Disco de The Flaming Lips: “Finally the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid 1983-88”

As you've probably figured out from other reviews, this is a compilation of the band's first ep, first 3 albums, and a cavalcade of bonus material. It's fairly agreed that flaming lips albums were fairly hit and miss up till their fourth release (in a priest driven ambulance), but there's still a lot of early classics worth buying this for, like "jesus shootin' heroin", "with you", "one million billionth of a millisecond on a sunday morning" and "chrome plated suicide". If you're already a diehard fan you may want to leap right into the early material with this set, but if you're looking for a cheaper look into the pre-warner brothers era, you can pick up "1984-1990", which compiles most of the more essential material found here. If you like what you heard, pick up "in a priest driven ambulance" or the recent two cd re-release "the day they shot a hole in the jesus egg", which gives you all of that album and a bonus cd of demos for the price of one cd as well.

The first cd starts off with the self titled ep, with the band's original vocalist Mark Coyne, Wayne's brother. The style is very different from the later lips, and even quite a bit different from the rest of the material on the first cd. These 5 songs seem very much inspired by 60's psychadelic garage rock, in fact almost all of these five songs would fit in perfectly among tracks you'd find in "nuggets" compilations. Mark is a fairly limited vocalist, but has the attitude for this style of music. Although he seems to have a vocal range of about two notes, his deep vocals lend themselves to the darker vibe of the material. Only the last track, "my own planet", hints at the faster, more melodic material ahead, and even then, hearing it lead into the first album's opening track, the mellow "with you" is quite astonishing. While still showing the Lips as a developing band, the album is mostly very solid, remarkably so considering it's Wayne's first time at lead vocals, alternating between raw but beautiful ballads and noisy punk rock-like numbers that at times recall early sonic youth. Next come the bonus tracks, more demos with Mark as the vocalist. These are considerably faster than the mostly slow and druggy material of the first ep, and mostly covers, including a hillarious take on the batman theme.

The second cd starts off with the second album, "oh my gawd" whichis about on par with the first. There's more of an accent on the melodic, and the band takes a few steps forward, but a few failed experments like "ode to cc part 1" weaken things a bit. For bonus tracks, we get yet another set of Mark Coyne demos, this time mostly songs that would end up making the first two albums, with an amateur-ish but amusing led zeppelin cover and a )deservedly) never before heard track thrown in. You wouldn't really be able to imagine the guy who sang on the first EP doing these songs, but he does a commendable job on them, particularly his intense and over the top reading of "jesus shooting heroin". In the liner notes, Wayne describes his brother's performances here as "Ian Curtis meet Chris Farley (not the fat part - just the absurd intense part)".

The last disc gives us the album "telepathic surgery". It's considerably more bogged down with filler than it's predecessors (reportedly the band originally intended to make an album length sound collage that got worked on extensively, then discarded aside from the excerpt "hell's angel cracker factory", and thus probably had less time to write material). Still, there's enough glimpses of greatness to make it worth listening to, and the assorted aural experiments like the simultaneously goofy and scary "ufo story" and various strange interludes make for an interesting listen. The bonus material is a handful of live material, including a sonic youth cover, another led zeppelin cover, a drastically different Wayne vocal-ed version of "my own planet" from the first ep, a goreous version of "after the gold rush" from a neil young tribute album, and an alternate mix of "can't stop the spring" from 'telepathic surgery'. Finally, the whole album closes with a strange sound collage meant to be listened to while reading the introduction to the liner notes, which detail Wayne's first experience with acid. Prentious as [heck]? sure. But it's also incredibly terrifying and creepy to hear those amplified heartbeat noises as you read the surreal tale of blood, fear of death, french fries turning into worms, supernovas, time shifts, and the fear of death, even if the track doesn't really stand up on it's own.

This is a great package they put together along with "The Day They Shot A Hole In The Jesus Egg". It makes the recent curious fans able to buy their early stuff w/o spending too much money. These are hidden gems indeed, I actually like their stuff from this and "Jesus Egg" the best. They were more of a wacky psychedelic distortion band back then, now they're a trippy electronic band. It's all good really, super kudos to them for changing their sound and still pulling it off very well. These fellas are the chameleons of alternative music for sure.

This will sound like pseudo rock critic hyperbole, but the Flaming Lips--in the early days right up to today--always tried to produce anthems and not merely "songs". This absolutely essential collection shows that, despite the reputation of these early releases falling somewhere between charmingly listenable and god awful, are, to my ears, nothing short of essential. These are exhilirating psychedelic punk anthems embedded with monstrous riffs, emotional catharsis, and fist-pumping sonic liberation.

Don't get me wrong, I love their current incarnation as sort of friendly, good will weirdos making psychedelic-electronic pop rock that stradlles both the mainstream and "underground" (and thus paves the way for other good newer bands such as MGMT). But this collection is arguably a much more fascinating listen than their current work. These are the aural growing pains of boundlessly creative youngsters in an isolated, conservative environment (Oklahoma City) attempting to transcend their surroundings not through nihilism, but uplifting chaos.

Since this seems to be currently out of print, I would recommend seeking out individual tracks as sort of a preview/sampler of the myriad anthems contained in the whole set: "My Own Planet," "With You," "Everything's Explodin',"Ode to C.C. (Part II)", "One Million Billionth of a Millisecond," and "Chrome Plated Suicide" are my favorites though, again, the entire collection, warts and all, is really awesome.

One final note: I described this early sound as "psychedelic punk", but this short-changes things a bit. There are lovely folk acoustic parts and more straightforward classic rock as well. In short, this was much more diverse and far more listenable than I expected.

The Art from "Oh My Gawd" is totally missing from this release.

And I'm really bummed out every time I see that destroyed face on the inner booklet.

BUT

The music here is totally awesome.

I kind of feel like I did when I got the Bitches Brew box set - I paid a bunch more money for it, only to NOT get the killer album art???!!! Are you serious?

THIS is the Flaming Lips, more than the latest two albums. The FLips are punk rock guitar pioneers and if you don't know that (and you can't tell it from Pink Flamingo Robot Sushi or whatever it is), then you might like Super Tramp too. Please, bring the guitars next time, Wayne.