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: METALLICA-Kill ‘Em All (1983).
Although I don’t think I remember exactly when this disc came out, I was pretty big into heavy metal (the heavier the better) back in 1983. I can remember this was my freshman year of high school, and I’m fairly certain I bought this LP pretty soon after it came out (thanks to the awesome radio show mu-mu-mu-mu-mu-metal shop).
SOUNDTRACK: BEN FOLDS-University A Capella (2009).
The story goes that Ben Folds heard some a capella bands and decided to give them some airtime. So he had them record a bunch of his songs.
SOUNDTRACK: THE DEAD MILKMEN-Stoney’s Extra Stout (Pig) (1995).
Of course, I can’t forget the Milkmen’s final release! But, in fact, I had forgotten about it, so much so that when I played it again, I was totally surprised to realize that I knew and liked a number of these songs quite a bit.
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: New Moon Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2010).
Back in the 90s, it seemed like every week there was a new soundtrack featuring an unreleased song from some great alt rock band. This meant huge sales for soundtracks, even if for the most part they weren’t solid start to finish. In fact, mostly you got three great new songs, three pieces of rubbish, one great song by a band you’d never heard before and two or three okay tracks.
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.
[READ:April 19, 2010] Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself [Afterword]
I Just Read About That... 