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(Warner Bros., 1989)George Harrison recorded “Cheer Down” for the Lethal Weapon 2 (!!) soundtrack, and with contributions from Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, this sounds, not surprisingly, an awful lot like the Traveling Wilburys. The music continues along the lines of the dense, guitar-heavy pop-rock of Cloud Nine, and the whole thing’s catchy enough to overcome a stunningly inane set of lyrics (did it really take both Harrison and Petty to come up with lines like “If your dog should be dead / I’m gonna love you instead,” and “If your shares should crash / You’ll get by even without getting a rash”?!). “That’s What it Takes,” another strong Cloud Nine track, is the American B-side, while in Europe it’s the relatively rare and appealing “Poor Little Girl.” Based on what he’d recorded over the last two years, solo and with the Wilburys, George was definitely on a winning streak at this point; it’s too bad that, after this, he went into semi-retirement and didn’t release any new solo material for over a decade. Dagnabit!
(Warner Bros., 1978)I’m partial to the gritty sweatguitar-funk of Maggot Brain over the whimsical synth-heavy discoisms of late-’70s Funkadelic, so take this unenthusiastic review with whatever size grain of salt you wish. The band included this record as a conceptually-baffling freebie in the One Nation Under a Groove LP, two eight-minute sides that (aside from the dirty, chugging “Lunchmeataphobia”) offer a laid-back, introspective counterpoint to the LP as a whole. First, the lengthy, weepytime guitar-solo insanity of “Maggot Brain” gets revisited in a virtuosic live recording, serving, if nothing else, as a vinyl torch-passer to new-ish Funkadelic guitarist Michael Hampton. Then, after a few minutes of the half-baked “Lunchmeataphobia,” “P.E. Squad/Doo Doo Chasers,” otherwise a boring and unfunny poop joke, pops up as a truncated instrumental – a version that reveals what’s in fact a quite satisfying, slow acid-rock/blues moodpiece that had been obscured by excruciating lyrics on the album proper. Still, nothing here is in any way “revelatory” or exciting, and these songs have all found their proper home, in the CD era, as bonus tracks tacked onto the end of the program, where expectations will be appropriately lowered for newcomers… a standalone 7” EP suggests far more intrigue than this material can deliver.
(Warner Bros., 2008)Yet more Christmas music from the Flaming Lips, courtesy of this white-vinyl 7” included as a freebie in the limited Christmas On Mars LP. The material included here is more “song-y” than the largely instrumental selections heard on the album; we get a perverse, non-soundtrack medley of a hymn (“Silent Night”) merged with a drug-damaged plea (Spacemen 3’s “Lord Can You Hear Me” – a song the band has been covering off and on since at least the mid-’90s), backed by the mournful “It’s Christmas Time Again.” The latter’s crushing orchestral seriousness and thematic joyfulness sums up the actual film better than any other Mars recording, with the A-side a close second, making it odd that these two songs have been relegated to “bonus single” obscurity. Truly confounding. But worrywart completists need not fret: In keeping with recent form, the band has since made this music available elsewhere as an overpriced picture disc. Uh… great. Keep them wallets open, kids.
(Warner Bros., 2007)A rather pointless vinyl tie-in released alongside the band’s UFOs at the Zoo live DVD. The A-side is, of all things, a perfunctory run-through of “She Don’t Use Jelly” that sounds almost identical to the album version (with the exception of a chaotic climax followed by the stripped-down singalong the Lips have been doing for almost ten years), and the B is a ripping “W.A.N.D.” that, again, is too close to the LP recording to be of much interest. If nothing else, this 7” at least shows how much more exciting the group has become in concert since adding Kliph Scurlock as live drummer; jettisoning the pre-recorded drum tapes has given them considerable punch, even if they do fail to stretch/reimagine their songs as extensively as one might hope.
(Warner Bros., 2006)While the Flaming Lips never worried about being ridiculous, for decades they at least tried to either challenge the audience or simply make it laugh… and can either of those things honestly be said about the insipid “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”? Come on. No need to mince words: this is retard-pop. It’s lovely that the band brought the guitars back after two electronics-based albums, but they’re more “bounce” than “crunch” here, and the total package, with the fuzzy political sentiments and embarassing vocal effects, is pure kiddie fare in the worst, most dumbed-down sense. Meanwhile, the excellent “Why Does it End” would have fit quite well on The Soft Bulletin, all thunderous crescendos and bittersweet ruminations as it is – the song’s sophisticated emotional with-it-ness makes “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” seem even more pathetic by comparison.
