelic, mind you - the trippiest. And there trippiness has been super fun to watch evolve.

Take, for example, "Talkin' Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants to Live Forever)." While the seeds of the epic guitar freakout that was to be In a Priest Driven Ambulance are clearly there, this song only hints at the musical weirdness that lay just down the road. [updated: OG PSA - the temporal matters, kids!] But the weirdness is just so goddamn earnest, you kinda got to love it:


Moving ahead to the Transmission era, you can see they've gotten more confident in their showmanship and have married their feedback-driven trippiness to really good, bubblegummy pop songs, like "Turn It On":


In the late 90s, the Lips dedicated themselves to putting on the trippiest spectacle in all of rock 'n roll (they succeeded), and their albums since this time have tended to have been informed by this spectacle, rather than vice versa. Pre-Soft Bulletin cuts don't often find their way into the current show, but when they do... check out the Ambulance era "Mountainside" performed last year:
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4 comments:

  1. ashJune 30, 2008 at 10:33 PM

    thanks for this. the flaming lips (well, hear it is through clouds taste metallic, anyway) exemplify what i think you meant when you asked a couple of saturdays ago about bands that have changed your life. i probably need to think a little more about what this says about me, but their relevance in my life during those years is undeniable.

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  2. ashJune 30, 2008 at 10:35 PM

    "Take, for example, "Talkin' Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants to Live Forever)." While the seeds of the epic guitar freakout that was to be In a Priest Driven Ambulance are clearly there, this song only hints at the musical weirdness that lay just down the road. "

    wait, am i reading this wrong?--didn't Hit to Death in the Future Head come out after In a Priest Driven Ambulance?

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  3. wobblieJuly 1, 2008 at 12:28 AM

    Oh my gawd. You're right. Why do I always think that song is from Telepathic Surgery? One strikethrough, coming up!

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  4. drJuly 1, 2008 at 10:52 AM

    THE FLAMING LIPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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