Poll
Question: do you agree?
how the hell did these guys not get even a nomination for best alternative album at this year's grammys (however the fuck you spell it) there is something rotten in denmark. :x
I love "She don't use jelly" or whatever, their big hit. That song rocks. There's a few other spngs I like...can't think of their names right now. Definitely a cool little weird band.
I love "Do you Realize," but cringe at some of the lyrics. Music is excellent, though.
I like some of the stuff off of "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" like Fight Test. The rest is noise.
They opened for and played with beck on halloween. Front row seats, best show I've ever been to, and I've been to a few.
I really like 2 songs off their new album a lot...however i cant stand the album that "she dont use jelly" is on....i bought that album interested in hearing the original (because i enjoy the ben folds five version quite a bit) and i was very disappointed.
oh well...they've changed a lot since then it seems.
I was listening to their song "Bad Days" and realized that was in a movie but I can't remember what movie. Can someone help sove this little problem for me? It seems like a Coen movie but I'm not sure. I can't remember! Aaaaaaagggghhhh!
Anyway, here's some of the lyrics.
"You're sorta stuck where you are
But, in your dreams you can buy expensive cars,
or live on mars
and have it your way
And you hate your boss at your job
well in your dreams you can blow his head off
in your dreams
show no mercy"
Well, it's not a Coen movie...it's a Schumacher movie! Batman Forever, to be exact.
Quote from: Plagiarhythmhow the hell did these guys not get even a nomination for best alternative album at this year's grammys (however the fuck you spell it) there is something rotten in denmark. :x
I'm from Denmark and it is pretty rotten! Yeah, I totally agree with you. That is very weird. Yoshimi....was pretty alternative :-D I especially loved that track "fight test" :)
Quote from: GhostboyWell, it's not a Coen movie...it's a Schumacher movie! Batman Forever, to be exact.
Are you serious?!?!? Damn, and an Akiva Goldsman script. I'm not sure why I thought Coens. Anyway, thanks for helping me out.
Yoshimi Battles the pink robots is an EXCELLENT modern progressive rock concept album.
8)
These guys are from my home town (there aren't that many bands that have made it from there, so that's saying something) so I might be a little biased, but I really love them... I'm really glad that they're starting to get popular, it's taken them a real long time.
I think "Do You Realize?" might be the best song from last year.
Love 'em. Haven't heard much from the new album but The Soft Bulletin is a masterpiece.
Quote from: Phil MarloweThe Soft Bulletin is a masterpiece.
indeed.
--end discussion.--
Quote from: PQuote from: Phil MarloweThe Soft Bulletin is a masterpiece.
indeed.
Agreed. An outright 90s all-time classic.
Quote from: P--end discussion.--
Not quite. I might go so far as to say the Lips are the single best American band of the last 15 years. Tell me who's made more flat-out great albums......
Flaming Lips Fly "Freak" Intimate band documentary due in March
Source: ROLLING STONE
The Flaming Lips are the subject of the new documentary My Life With the Fearless Freaks, due out on DVD from Shout Films on March 23rd.
Taking its name from a Sunday youth football team on which Lips frontman Wayne Coyne played with his brothers, The Fearless Freaks explores the evolution of the Oklahoma band. In particular it focuses on the families and life experiences that shaped members Coyne, drummer Steven Drodz and bassist Michael Ivins.
"I started in Wayne's neighborhood and really tried to tell the story of how he grew up because he has so many older brothers that were a huge influence on his life," says director Bradley Beesley, whose previous credits include Lips' videos, as well as documentaries about Oklahoma catfishing and blues label Fat Possum Records. "They shaped the music that he listened to and his early career drawing, and playing guitar, and going to concerts, and doing drugs."
Beesley is a longtime associate of the Lips, and they were comfortable enough to let him film very personal moments. "I've got some pretty intimate footage of Steven using drugs and talking about how drugs destroyed his life, as they're destroying his life," Beesley says. "It's not like a VH1 thing where the guy talks about shooting up like ten years ago. I was capturing it literally as he was shooting up."
