The Flaming Lips - Definition and Overview

The band is known for its catchy, dreamy guitar-led melodies, overlaid on signature complex and fast-paced drum beats and accompanied by idiosyncratic usage of samples. They are also known for their bizarre and frequently humorous song and album titles, perhaps the most infamous examples being Due to high expectations... The Flaming Lips are Providing Needles For Your Balloons.. (an EP) and Talkin' Bout The Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants To Live Forever) (a song from Hit To Death In The Future Head).

They languished in relative obscurity for long periods of their history, releasing their first four albums on a minor label (Restless Records) before being picked up by Warner Bros. in 1990. By 1994 they were gaining a respectable cult following and some college radio airplay with their album Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. Strangely enough, Transmissions spawned a top ten Modern Rock hit with "She Don't Use Jelly", peaking at number 9 in 1995. The Lips were even featured on the popular teen television series Beverly Hills 90210 in March of 1995.

Clouds Taste Metallic was released to much critical fanfare in late 1995, though did not achieve the commercial success of its predecessor. Following their experimental Zaireeka (1997), a four-CD album which is intended to be heard by playing all four CDs in four separate CD players simultaneously, the band conducted a series of "boombox experiments", where an orchestra comprising up to 40 volunteers with modified "boombox"-type tape players was "conducted" - directed to vary the volume, speed or tone of the tape they were playing (all of which were made by the band) - by the band's lead member, Wayne Coyne. Though their experimental endeavours received some press, their real breakthrough came with the massively acclaimed 1999 release, The Soft Bulletin. Marrying more traditional catchy melodies with languid synthetic strings, hypnotic, carefully manipulated beats, booming cymbals and oddball, philosophical lyrics (sung much more strongly than on earlier releases), the album was one of the underground hits of the year, widely considered to be one of the best albums of the entire decade.

Several of the band's records are produced by unofficial fourth member Dave Fridmann of Mercury Rev, with whom the Flaming Lips are often compared. Also the LPs In A Priest Driven Ambulance and Hit To Death In The Future Head featured guitarist Jonathan Donahue, who would later go on to form and front for Mercury Rev. The band's current line-up consists of Wayne Coyne, Michael Ivins, and Steven Drozd. The loss of their former guitarist Ronald Jones, after the album Clouds Taste Metallic, brought the band to its current state. In 2002, Q magazine named The Flaming Lips as one of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die".

Recently, they performed as the backup band for singer Beck on his Sea Change tour. In the summer of 2004, it was announced that the Flaming Lips would appear among the headliners on the 2004 Lollapalooza tour, alongside such legendary artists as Sonic Youth and Morrissey; however, the tour was canceled due to lack of revenue. Following the concerts' cancellation, the band entered Tarbox Road Studio with producer Dave Fridmann and began work on their eleventh album, tentatively titled At War With The Mystics.

Discography

Albums

• Hear It Is (1986)
• Oh My Gawd!!! (1987)
• Telepathic Surgery (1989)
• In A Priest Driven Ambulance (1990)
• Hit To Death In The Future Head (1992) (first WB album)
• Transmissions From The Satellite Heart (1993)
• Clouds Taste Metallic (1995)
• Zaireeka (1997)
• The Soft Bulletin (1999)
• Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002)
• At War With the Mystics (2005)

EPs / singles

• The Flaming Lips (1984)
• Drug Machine (1988) (released on Sub Pop)
• Unconsciously Screamin' (1991)
• Yeah, I Know It's A Drag... But Wastin Pigs Is Still Radical (1991) (first WB single)
• She Don't Use Jelly (1993)
• Due to high expectations... The Flaming Lips are Providing Needles For Your Balloons.. (1994)
• Turn It On (1995)
• Bad Days (1995)
• This Here Giraffe (1996)
• Brainville (1996)
• Race For The Prize (1999)
• Waitin' For A Superman (1999)
• Do You Realize?? (2002)
• Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots part 1 (2003)
• Fight Test (2003)
• Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell (2003)

Filmography

• Christmas on Mars (2004)

External link

Official Site (http://www.flaminglips.com/)