Celebrating Wayne Coyne in advance of his 63rd birthday tomorrow. —Ed.
Yeah, yeah, I know. The Flaming Lips’ 1999 LP The Soft Bulletin is brilliant. A masterpiece released just as the sun was going down on the Twentieth Century. But for my money—which unfortunately happens to be in worthless depression era German Reichsmarks—the Oklahoma band released its finest work between 1986 and 1995, before they went and got themselves domesticated.
The Soft Bulletin is a warm and fuzzy album for warm and fuzzy people looking for an uplifting musical experience. Earlier Flaming Lips albums featured songs like “Talkin’ ‘Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants to Live Forever),” Unconsciously Screamin,'” Jesus Shootin’ Heroin,” and “Evil Will Prevail.”
If The Soft Bulletin is a hug-your-neighbor ecstasy trip, LPs like 1989’s Telepathic Surgery and 1992’s Hit to Death in the Future Head are LSD trips—you might find instant enlightenment or, conversely, locked in a Porta-John at your local music festival, because demons are pursuing you and you need somewhere to hide.
I attended a few Soft Bulletin-era shows, and they were joyous affairs—Grateful Dead concerts minus the home tapers. The concertgoers around me had the glassy-eyed look of true converts. The only song that’s ever left me glassy-eyed is Sammy Johns’ “Chevy Van,” which ought to qualify as a world religion. Your Flaming Lips idolater is a fanatic, and fanatics can be very dangerous people.
Which is why I prefer albums like 1989’s Telepathic Surgery. It doesn’t hurt that the LP’s title sounds like the name of a Blue Öyster Cult song. But what really wins me over are song titles like “Hare-Krishna Stomp Wagon,” “Hell’s Angel’ Cracker Factory,” and “Redneck School of Technology.” And the songs are as strange as the titles. A fair number of Flaming Lips fans would hide in a Porta-John to escape them.
Opener “Drug Machine in Heaven” is Black Sabbath crossed with the Butthole Surfers–a metallic KO powered by the twisted guitar tone (love the solo) of vocalist Wayne Coyne, who begins the song with the chipper lines “Every time that we fly together/Our plane blows up in the sky.” “Right Now” has a herky-jerky rhythm reminiscent of the Minutemen and the power chords of Pete Townshend; the sorta love song “Chrome Plated Suicide” opens with squalls of guitar feedback and noise, after which Coyne tosses off lines like “’Cause love is something that you can’t see/It’s like telepathic surgery/And it cuts and scrapes/Just like Iggy Pop thrown in a hole.” I doubt we’ll hear a John Legend cover anytime soon.
On the metallic (and really rather catchy) “Hare-Krishna Stomp Wagon” Coyne turns garage rocker singing about “turnin’ down existence.” I love the head-scratching lines “I got this gasoline/I didn’t know what I mean.” I suspect what he means is arson as a cure for tedium: “I wish that something would happen/Just so I’d get a reaction.”
The spoken word “U.F.O. Story” is just what it purports to be: Coyne relating his earliest childhood memory, which just happens to be seeing six U.F.O.’s flying in formation. He goes on for a while before saying “and they made this really weird sound, I mean I’ll never forget, they made this sound, and it sounded like this, like this, like this,” at which point the band segues into the revving choppers of “Redneck School of Technology,” on which we get opera, monstrous power chords, and twisted guitar nose ala Sonic Youth, giving one the impression the trio recorded it while on nine counteracting illicit substances at once.
“Shaved Gorilla” has an “All Tomorrow’s Parties” meets the Byrds vibe; the storyline such as it is opens with the Flaming Lips buying a gorilla a motorcycle and ends with the lines “I swear if God only let us/We would change it/We don’t care that much now.” Resignation? Apathy? Indifference? Or a combination of all three? “Miracle on 42nd Street” opens with a spin of the radio dial before evolving into a slow acoustic guitar drone. It is, believe it or not, a love song.
On the rip-it-up garage rocker “Fryin’ Up” apathy once again rears its ugly head: “I want to move you but I just don’t care/Get to pushing on an electric chair.” The fifty-three second “The Spontaneous Combustion of John,” Coyne seems to be suggesting that Captain Marvel had something to do with John’s demise. The Flaming Lips revisit the Velvet Underground/Byrds drone on “The Last Drop of Morning Dew” and boy is Coyne a bummer: ‘Cause God fucked up when he made us/’Cause he made us so we could hate us/And the world could end in a second.” “Begs and Achin’” is a savage fuzz guitar freak-out that evolves into a lovely repeated riff over which Coyne plays beatific guitar. It’s hard to know whether the crowd applause at song’s close is real or canned, but either way I’m applauding too.
On “Five Star Mother Superior Rain” from 1990’s In a Priest Driven Ambulance, Coyne sings, “My hands are in the air/And that’s where they always are/You’re fucked if you do, and you’re fucked if you don’t/Five stop mother superior rain.” It’s a mighty long way from there to the blissed-out songs on The Soft Bulletin. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, unless you’re one of those people who subscribe to the belief that you’re fucked if you do and fucked if you don’t.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
