SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS & STARDEATH AND WHITE DWARFS featuring HENRY ROLLINS and PEACHES doing The Dark Side of the Moon (2010).
You’ve got to have balls to cover the most popular album of all time. Everyone knows Dark Side of the Moon, according to Billboard charts everyone probably owns a copy of Dark Side of the Moon. So, you’re taking on a pretty big task here. But the Flaming Lips aren’t called The Fearless Freaks for nothing.
What delights me about this album is that it is utterly unfaithful to the original. There’s nothing worse than a cover song that just apes the original version. With that in mind, the Lips have put their bizarro stamp on the classic album, oftentimes rendering the songs almost unrecognizable–but more on that in a moment.
The two guest stars on the disc are Henry Rollins and Peaches. Rollins recites all the spoken word bits from the original. He actually makes a lot of those weird ramblings clear for me for the firs time. The originals were spoken by a (presumably) high Englishman. Rollins’ delivery is much more abrasive (but then so is the music). It works pretty well, especially since Rollins’ laugh is maniacal, although if he sounded a bit more drunken I think it would work even better. Peaches sings a few of the female vocal bits. I’ve never been much of a fan of hers but, man, she does an awesome job in covering “The Great Gig in the Sky,” the track from the disc that features a wondrous diva singing and screaming her heart out. Peaches really lets loose and showcases the power of her voice.
The Lips play on 7 songs and StarDeath play on 6. They work together on 2 tracks.
StarDeath is fronted by Wayne Coyne’s nephew, Dennis. I’d only heard one track from them before, and I liked it. Dennis’ voice is a higher register, like Wayne, but he’s also a bit more subtle. Musically they are less noisy as well, and it’s a good counterpoint to the static of the Lips’ tracks.
So the opener, “Breathe” (Lips) is distinct right away, because the main focus of this version is a loud throbbing bassline. “On the Run” (Stardeath) is completely indistinguishable from the original. You would never suspect it was a cover. It’s a bass-propelled, very cool song, but there’s almost no similarity.
“Money” (Lips) stays fairly faithful to the original, except that the vocals are totally auto-tuned. It makes the song sound really alien, as if coming, yes, from the other side of the moon.
“Time” (Stardeath) on the other hand, is a very delicate, acoustic track, (sounding somewhat like Mercury Rev, actually). It is something of a counter to the rocking version on the original.
“Us and Them” (Lips) is probably the closest sounding to the original. It has simple washes of sound and Wayne’s delicate voice. But, once again, the louder sections of this song are left out. “Any Colour You Like” (Stardeath) is a much closer instrumental to the original than “On the Run” was. And “Brain Damage” (Stardeath) is really quite spot on (and may be even creepier than the original).
The ender, “Eclipse” is like a distorted indie rock version of the original. It works pretty well.
There’s surprisingly little in the way of sound effects (which are all over the original). I’d have thought they’d populate the disc with all kinds of fun things, but no, they actually play it pretty straight.
My one real complaint about the disc (and actually about Embryonic as well). The Lips have always pushed the envelope of music. But lately, they seem to be redlining a lot of their sounds, making them distort and crackle. Now, I love distortion when it’s used well, but this “too loud” distortion actually hurts my ears, even if the volume is low. I find the sound to be unpleasant, and not in a good way. And I think it’s a shame because the Lips write such great music, that I hate to have it obscured by clouds of noise.
So, yeah, this will never replace the original for anyone. But it’s a fun experiment and actually sounds a bit like a rough demo for the final release. In fact, in many ways it sounds like it’s coming from outer space and may be conceptually more accurate for the title.
I saw The Lips and Star Death on Jimmy Fallon. They played “Breathe” and all eight (or more) guys were on stage. It was a big wonderful mess. And they sounded really good together.
[READ: May 11, 2010] ; or The Whale
In 2007, a book was published called Moby Dick in Half the Time. And, as the title implies, it took Herman Melville’s Moby Dick; or The Whale and truncated it. The editors basically kept in all of the “plot” and excised most of the “wandering” parts of the story.
So, in 2009, Damion Searls decided to print all of the excised material as a book itself. This exercise was published in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 2009 | Vol. XXIX. So, this “book” is Moby Dick without the “plot” or as the introduction puts it, “all Moby, no Dick.”
This book includes “every chapter, sentence, word, and punctuation mark that Anonymous removed to produce [Moby Dick in Half the Time]” (10).
And so what we get is a very surreal story indeed. It comes across as a fascinating look into the mind of the (in this version) not named until Chapter 11 or so narrator (since we’ve obviously lost “Call me Ishmael”). It also comes across in many sections as bizarre poetry.
; or the Whale’s opening line is:
“methodically.” (31). (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: FUGAZI-Steady Diet of Nothing (1991).
Jangly noisy guitars open the track (and then a lengthy silence after a minute or so). And this loud/soft dynamic is pretty dramatic on this disc.
SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Joy (2009).
This is basically Phish’s reunion disc (after a 5 year hiatus). It opens with one of their poppiest songs, “Backwards Down the Number Line” a song that picks up where their least disc left off: with a feeling of driving down a country lane with nowhere to go, windows opens, just happy to be alive. The second track, “Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan” is a delightful rocker with a supremely catchy chorus “got a blank space where my mind should be….”
SOUNDTRACK: ALANIS MORISETTE-Jagged Little Pill (1995).
In this book, DFW considers himself to be absolutely useless when it comes to music. He doesn’t know anything at all. He says he listens to Bloomington country radio stations until he can’t take it anymore and then he switches over to the alt rock station. He’d never even heard of Nirvana until after Cobain’s suicide.
Oh, and by the way, I also grew up watching Alanis on “You Can’t Do That on Television,” so it was pretty exciting to see a child star that I knew make it big.
SOUNDTRACK: VAMPIRE WEEKEND-Contra (2010).
I absolutely loved Vampire Weekend’s debut album (and still do). It was my favorite record of last summer and always makes me think of summer fun and hijinx. Critics trotted out the “world/ethno/Paul Simon” vibe when discussing the album. But I really didn’t hear it. I mean, yes I suppose it was there but the album felt more like a punky ska album of fun.
SOUNDTRACK: THE DEAD MILKMEN-Beelzebubba (1988).
Why the hell do you think they call it a burrow owl anyway?
He almost drowned twice. The first time he was initially mistaken for seaweed as he was floating in the water. (After he had discovered laminaria digitata). He also began to draw seaweed in his book. (The seaweed connection is pretty thorough as he was described as looking like seaweed when he was born). The tourist who saved him was named Vogel. He believed in the general goodness of humanity, but he felt that he was a bad person for initially mistaking Hans for seaweed. Vogel also talked endlessly about the virtues of masturbation (citing Kant as an example). 
SOUNDTRACK: Philadelphia Radio Stations (circa 1990 and 2010)
There’s a Dead Milkmen song called “The Big Sleazy” in which the chorus is
I’ve always been amused by the song, especially when I travel to Philly and hear these stations. That song is from 1990, so 20 years later I’m not sure what the band would think of their new playlists.
Now, I have no idea what XPN was like before, but, yea, I can see that he folk Nazis are in charge. Of course, I rather like that. However, XPN also plays a bunch of artists who are broader than the folk label, so I wonder if they have changed even more since 1990.
SOUNDTRACK: RUSH-Permanent Waves (1979).
When my friend Doug and I were hanging out back in the 80s, we both were getting into Rush at the same time. And because this album was in black and white this was the last Rush LP we bought. Imagine our surprise when it turned out to contain “The Spirit of Radio” one of the best hard rock anthems ever.
I Just Read About That... 
