SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-Lighting Strikes the Postman: The Flaming Lips Remix (2016).
This release came out on Record Store Day 2016. It is, simply put, the Lips’ album Clouds Taste Metallic but remixed to remove all of the vocals and to highlight all of Ronald Jones’ guitar playing. This was Jones’ last album with the band and he has become pretty reclusive since then.
You can hear the very basic structure of all of the songs–drums, bass and rhythm guitar are all there, but mixed low. The rest of the CD is Jones’ rather unique style of playing–noisy, feedbacky, almost improv-y, but never out of control.
The release also comes with a comic book penned by Wayne Coyne. The comic pretty much explains Jones’ guitar playing.
You see, after the band released the album, Ronald was abducted by aliens. Why would they take him? Because back then he had one of the most elaborate homemade pedal boards on earth. He would hook together an endless amount of gadgets, some that were not meant to go together. One night he connected to a giant antenna. Then while searching for a sound to enhance the ending of “Placebo Head Wound,” he found the sound of the dreaded Zorgodrites’ freaky 2 way radio and boy were they mad.
They came down and took him away and he was never seen from again.
And so that’s what you get. Around 55 minutes of guitar freakouts. But unlike an album of just noisy, weird stuff, this collection is based around songs. Some of the songs are the same length as the final product. Others are a bit longer. The opening track “The Abandoned Hospital Ship” is about three minutes longer than the album version–mostly for Jones’ noodling.
I tried to sync up the disc to the original via Spotfiy with varying degrees of success.
If you know the album pretty well, you’ll recognize the songs–the verses and choruses are in tact, it’s just that you get to hear some wild guitar around those melodies instead of the melodies themselves.
It can be a disconcerting listen if you are expecting to hear the songs, but if you put that aside and just listen to the kind of things Jones is doing it’s a pretty cool exploration of the guitar. But definitely not for everyone.
[READ: October 1, 2020] Cycling: The Craze of the Hour
I love books like this. This is a collection of pamphlets from around the turn of the 20th century, both pro and con for bicycles. The first item is an instruction manual about how to ride a modern bicycle. The second talks about the dangers (to your heart) of riding a bicycle. The third and fourth are humorous stories in which bicycles feature prominently.
The first bicycle was invented at the turn of the nineteenth century but the craze really took of in the 1890s. And so you get:
“The Modern Bicycle (with Practical Illustrations)” (1877) by Charles Spencer
Spencer was an early proponent of the bicycle. In 1869, he rode from Trafalgar Square to Brighton in fifteen hours (Google maps says it should now take you a little over five on a bicycle, so that’s pretty impressive for 1896.)
This instruction manual is fascinating. Now, the bicycle they are talking about is more or less a penny-farthing. The “modern bicycle” may be slightly shorter than a pennyfarthing. And yet, as a person who can ride a bike today, I can”t imagine riding one of these death traps. (more…)
This is another new single from The Flaming Lips’ new, more mellow album American Head.
S. and I saw clipping. open for The Flaming Lips. It was an unlikely pairing to be sure. clipping. are a noisy glitch hop band fronted by Daveed Diggs. Their songs are noisy and violent and more than a little unpleasant.
