SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS AND HEADY FWENDS-“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (2012).
2012 saw the release of this very strange collaborative album. Whether The Flaming Lips had entered the mainstream or if people who’d always liked them were now big stars or maybe they all just liked doing acid. Whatever the case, The Lips worked with a vast array of famous (and less famous) people for this bizarre album. Here it is 8 years later. Time to check in.
This is, indeed a cover of Roberta Flack’s song.
It’s not often that a cover is so willfully defiant of the original without actually trying to mess with it.
This is a ponderous, ten-minute version of the song, punctuated by loud, echoing drumbeats keeping a slow pace. The music is essentially distorted electronic chord changes on the beats and occasional twinkling keyboard notes throughout.
The song is sung in the audio equivalent of soft-focus by Erykah Badu.
It is a hard song to parse. Badu’s voice sounds great. The contrast to the original music is stark and yet it is sonically more interesting than the treacly original. On the other hand, it is long and, if the mood is wrong, slow and boring.
It’s a song I thought I would likely skip were I listening to the whole disc, and yet listening to it right now, the 10 minutes went by like nothing. So maybe it is pretty great after all.
[READ: June 15, 2019] “Interesting Women”
Interesting women–are we ever going to be free of them?
So starts this story of an interesting woman.
She is concerned because all new acquaintances
seem to be gorgeous lesbians or bisexuals whose intoxicating charm fed straight into hot wet tumbles between rented sheets.
The narrator is on holiday with her daughter, Basia, in Thailand. Their hotel is swimming with interesting women.
The narrator and Basia are kayaking when an interesting woman approaches them. She is in her fifties, looking good without pushing it. The woman asks how hard it is and then says that kayaking is on her list of things to do that scare her, The woman’s name is Silver, well, its one of her real names.
They chat for a bit (the woman’s backstory is humorously fleshed out). Indeed, this story is full of amusingly phrased observations. Like
Basia is as tall as I am, and wears larger a shoe, she s one of the new, giant breed of American children created by over-nurturing parents.
The women stare at the beach as men approach. One of the men is a
black guy with a shaved head and a body that makes you realize that sometimes just a body is enough.
Basia is embarrassed and says not to stare at him, but Silver assures her that men who look like that are used to being stared at.
At dinner Basia says she thinks Silver is cool.
The next day the narrator says, “one of my weak points as Simon continually tells me is my incorrigible curiosity.”
This leads her to agree take a taxi into town to going shopping with Silver.
It started off poorly with the narrator and the taxi driver having to wait and extra fifteen minutes for Silver to show.
Then Silver tells her that she wants to find a place to get a colonic irrigation. The narrator is aghast: “Enemas? You’re crazy!”
Silver says the body cant be separated from the spirit–you can’t reach enlightenment unless you body is clean
The narrator retorts that it sounds like “getting buggered for your health.”
But Silver cannot be offended. She says there are two places she wants to check out. The first one does not live up to their standards, so she goes in search of Cornelia, an American woman who runs a retreat in the bush. She’s the best…if you can find her. (Cornelia went to Wellesley, you know).
They finally find Cornelia. The narrator instantly dislikes her, but Cornelia and Silver act like they have known each other forever.
The narrator has to break it up because she has to get back to Basia. But Silver makes an appointment for the next day.
When the narrator gets to the hotel Basia says she was worried that her mother wasn’t coming back and that she would be stuck watching An Evening with Aerosmith.
When she tells Basia about Silver’s plan, Basia says,
“Oh God Mom–you mean she’s going around looking for places to get he ass washed out?”
“Don’t use crude words to show off.”
The story ens a little unsatisfying, with Silver going off and the narrator waiting for an other interesting woman to show up.
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