"The Flaming Lips Could Never Happen Now"

bmichael:

To go along with the amazing Flaming Lips record store day release, I figured I’d link to this thing. It’s an essay I wrote that never found its way to publication anywhere, so I posted it to my own website. I’m pretty happy with it.

The idea is that the Flaming Lips were given so much rope, and that you don’t necessarily see that anymore these days. The big thing was that, as well, they got a lot of rope from the record label, but they also got a lot of rope critically. Just by virtue of when they existed. Plus talent, perseverance, etc. But it seems strikingly alien to me to think about another band growing up like the Flaming Lips. It just sort of seems like life now is just more wearying, and even if a band got enough shots financially and critically, you’d just get tired of being in it, you’d maybe lose the patience for it. (Cf, Air France?)

This is the miraculous point of the Flaming Lips career. Nowadays, the New York Times critic Jon Caramanica can say confidently that “major-label rock these days [is] a musical universe in crisis like no other”. He laments the lack of imagination in major-label rock, but, to borrow a phrase, it’s the economy, Mr Caramanica. If you’re an active music critic, you’ve come across a number of imaginative rock bands, but major labels don’t have the time, money, or courage to sign and stick with them as they develop. After three albums, the Flaming Lips were in a creative rut — and recently out the guitarist Ronald Jones, who gave them their signature scuzz-rock sound. At this nadir, Warner Brothers would have been wise to drop the band. Instead, somehow, the Flaming Lips convinced the label to allow them to record and release two more albums, one of which was a four-disc monstrosity designed to be played simultaneously on, yes, four CD players. Zaireeka, for perhaps obvious reasons, is not included in the vinyl LP reissue.