Interesting piece about vinyl

[kjohnsonhp]

Have you tried playing the Flaming Lips "Zaireeka" 4-cds on 4 different CD Players/stereos at the same time? Now there a reason for a bunch of Klipsch owners to get their gear together...ha,ha.. See below. NOTE: South by Southwest in Austin is a great opportunity to see a variety of under the radar bands all in one night by going from club to club.

Here's the interesting description of the 4-cd set from the Oklahoma City nuts...FLAMING LIPS

A combination of the words "Zaire" and "Eureka," Zaireeka is a term coined by Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne symbolizing the fusion of anarchy and genius. It's a perfect title; Zaireeka is the culmination of the Lips' helter-skelter brilliance. Pushing the concept of interactive listening into new realms of possibility, the work extends Coyne's infamous "parking lot experiments" into not merely one album, but four separate discs that can be played separately or in groups of two, three, and four with multiple stereos. (Properly synchronized multi-disc playback requires more than one person it's literally a party album.) Between combining the discs and toying with volume, balance, fidelity, etc., the options are truly limitless. No two multi-disc performances can be repeated, thanks to the space-time continuum and discrepancies from one CD player to another. Musically as well as conceptually, the Lips are defiantly experimental throughout Zaireeka; individually, each disc sounds more like free jazz than pop, although Coyne's diamond-sharp melodic sensibilities prevail even during the most chaotic moments. With each additional disc, the music's force and ingenuity reveals itself: "Riding to Work in the Year 2025 (Your Invisible Now)" is an epic orchestral noise suite, "Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair" is a multi-narrative plane-crash drama remarkably evocative in its depiction of fear and chaos, and "How Will We Know? (Futuristic Crashendos)" features such extreme high and low frequencies that it can lead to disorientation, confusion, or nausea (the track is not recommended to be played while operating a motor vehicle or in the presence of infants). Logistical nightmares aside, Zaireeka is a dense, difficult work, recommended only for the hardiest Flaming Lips fetishists; however, they're in for the musical experience of a lifetime. Jason Ankeny

[Chris Robinson]

Aaaahhhhhh !!!! What little hair I have is on fire !!!

[mobile homeless]

Ken, interesting review! Heh....

Now if only I could share the enthusiasm for Wayne Coyne, who I will nominate as the most annoying, contrived stage presence I have seen after the Lemonheads Evan Dando, who once played with a ski cap pulled down till over the top of his eyes, so he had to tilt his head back to see past his black Chuck Taylor's....

The Flaming Lips get all sorts of great press. I liked them in the 80s when a bit less sure of themselves and raw. But somewhere along the line, Wayne Coyne became the most contrived centerpiece to a band that I can barely stomach live unless loaded with enough drugs and alcohol to render any coherent vision of his being completely NULL and VOID; mainly since his antics remind me of someone constantly looking at himself from 10 feet away and saying:

"Wow...that's kind of cool...yea...I look pretty cool here...maybe if I purse my lips and close my right eye...yeaaaahhhh... damn, now I will hold both hands in air in feigned question while stating obscure lyric to suddenly TWIRL like a whirling dervish...YEAhh! Christ, I am cool."

The last time I saw them was in a great quadruple Plus bill with The amazing band "Cornelius" who followed ICU. Then came Robyn Hitchcock of all people. I love Robyn to death but the man owes everything he has done to Syd Barrett. Sebadoh followed Hitchcock. I loved them for many years but when Lou Barlow moved to LA from the Boston area, it was all over(how does anyone recover from living in LA?}. By the time the Flaming Lips came on to wild applause, I was in a stupor. My wife looked over at me after 5 minutes and yelled over the din: "This guy is a F***ing idiot." I was so proud of her for noticing since it was her first time seeing any of this stuff. Ole eagle eye Audrus.

Flaming Lips do have some inventive stuff out recently. But lord, their music strikes me as completely contrived with no soul, nothing REAL, and a mere characature of INVENTION, almost like a clan of Gibbons blindly drawing on a blank canvas and claiming it "abstract art." Perhaps this is a bit harsh. But I just find them painfully contrived and self-aware in the worst sense of the words.

A good friend of mine thinks they are ruled by genius. Just typing that out made me come close to losing consciousness....

kh

[Chris Robinson]

Man, you have to love this thread ... It's educational and totally brain-numbing for an outsider looking in ... especially someone laced as tightly as I am. Hell, I just lost my virginity last year.

