FROM THESE LIPS TO YOUR EARS
Band that follows its own rules finally releases ‘Greatest Hits’
The few successful rock bands that have managed to hang together long enough to issue five or six albums on a major label have more than likely already released at least one and sometimes two “best of” compilations.
But Oklahoma City’s own self-described “fearless freaks” don’t follow any record industry rules, not to mention creative conventions.
The Flaming Lips band has been together in one form or another since 1983, issuing 19 full-length albums —
15 of those on Warner Bros. Records — and picked up three Grammys along the way. The band members even made a couple of movies together.
And only now — Friday — are the band is releasing “The Flaming Lips Greatest Hits Vol. 1.” So, what took so long?
“Well we probably would have tried to do that even awhile back,” Lips leader Wayne Coyne said in a recent phone interview. “I don’t think we ever quite found the time to say, ‘OK, let’s do this.’ I think it was connected with the ability to remaster it all with (longtime Lips producer) Dave Fridmann, as well, and I think some of those were the things that all lined up to say let’s do it now. And I think we were starting to notice that people were starting to put together good Flaming Lips compilations anyway. You know, you would go to the digital playlists on Spotify and stuff like that, and they would already have a good version of The Flaming Lips stuff, and we just thought, well, why don’t we just make it easier for everybody? And we’ll just make a version that you can have and you can download it. There’s a vinyl of one version, and there’s a big three-CD set of another version.”
The vinyl record will contain 11 Warner-era singles and album tracks from “Transmissions from the Satellite Heart” (1993), “Clouds Taste Metallic” (1995), “The Soft Bulletin” (1999), “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (2002), “At War with the Mystics” (2006), “Embryonic” (2009) and the band’s current album, “Oczy Mlody” (2017).
The deluxe three-CD set will contain 52 tracks in all, taking in additional albums “Hit to Death Wayne Coyne, of The Flaming Lips
in the Future Head” (1992), the highly experimental “Zaireeka” (1997), “The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends” (2012) and “The Terror” (2013). The deluxe box also will include several international B-sides, studio outtakes and unreleased tracks from this left-of-center psychrock band’s tremendous body of work.
And if that’s not enough to satisfy hard-core Flaming Lips fans, in April Rhino Records released yet another retrospective, “Scratching the Door,” this one containing the group’s very first recordings from the original lineup of singer Mark Coyne (Wayne’s younger brother), drummer Richard English and bassist Michael Ivins, with the elder Coyne on lead guitar.
And there’s more. On June 29, Rhino will unleash “Seeing the Unseeable: The Complete Recordings of The Flaming Lips 1986-1990,” a six-CD box set covering their four albums for the indie Restless label — “Hear It Is” (1986), “Oh My Gawd!!!... The Flaming Lips” (1987), “Telepathic Surgery” (1989) and “In a Priest Driven Ambulance (With Silver Sunshine Stares)” (1990). The sets other sonic gems include “Godzilla Flick,” “Unconsciously Screaming,” “One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning” and the band's cover of the classic “(What a) Wonderful World.”
The set also holds rare recordings originally released as B-sides, flexi discs and on various compilations, such as the Sub Popsingle “Strychnine/ Peace, Love and Understanding” and a cover of “After the Gold Rush” from a 1989 Neil Young tribute album.
Magic ingredients
Coyne said it was a lot of hard, time-consuming work, but it helped that the Lips haven’t had a lot of new material to worry over since “Oczy Mlody” — the band's last album of fresh tracks — was released in January 2017.
“We knew that if we didn’t put anything out — that’s my biggest dilemma, as well, is putting out another record — if we didn’t put anything out, it would allow us a good year or so to make these things and put them out. And so that’s why they’re all coming out this year. We started to work on it right after (“Oczy”) came out.”
Of course, the band also found time to work out a deal with independent craft brewery Dogfish Head to come out with a special, beer-filled vinyl single, “The Story of Yum Yum and Dragon,” just in time for Record
Store Day on April 21.
Coyne even had some input as to the ingredients to be used in the custom brew — which happens to be pink.
“Well I think they sent us from flavors and some combinations of things,” he said. “And I told them in the beginning that I’m not a real beer connoisseur myself. I don’t really drink beer, but most of the beers that I remember were from way back in the ’70s, like Coors and Budweiser, and that would be my palate of beer. Beer nowadays has gotten pretty sophisticated, and with a lot of flavorings that have gone on. So, in the beginning I was sort of suggesting that I didn’t want it to be too sweet. I didn’t want it to feel like someone poured some Kool-Aid into my Coors Light. I’d like it to still taste like a beer. And I think (they) knew what I was talking about. It’s a slightly sour beer compared to some that are sweeter, but I like that about it. It’s not too hoppy. In some beers I think there’s too much of that hops flavor. So, I think that some of the nuances that I expressed that I didn’t like, (they) really seemed to know how to make that possible.”
The “magic” ingredients in the brew were dragonfruit and yumberries, which inspired Coyne to create the characters in the songs “The Store of Yum Yum and Dragon” and “Pouring Beer in Your Ear.”
The limited edition, translucent, beer-filled vinyl will be pretty hard to find by now, but the beverage itself will be available on retail shelves and on tap through August, according to a Warner Bros. news release. For more information on Dragons & YumYums, go to dogfish. com/rsd. As for the song selections on the three Flaming Lips compilations of tunes, Coyne credits longtime Lips manager Scott Booker, who also happens
to be the founder and head of the Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma, for picking the tunes and their playing order.
“I think Scott would always have a good running idea of what this ‘Greatest Hits’ stuff would be. He loved all that sort of stuff. Scott has always been a fan of the way The Beatles would compile different — you know, they wouldn’t call them ‘Greatest Hits’ — but it would be different versions of their most popular songs just sort of stuck together on different records.
“We just haven’t done that that often, but I think he’s always had it in the back of his mind. We sort of left it up to him that he would decide this should be on there, this should be second and this should be third. I don’t think anybody had any disagreement with it. It would be impossible for us, being so invested in it — in them as records. We were all quite relieved that he was so decisive about it. And so there you go. Cool. Sounds like it’s gonna be fun. And then when you hear them all together, sitting up there with Dave Fridmann as we would decide about different volumes and EQ things and all that, it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun.
“And I could see even the glee in Dave Fridmann doing it, going back to records that we made even before he was with us. Saying, God, this classic. Most of it is a lot of love. So, most of the revisiting of all of our older stuff is absolutely fun, because then you don’t really realize that, you’re not that same emotional adult anymore. You’re just a different sort of person. We hear it. And it’s just insane, the amount of music that The Flaming Lips have made. See, I detached myself from it just then. Like I’m not even part of it. Those guys back in the ’80s and ’90s, don’t quite remember how it all got the way it goes.”