SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-Hear It Is (1986).
I’ve claimed that I love the Lips, but then I was very harsh about their cover of “White Christmas,” and I noted that I wouldn’t listen to the soundtrack of Christmas on Mars very much. So, I felt I owed them some love. But my recollection of their early stuff was that it was pretty weird and hard to listen to.
And yet, I proved myself wrong. Hear It Is is not the Flaming lips of the early 2000’s. It’s almost like the bratty younger brother of that band. Only Wayne and Michael Ivins are present, and the band is pretty much just guitar, bass and drums. The guitar is distorted and noisy (except when it’s acousticy and mellow). The album doesn’t sound too far out of place for a college radio record in the late 80s.
Except of course that Wayne and the boys are pretty out there. The music is psychedelic, acid inspired and quite punk. So you get songs like “Jesus Shootin’ Heroin” a seven minute epic of heavy riffs and screaming, but also of background “Ahhhh’s”. You also get “With You” a song that starts out like a pretty, acoustic ballad. “Godzilla Flick” is a ballad like no other. And yet despite all of the freakouts and noise, really at this stage what you get is a Led Zeppelin inspired heavy garage band having a lot of fun. To say that this is going to blow your mind would be unfair, but to anyone who says the early stuff is unlistenable, they are totally wrong. Hear It Is is sloppy, punky and a little ridiculous, the ideal incubator for what will become the Lips of 2000.
This CD comes with a cover of “Summertime Blues.” This disc was reissued along with their initial EP and some bonus tracks on the disc Finally the Punk Rockers are Taking Acid.
[READ: 1998 and January 10, 2009] McSweeney’s #1
I have been reading McSweeney’s since its inception. (My copy of this issue even has the two page typed letter that explains the failure of Might magazine and the origins of this one. However, it’s been over ten years since I read the first issues. Given my new perspective on McSweeney’s, and how I read just about everything they release, I thought it was about time to go back to the beginning and proceed through the issues until I meet up where I first started reviewing them.
Issue #1 has many features that are absent in later issues:
First is the cover. This cover is simply filled with words; practically littered with them. There are subtitles, there are jokes, there’s all sorts of things (I mean, just look at the full title of this issue).
Second is the letters column. The difference with this letters column compared to most publications is that they are all (or mostly) nonsense. One comes from an author whose piece is accepted into the issue (Morgan Phillips). Another is a funny/silly letter from Sarah Vowell. And there’s a letter to his cousin from John Hodgman (whose comic potential may not have been tapped at this point?). (more…)
I Just Read About That... 