SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS AND HEADY FWENDS-“Tasered and Maced” (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.
The final song of the album features Chris Martin from Coldplay on the vinyl release. But it’s something else entirely on digital releases. This is the digital song.
This song is a slow echoing piano-based song that opens with some very familiar lyrics:
Imagine there’s no Heaven, it’s easy if you try
Despite the lyrics, the melody is nothing like “Imagine” In fact he changes it to his own very Lips-ian idea:
No hell below us, you don’t go anywhere when you die
(I don’t want you to die and I don’t want me to die)
A new melody is added between verses.
Then after the second verse Chris Martin from Coldplay starts singing. his voice is distant and echoed
And after all we’re only roses when we die, oh, I don’t want to say goodbye
After all we’re only roses in the sky, oh, I don’t want to say goodbye
He sings for all of twenty seconds before Wayne comes back.
I rather wish Chris martin was more prominent , but it is an amusing cameo.
This is such a better album-ender than “Maced and Tasered,” I can’t imagine why they replaced it (I’ll assume it has something to do with Coldplay lawyers).
[READ: August 20, 2019] “Thyroid Diary”
I have a soft spot for Lydia Davis. I like her sense of humor and how she works with the mundanity of existence.
But sometimes her stories are too much diary entry and not enough story. This one is called a diary, but the New Yorker claims it is fiction. So which is it? It’s a mildly interesting diary entry (but not focused enough). However, it’s not very interesting as fiction at all.
I did enjoy the first part. They are going to a party at their dentists’s house. The dentist’s his just earned enough credits at the local college to have graduated. She has been taking tutorials with the narrator’s husband.
I enjoyed her puzzling out the economics:
I paid the dentist and he presumably gave his wife the money for her courses at the college; she paid the college, the college paid my husband for the tutorial and then my husband gave me the money for the dentist.
That was pretty interesting. I’d have liked to see that investigated further.
But instead she goes off in different directions.
The dentist is actually having two parties over the course of two weeks. The narrator and her husband are the only people invited to both parties. The second is for his wife. The first one is for a person who is going off on a long sea voyage. She had forgotten which party they were going to.
She explains that her poor memory is likely due to her under active thyroid–slow thinking is a symptom, She does not think he mind is moving any more slowly than usual.
Although she does recall an evening when she kept forgetting whose turn it was at the board game they were playing.
She believed that the body could cure itself through the right diet and attitude, but she does not believe her body can cure her thyroid.
She thinks maybe her brain is just working more slowly–so her work will take longer to finish. Maybe her thyroid is making her feel more pessimistic about the world, too.
There’s some sidetracks about her husband’s garden (confusing–although I found the part about the woodchuck interesting) and about the school.
I also enjoyed her talking about her translating work. I’m fascinated by the work of translators and wish she’d spend more time on that
But instead, it ends with her talking about the book they were going to give to the person going sailing. The last line is literally her wondering why that book is so often in second-hand books stores and at library sales.
That’s it. very unsatisfying. And if it’s supposed to be like reading someone;s diary, there are most likely far more interesting diaries to read.
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