In addition to such gritty scenes, Freaks includes cameos from Beck, Jack White, Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue, Juliette Lewis and Liz Phair, as well as outtakes from the long-awaited Lips movie Christmas on Mars (due out December 2005). The film also features four new Flaming Lips songs made specifically for the film.
"It's a cool film," says Coyne. "When you get to appear inside someone's life I don't think it would even matter who they are. I think if you followed anybody around for eleven years and talked to their relatives and were there when poignant things in their life happened, it wouldn't matter who you are, it'd be interesting."
Beesley and Coyne hope to have Freaks make its cinematic premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January, or at the South by Southwest Music-Film Festival in Austin Texas, in March.
Effin Brad! Way to go, G!
Always pleased to hear a fellow Normanite come Austinite making good shit.
For those that don't know, he also made Okie Noodling... a fun little doc.
It makes me feel good because he's from where I was and is where I am. Maybe it's a good locational formula.
Loved the bubble bit they did on Conan Obrien tonight. Good stuff. The shit these guys come up with is great. I went to a show where they opened for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and they asked members of the early arriving audience if they wanted to dress up in costumes and dance on stage for their entire set with the rest of the band!
:-D
man, i'm bummed i missed their conan appearance. i saw them at all tomorrow's parties a few weeks ago and they put on quite possibly the coolest stage show i have ever experienced. not only did they do the costume thing (mentioned above) but wayne got into this giant inflatable bubble thing and rolled over the audience and they also had tons of huge balloons that were being bounced around over the crowd all night.
good fun, i tell you! :-D
did anybody watch Austin City Limits last night? it may have been a repeat, i don't know, but they did a cover of "War Pigs" with Cat Power. It was awesome, and something i did not expect from the Lips.
Awesome trailer for new documentary
http://fearlessfreaks.com/media_trailer.htm
Quote from: russiasushaAwesome trailer for new documentary
http://fearlessfreaks.com/media_trailer.htm
That looks GREAT! It's coming out this month? I hadn't heard anything about it... I will definitely be seeing this.
2LB
Has anyone attempted the Zaireeka (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000002NIQ/ref=cm_bg_d/104-8931819-7811132?v=glance) expirement, or known anyone who has? I've been reading a little bit about it lately and I'm intruigued.
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For those unfamiliar, Zaireeka is an album with four discs of music that one is supposed to play on four seperate playing units simultaneously to make the experience. Strange.
Quote from: life_boyHas anyone attempted the expirement, or known anyone who has?
I have at Roskilde Festival the year Flaming Lips were playing there, it's a couple of years ago. They had set up 4 cars were the stereos were playing Zaireeka. The whole experience is kind of blurred because I was drunk but I remember it as being very homogenic and well thought out.
My roommate, who I have been living with for the past two years, has it, but I have never gotten around to doing it mainly because you really need four people to sink up the four different stereos.
I have listened to a pirated version of the four cds mixed together. It's really different and good. It's mellow and a bit melancholy.
If you are ever in denver, life_boy, we can listen to it (the four track version i mean)
Quote from: life_boyHas anyone attempted the Zaireeka (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000002NIQ/ref=cm_bg_d/104-8931819-7811132?v=glance) expirement, or known anyone who has? I've been reading a little bit about it lately and I'm intruigued..
I wouldn't call it an "experiment," since it's the way they made the album to be played. :) I've done it a couple of times. My house has a sunken den (used to be a garage way back when) at one end of the house. That's where my stereo and my computer are. We put one disc in each of those,then a disc into a boombox sitting at the top of the stairs, and then put the 4th disc in the stereo up in the living room, which is about twenty feet away from the doorway to my den.
It was extremely cool, especially when something would echo from down in the den to upstairs in the living room, or vice versa. Or when something would start on the loud stereo speakers, and end up in the little crappy boombox.
I've heard of people who work in cubicle farms taking it to work and playing it on four different computers there, though I imagine the sound quality would suck.
We found it's best to stop and re-sync at the beginning of each track, BTW, or soon the songs aren't even playing at the same time.
About a year ago I read where Steve Drozd was suggesting the best combinations for 2 and 3-disc variations on this... Google around and you can probably find it.
2LB
Here's a copy of the CD liner notes (http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/4533/flips/zaireeka.htm).
