Zaireeka was meant to challenge the norms of recorded music, as The Flaming Lips’ recorded it with the intention of having listeners play it on four different turntables and home sound systems at once, which the band accomplished themselves on their accompanying tour. #THE FLAMING LIPS TOUR FULL#Through their supremely humanistic and, at times, atypical view of the world and the contemporary state of music, they’ve created records like Zaireeka (1997), a scatterbrained noise rock experiment full of nods to science fiction, urban legends, and their extremely nuanced observations on the human condition through improbable fictional scenarios. The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne © George Salisburyįor me, I always say The Flaming Lips, we’re doing exactly what we want to do in that time, and no one stops us.įormed in 1983, The Flaming Lips have released sixteen studio albums in their storied career, and to say they’ve gone down most stylistic avenues at least once in their history would be the understatement of the century. The Flaming Lips’ music is an extension of their own lives and the two cannot be separated they look to be the direct conduit to a listener’s deeply lived emotions and spiritual lifeblood, thereby familiarizing themselves with their fanbase on an unprecedented level. Their work, while reflecting several genres and moods over their career, is marked by a very personalized human touch that gets lost in translation with other bands, who opt for distance between themselves and their audience. He’s impervious to any singular categorization or pigeonhole and he appears to prefer it that way, at one point saying, “I’m not necessarily proud of this, but I’m just a creative weirdo.” That’s most likely true even in its pure humility, but Coyne himself doesn’t realize what he represents to legions of fans across the world and the overarching legacy of music itself.Ĭoyne’s empathetic, down-to-earth, yet enigmatic nature has been a driving force behind The Flaming Lips’ one-of-a-kind artistic roadmap for the better part of four decades. Whether he’s embodying a normal guy, an informal philosopher, a dizzying rock iconoclast or an omniscient poet, Wayne Coyne is one of the most captivating figures in music today. The affable Oklahoma family man? The heady former stoner with a staggeringly creative mind and finely-tuned emotional intellect? The daring conceptualist behind some of popular music’s most confounding and influential works? The next thirty minutes will make it abundantly clear, as Coyne is all of those things and more. I wonder which side of Coyne I’m encountering at the moment and which sides of him I may encounter throughout the interview. While we exchange pleasantries and I begin to reconcile this personality on the other side of the phone, I’m once again overcome by the nagging feeling that the total essence of this person is eluding me. To my surprise, I’m patched through and greeted warmly by the welcoming voice of a humble midwesterner, who’s sitting in the driveway outside his Oklahoma residence and describing to me the brilliant sunset he’s been observing. His reputation precedes him as a timeless artist and elder statesman of indie rock who possesses a bit of elusive, shaman-like mystery, an intangible quality that seems both prophetic and slightly intimidating to those who have the privilege of experiencing it, and I’m worried I may have difficulty capturing his true essence. I’ve pored over every interview he’s given on the virtual press tour for The Flaming Lips’ latest album, American Head, and am not entirely sure what to expect. I’m sitting in my house by the phone one Friday night, thrice-revised list of questions in hand, anxiously waiting to speak with Wayne Coyne, lead vocalist and frontman of hallowed psychedelic rock band-for-the-ages The Flaming Lips. I’m not necessarily proud of this, but I’m just a creative weirdo. “Assassins of Youth” (live) – The Flaming Lips Wayne Coyne, leader of Oklahoma psych-rock outfit The Flaming Lips, dives into their new record ‘American Head’, an exhaustive meditation that covers the full spectrum of our lived humanity.
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