The Flaming Lips

A few weeks back while looking for something in the DVD cupboard I came across the Flaming Lips film "The Fearless Freaks", a long documentary about their very long history - much longer than most people would think going back to about 1983. I remember hearing tracks by them years ago - the oddly named "Jesus shooting heroin" being one that sticks in my mind. They were a psychedelic band something like Loop at the time.

This has led me to some recent live shows including the Bonarroo set when they played their version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. And then to some amateur live DVDs filmed at some shows over this summer. Briefly, about 7 or 8 years ago, it looked like they were going to become quite mainstream, but instead they have managed to carry an audience with them back to their psychedelic roots. The current live show is really good

Finally to the cd from last year, Embryonic. I have been listening to this for much of the last two or three weeks and am really thrilled by it. The highlight for me is the track Powerless, with its looping bass line and wild Beefheartian guitar solo.

On discussing this with Jerome, he mentioned that most of the Embryonic album has official band videos on Youtube. These are all quite low budget affairs, which just shows how little needs to be spent to produce highly interesting stuff. All feature the same girl in various scenes, from tied to a chair in a field for Powerless, to leaping around pretending to be various animals for I can be a frog, to the quite disturbing video for The Sparrow looks up at the Machine. Excellent stuff

I can be a frog

Powerless

And two video links from youtube