Quote from: life_boyHas anyone attempted the Zaireeka (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000002NIQ/ref=cm_bg_d/104-8931819-7811132?v=glance) expirement, or known anyone who has? I've been reading a little bit about it lately and I'm intruigued.
u should ask the ppl in Now Playing with those multi-players.
i feel like such a loser but i just bought the soft bulletine the other day...and it blew me away...its like the first time i listened to the wall and ok computer..i bought y.b.t.p.r. upon release and thought 'do you realize' was one of the best things i heard in life.....then i got soft bulletine yesterday......man, feel like a poser..
nah, its okay. i had dismissed them after the jelly song and the one in batman forever, then didnt give them another chance until yoshimi came out. then i went backwards and got soft bulletin. they're both great.
but the new album's doomed, right p?
Quote from: cronopiobut the new album's doomed, right p?
they should know better :(
ah crud i just got into flaming lips. i've been listening to yoshimi for a couple days and am loving it. now reading this thread i know what i must do. go buy soft bulletin asap!
new video for new song 'you've got to hold on'
http://locker.uky.edu/~mcjord2/The%20Flaming%20Lips%20-%20Youve%20Got%20to%20Hold%20On.mov
Quote from: Mesh on October 14, 2003, 04:56:33 PM
Not quite. I might go so far as to say the Lips are the single best American band of the last 15 years. Tell me who's made more flat-out great albums......
Fugazi
Quote from: ShanghaiOrange on November 16, 2005, 03:07:49 PM
Quote from: Mesh on October 14, 2003, 04:56:33 PM
Not quite. I might go so far as to say the Lips are the single best American band of the last 15 years. Tell me who's made more flat-out great albums......
Fugazi
update your calendar.
Fugazi's last album was in 2001. The Flaming Lips'eses last album was in 2002. So poop to that notion, gramps!
Quote from: cronopio on November 16, 2005, 02:34:58 PM
new video for new song 'you've got to hold on'
http://locker.uky.edu/~mcjord2/The%20Flaming%20Lips%20-%20Youve%20Got%20to%20Hold%20On.mov
loving this song.
Quote from: ShanghaiOrange on November 17, 2005, 01:13:53 PM
Fugazi's last album was in 2001. The Flaming Lips'eses last album was in 2002. So poop to that notion, gramps!
Mesh said that more than two years ago. you're arguing with a dead man.
so buy a new calendar.
Oh...
:(
Man, I didn't post in this forum for like years so I'm just catching up.
Anyway, yeah, Clouds Taste Metallic is pretty fantastic. Man, sometimes I just want to have sex with the bassline of This Here Giraffe.
Quote from: cronopio on November 16, 2005, 02:34:58 PM
new video for new song 'you've got to hold on'
http://locker.uky.edu/~mcjord2/The%20Flaming%20Lips%20-%20Youve%20Got%20to%20Hold%20On.mov
the new song is so-so. i didn't immediately want to listen to it again like when i first heard Mr. Ambulance driver..but the video is weird and great
Flaming Lips Set Release Date for Mystics
Source: Pitchfork
Over the holiday break, while the Flaming Lips were busy celebrating Christmas on Mars (or in Oklahoma-- whatever, same thing), they let slip a few juicy details about their highly-anticipated new album, At War With the Mystics.
At last, the disc has a release date. Or rather, two: April 3 in the UK and April 4 in the U.S. The first single, "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song", (reportedly inspired by the band's cover of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody") is due March 27 in the UK. What, you thought the States would get a single? Dream on. All we get is the digital release of "The W.A.N.D." on January 10 through iTunes, Rhapsody, and all the other usual suspects.
Quote from: modage on January 04, 2006, 12:49:41 PM
All we get is the digital release of "The W.A.N.D." on January 10
I just listened to this... man, it's great. I was a little disapointed with Mr. Ambulance Driver, but this is what I wanted... a sound
Quote from: RegularKarate on January 19, 2006, 10:49:30 PM
Quote from: modage on January 04, 2006, 12:49:41 PM
All we get is the digital release of "The W.A.N.D." on January 10
I just listened to this... man, it's great. I was a little disapointed with Mr. Ambulance Driver, but this is what I wanted... a sound
where might one procure this?