(Warner Bros., 2004)
Don’t get too excited. First the Flaming Lips released “Syrtis Major” on one of the U.K. “Do You Realize” singles. Then they paired it with “Protonilus Death March” on a 7” picture disc and sold it as part of an expensive photo-book package through their website. Then they divorced the vinyl from the book and sold the standalone single as a web-only exclusive. Then they renamed both songs (“Space Bible With Volume Lumps” and “The Gleaming Armament of Marching Genitilia,” respectively) and hawked ’em to the public via the Christmas On Mars soundtrack. So pardon me for my muted enthusiasm as I dust this fugger off.
And yet… the music’s not terrible.
Whereas the softball instrumentals on The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots evoked intergalactic grocery shopping above all else, these two brief songs have a dramatic edginess that does anything but soothe. The mix of chilly, futuristic electronics and more “classical” soundtrack elements create an unsettling, unearthly atmosphere that works well on disc and even better on film when paired with the visuals for which the music was composed. So ultimately, the low-budget, sci-fi psych-out Christmas On Mars DVD is a safe recommendation, the various repackagings of its score significantly less so. Particularly this 7”; avoid chumpdom and don’t bother to lose any sleep or cash over it.
(Warner Bros., 2002)Wayne Coyne has recently said in several interviews that “Do You Realize” will probably end up being what the Flaming Lips are best remembered for, and I think that’s a canny (and, coming from a musician, uncharacteristically honest) read on things, as the song is the clearest summation of the blend of Christmas-y optimism and death-acceptance that has colored the band’s work since Clouds Taste Metallic. Production-wise, it also stands as the ultimate late-period Lips/Fridmann song, with rich acoustic guitars a-strummin’, bells a-clangin’, drums a-poundin’, and synth flourishes a-burblin’. Heavenly stuff for sure, and while it does seem to be fairly well-known thanks to its many appearances in TV commercials, it’s surprising that “Do You Realize” didn’t do so well on the charts – it never appeared on Billboard in the U.S., and only made it to 32 in the U.K. Given that the subsequent Yoshimi singles performed better as critics slobbered all over the album throughout the year, it seems a missed opportunity that Warner failed to reissue and re-promote such an accessible song (as Mercury Rev did with “Goddess on a Hiway”).“Up Above the Daily Hum,” which is on the other side of this fancy picture disc, is a reworking of a song from the Soft Bulletin days (a 1999 radio performance is on the Bulletin 5.1 DVD). The vocal melody in the bridge is extremely nice, but the treacly muzak quality of the electronics/piano-based instrumental track stands as a warning of what bland paths the Flaming Lips could have easily followed from here. While I’m no huge fan of At War With the Mystics, a descent into cosmic alt-Manilow crooning would have been much, much worse.
(Warner Bros., 1995)WB beats the boots (Sorta! Says “Sweet Jesus…It’s the Lords of Love Noise” later re-bootleged these tracks) with this promotional release of two live songs from an October 18, 1994, Flaming Lips show in Minneapolis. It’s the Moles getting the cover treatment on the A-side, as the sonically-intense Coyne-Ivins-Drozd-Jones lineup saws and thunders its way through “What’s the New Mary Jane.” An absolutely psychedelic and gigantic-sounding hunk of music; Ronald Jones’s guitar playing is practically orchestral in its effects-laden weirdness (though Wayne’s singing has sounded far better…). The other side is a shaggy, largely by-the-book garage-band thrashing of “Under Pressure,” which ends with the incredible time-capsule absurdity of Coyne saying, “Thanks a lot everybody. Candlebox is up next.” Yikes.
(Warner Brothers, 1973)
The Beach Boys included “Mount Vernon and Fairway” as a bonus EP with the rootsy Holland album, but despite being labeled Sides 3 and 4 it has nothing to do musically or thematically with the rest of that LP. A fried, poorly-written – albeit clearly personal – fairy tale pieced together by Brian Wilson and narrated by Jack Rieley, the track sketches out the story of a prince and a magic transistor radio which is inhabited by the party-hearty spirit of the Pied Piper. Squelchy synths and sound effects make up most of the eerie, minimal backing music, though a few snatches of bare-bones, Wilson-sung songs pop up here and there. This idea possibly could have worked if the action had been developed further and it was issued in a more fitting context (as a stand-alone EP, perhaps, or as an extended LP project), but as it exists, “Mount Vernon and Fairway” is just a barely-interesting, half-baked failure that struggles even to rise to the level of charming. Given that the Beach Boys were trying to get hep and serious during this period, the addition of a goofy fairy tale to the band’s latest album – and Holland is definitely a self-consciously serious and “mature” LP – must have been mortifying to the rest of the group. Really, it’s hard not to get the sense that this was released merely as some sort of political concession to Brian.
(Warner Bros., 1989)