I have "special" Massachusetts plates with stick children flying kites. I wonder if I can get "Sukpatch" put on there as a special vanity feature?

Manhole out.

[mobile homeless]

HEHEHHHEH.... Man, that was the funniest post you have ever written...or at least in the last 48 hours! That "stick children" line is an all-timer. God, I laughed aloud at that.

kh

[synthfreek]

The newest Flaming Lips album is without a doubt the best thing they've done in 10 years.

[mobile homeless]

I just got finished watching the Flash videos from their site.

"the name is Yoshimi. She's a black belt in karate.

Working for the city, she had to discipline her body

cause she knows its demanding to defeat those evil machines

I know she can defeat them.

Yoshimi they don't believe me. Cause you wont let those robots beat/eat me etc"

This stuff almost makes me angry. It's that bad to me.

They are precious. Contrived. Vapid. Absolutely with NO depth, even in the adjusted depth scale of anti-depth... Their whole style and delivery makes me want to reach for a rubber mallet to take to my own temple.

I cant tell you how bad I think this is.

But I know plenty like it.

kh

[skaloumbakas]

ARCO sent me a link about Simon Yorke's views on the future of audio, which I thought I share with you. Read it, is very nice!

[reluctant carnivore]

hey mobile.

you are beginning to begin to impress me.

i just spent the last 4 hours seeing tortoise, sparklehorse, and the seconds.

i have been into tortoise for years and this was my first time seeing them.

you mentioned that your list was long, and from the looks of it i am sure you are familiar with sparklehorse. cat power has a new album coming out near the end of the month. what do you think of the band califone(basically red red meat reformed)?

i think the are one of the best rock bands of the last 10 years.

i hate to recommend anything to you, however,

the band ISIS has a new release called oceanic. this is heavy music and the album is appropriately titled. it is heavy(i like heavy), but this appeals to most of my friends, a lot of whom beg me to stop my other "heavy" records and throw on some cornelius or will oldham.

have you heard godspeed you black emperor?

oh...i could go on on and on...but thats enough for now.

i am ready to be humbled.

[middlecreekguy]

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On 1/10/2003 1:20:41 AM kjohnsonhp wrote:

middlecreekguy,

Do you have any memorabilia from those shows? Posters? Auotgraphs? Photos? Tapes? Fanzines? I wish I would have taken more pictures and got more signed hand bills, lps etc. ... of course then I wouldn't have been fully drenched in sweat and having a good time.

What region where you in? Local bands were a big part of the scene and depending on where you were from you probably had a slightly different perspective. MINN, BOSTON, DC, LA, SF, NY, AUSTIN, ATHENS, NC, etc. I have a thing for all the local Boston bands of my college days...even some of the poppier ones. I saw shows at places like THE LIVING ROOM, RAT, CHANNEL, RALPHS, INMAN SQUARE MENS BAR, SPIT and colleges.

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Sorry I did not get back to you right away kjohnsonhp. The only thing I have from all of those shows are good memories and a few t-shirts. Most of the shows were at "Bogarts" in Cincinnati Ohio, and right across the river in Newpot, I mean Newport,KY at a place called "The Jockey Club". I have never been the type to ask people for their autograph. I just don`t like to put people on the spot. And at all of those shows back then, the performers were in the crowd before and after the show. I was just happy to be standing at the bar when they were there. I do have an autographed flyer by "Jason and the Scorchers", that some friends got signed for me. I saw them the next two times they came around. The same friends got an REM bootleg signed for me(`82), also. Stupid me gave it away a couple years later. I`ve got a Minuteman, Meat Puppet, Husker, Gang Of Four t`s. I do have a great Mike Watt story that is too long to tell right now. The first time I saw them,we got there really early. D was taking a nap on the stage and Mr Watt was at the bar. The place was pretty empty and we were getting served by the bartender when this guy speaks up that`s sitting at the bar. He says he is in the band. We ask which band. When he told us, we almost pissed our pants. We started talking about the music business and how bad radio sucked and the next thing you know, the four of us are driving around listening to the Velvet Underground(that`s what Mr Watt picked out of our tape case) and pulling in to a Subway to satisfy our sudden hunger from.....uh....riding around. It made their music that much more real that night. Because we new these guys were just ordinary average guys, just like Joe Walsh says. I saw Mr Watt again after D`s accident. He was playing with Firehose. He is such a nice guy. The Minutemen and the other SST bands are so responsible for the success of so many `90s bands. Hey. Guess I had time to tell that story after all.