Quote from: squints on January 19, 2006, 10:55:27 PM
Quote from: RegularKarate on January 19, 2006, 10:49:30 PM
Quote from: modage on January 04, 2006, 12:49:41 PM
All we get is the digital release of "The W.A.N.D." on January 10
I just listened to this... man, it's great. I was a little disapointed with Mr. Ambulance Driver, but this is what I wanted... a sound
where might one procure this?
Quote from: modage on January 04, 2006, 12:49:41 PM
All we get is the digital release of "The W.A.N.D." on January 10 through iTunes, Rhapsody, and all the other usual suspects
got it from itunes...strange, very different indeed...no acoustic guitar? It has a classic rock feel to it which is weird, but I have to say I enjoyed Mr. Ambulance Driver upon first listen more than i did this. After hearing this and that song from the recent video (You've got to hold on? is that the name?) I'm incredibly curious and maybe a little worried as to what this new album is going to sound like. But it definitely already promises to be something innovative at least for what the lips have already established. Simpler maybe?
what's simple about the Flaming Lips anyway?
EDIT: Upon about 20 more listens throughout the day...this song definitely rocks
Now we have this, the official tracklist for At War With the Mystics, due out April 4 on Warner Bros. Records. Just take a peek below for more glimmers of violence. Rebellions? Most assuredly violent. More references to ambulances and their drivers? Violence implied. Pompeii? Totally decimated by a violent volcano, dudes. See for yrself:
01 The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
02 Free Radicals
03 The Sound of Failure/It's Dark...Is It Always This Dark??
04 My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion
05 Vein of Stars
06 The Wizard Turns On...
07 It Overtakes Me/The Stars Are So Big, I Am So Small...Do I Stand a Chance?
08 Mr. Ambulance Driver
09 Haven't Got a Clue
10 The W.A.N.D.
11 Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung
12 Goin' On
I was about to pick up Void that DVD of their videos, but I've only ever seen the Do Your Realize?? video. I figure I'd enjoy seeing these videos as a new experience, but I'd like to know if anyone has it, and what it's like.
i wasn't aware there was a videos dvd...but if anyone hasn't seen the Fearless Freaks they should check it out immediately
That works, too.
stream the wand here: http://www.warnerreprise.com/qt-ref/theflaminglips_thewand_ref.mov
for anybody in nyc, tickets just went on sale for two nights at webster hall. i picked up my tickets for friday, march 31st.
and the opening act is the pink mountaintops
Quote from: meatwad on March 01, 2006, 11:41:19 AM
for anybody in nyc, tickets just went on sale for two nights at webster hall. i picked up my tickets for friday, march 31st.
and the opening act is the pink mountaintops
FUCK.sold out. :yabbse-cry:
saw them last night, for their first show of a two night run at webster hall. the show was amazing, starting off with a sexy set from the pink mountaintops. great band on record, and an even better record live. then the lips came on and tore the place down. i've never seen them before, so i was not fully prepared for the full on visual assault they give you.
they played some new ones including "free radicals", "yeah yeah yeah song" and "the w.a.n.d", as well as the usual "race for the prize" "do you realize", "she don't use jelly", etc. they encore ended with their cover of "war pigs" they have been doing for some time.
instead of the people dressed up as animals, they were now dressed up as jesus and santa. i think most of the pink mountaintops were dressed up.
all in all well worth it, and now i know why people were buying tickets for $200 outside the venue
ooff! stay tuned for next week when we continue our spine chilling adventure with "garam's record of the week".
Quote from: Garam on April 02, 2006, 01:41:30 PM
I just found the pink robots album on here - my brother must have downloaded it. It's pretty nice, but some of the lyrics are retarded.
'Do you realise everyone you know will die?'
Really? Hot damn, thanks for breaking the news to me man. I'll go and inform the village people. That song stinks of contrived profoundness, but it just comes across as pretentious and silly. Also (it's petty, I know), but the two question marks irritate me further. It's not bad enough that he's pointing out the obvious, but the extra question mark is implying that he's had a masterstroke and he's about to enlighten you.
My next step will be to buy download the soft bulletin so that I can join in the people at my college who talk about how great it is every single day.
:yabbse-angry: don't bad mouth the lips.
I think Garam is confused about what "Simplistic" is.
Quote from: Garam on April 02, 2006, 01:41:30 PM
My next step will be to buy download the soft bulletin so that I can join in the people at my college who talk about how great it is every single day.
i get it now. see i thought you were over that, the whole "you guys are this and i'm against all that you guys are cos you are all the same and i see through the bullshit". now i see the gervais thing as an extension of that same hang up you have with anything anyone else likes, or your perception of what everyone else is.
i'd still like to believe you have moved on from that phase. and advise you to stick with what you know, that is british tv. cos i think you're right about the gervais thing, even if you showed your hang-up again the second you revealed your assumptions about what everyone in america thinks of chappelle: yet another perceived "you guys all" mentality, which counts for everything apparently. you just don't know what you're talking about here, i think your judgment has been clouded.
Do You Realize is actually quite brilliant, as is the soft bulletin, regardless of what they -- the douche bags who beat you up every day -- say.
Quote from: Garam on April 03, 2006, 09:53:34 AM
I was just having a lighthearted joke, chill the fuck out. Jesus.
you gotta work on your comedy skills.
Quote from: Garam on April 03, 2006, 09:53:34 AMQuoteDo You Realize is actually quite brilliant
Oh! Thanks for telling me where I went wrong. Sorry for comitting the heinous crime of expressing an opinion on a public message board.
that's weird how you replied to the same thing twice. :yabbse-huh:
Quote from: Garam on April 03, 2006, 09:53:34 AM
You assumed I was being iconoclastic and you 'like to believe i have moved on that from phase', yet you're in your early twenties and you get your knickers all in a twist just because my opinion clashes with yours.
were you going somewhere with that comparison? i must've missed the point. i understand you are constantly on edge from all the beatings you get everyday, i don't blame you for thinking everyone is freaking out. i'm sure tomoro when your teeth are getting kicked in (god knows for what) you won't be wrong in assuming that person needs to "chill the fuck out", in this case you are mistaken.
so what are your thoughts on AWWTM? i'm looking for a second opinion
Quote from: ddiggler6280 on April 11, 2006, 07:36:46 PM
so what are your thoughts on AWWTM? i'm looking for a second opinion
It's not Yoshimi. It's not the Soft Bulletin. But it's obviously not supposed to be, it's definitely different from anything I've hear them do before, which is commendable that they're still experimenting. Sadly, I wished their return to the electric guitar would've been something more.Still, I find it endlessly listenable even if it isn't as innovative as their previous two outings. "A Vein of Stars" is a beautiful song. "It Overtakes Me" makes want to wake and bake, and dance.
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Flaming Lips: 20 Years of Weird
this album has a song on it called "Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear". This song contains the lyrics "Last night, i had a horrible dream..."
I have never heard this song in its entirety but i remember while watching The Fearless Freaks doc those lyrics pop up accompanying some beautiful arrangements. The sad thing is, Pitchfork has a link on their review of the album that says "Download from eMusic" that doesn't work. I want this song soooo bad! But i don't know what to do.
Last week the record store around the corner from the video store i work at closed off the street and had a concert. Apparently one of the best shows this town's seen in a while (featuring a great band called Kunek that everyone should check out). I only caught the last portion of the evening as I was working at the video store until midnight. What sucks about this is that while I'm working everyone from the show keeps coming in and telling us how much we're missing and that wayne coyne from the lips is there and he's just hanging out with everyone. I thought I had missed an opportunity to meet one of my favorite musicians and the best musician to come from my home state since woody guthrie.
Fast forward two days later to a show featuring some local bands w/ Danielson headlining. Not only was Danielson amazing (daniel smith's performance has pushed his album Ships into my So Far this Year list) but as i'm rocking out to the music mr. coyne is standing right next to me. Between song breaks I asked him about the show from a few days earlier he said he enjoyed himself, it was too bad i didn't get to see his nephew's band open the show and if he would've know about my store he would've checked it out. And that was that, he walked away after "Did I Step on Your Trumpet" and i got to come home and tell everyone that not only did i see wayne but i had a casual conversation with him. Judging from the fact that I'm nearly the only one who ever posts in this thread, I hope you guys can understand my giddiness.
If anyone cares....this av is a pic from the flaming lips show at the oklahoma city zoo last friday. it was great, thats wayne with a dove in his hand a spaceship in the background...if anyone cares to see anymore pics i've got a shitload, you can see the spaceship descend upon the zoo somewhere on youtube if one were so inclined
For you, my dear:
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Flaming Lips: They don't think small
Balloons. Dancing fans. A UFO. The band will go all out for a joint concert with Gnarls Barkley and Cat Power.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Singer Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips is apologetic. "We'll see if people will forgive us, and try again," he says.
Unlike other high-profile apologies (see Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, etc.), Coyne has done nothing to offend — his psychedelic pop band, after all, makes songs about coming together, finding the right direction in life, moral quandaries and even robot battles. But he's apologizing, now, for last New Year's, when the Lips' planned festivities at Giant Village in downtown Los Angeles were scotched after promoters, citing safety concerns caused by rain, canceled the event only hours before the gates were to open.
"When they take control away from you like that, it's just crushing," says Coyne, adding that the band learned its lesson: "[On New Year's], we should always play inside."
And so it will be Sunday, when the Lips, joined by Gnarls Barkley and Cat Power, give a concert that rings in 2007 at the USC Galen Center.
Few bands anywhere better embody what most concert-goers are looking for on New Year's Eve than the Flaming Lips. On what passes as a normal night for them, they're surrounded by audience members, each illuminated, dressed as aliens, Santa Clauses, giant stuffed animals, blow-up suns, enormous salamanders or some combination thereof. Then there are the balloons — thousands of them, bouncing merrily everywhere — as well as the blizzard of confetti blown on the audience throughout the show.
"For the past six or seven years, we've become a New Year's Eve band," Coyne says. "Each time we've done a New Year's show, the spectacle has stayed with us for the next show. The first time we did the balloons was at a New Year's show. We thought, 'We'll go all out.' "
Now, of course, all-out for the Lips' is far bigger than that. For most of this year, they've been talking about their plans to introduce a giant UFO to their stage set-up — a plan that was intended to be hatched at the Hollywood Bowl this summer but was foiled by (of all things) transportation issues. Instead, they debuted the UFO at a hometown show in Oklahoma City. It will get one more test run Saturday night in San Francisco.
"There's an amphitheater that's part of the Oklahoma City Zoo," Coyne says. "We've been out there for the last month or so trying to figure out lighting configurations and weight configurations that will let us do this stuff. We were out there last night at 1:30 in the morning with smoke machines blowing into the hyena pits over there. It looks pretty crazy — even by my standards."
For this New Year's show, the onstage dancers will be picked from Lips fans who've uploaded videos of their dance steps onto YouTube, and Coyne says he's impressed with the results: "They can share their freakiness and not be overshadowed by the Flaming Lips."
The band is also planning onstage collaborations with its openers, Cat Power and Gnarls Barkley, first in Gnarls' set on their ubiquitous "Crazy" (which Coyne calls "the coolest song of the year") and later, post-midnight, for an all-band run-through of "What a Wonderful World."
Says Coyne, "That's the sort of thing an audience thinks should happen at something like this, and they often don't. I've been to plenty of New Year's shows that were standard issue. You go to a Flaming Lips show — that's what New Year's is all about."
In fact, he says, he wants people to think they were at the best event in the world.
"Sometimes you'll go to a New Year's party or New Year's show, and [the next day] you'll be watching some dumb CNN thing, and they'll show some party that's utterly out of control," the singer says. "You'll slump in your seat and say: 'I wish I was at that one. The one I was at, even though it was fun, wasn't out of control.'
"My thought is: You come to a Flaming Lips show, come home and watch CNN — you pity those fools.
"You were at the party that was the greatest party on the planet at that moment."
Sorkin Will Script Flaming Lips Musical
March 20, 2007--The West Wing/Studio 60 creator will write the script of a musical based on the psych-rockers' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.
The Great White Way will never be the same: In an exclusive interview, Wayne Coyne, lead singer of the Flaming Lips, told EW.com that the psych-rock band will team up with acclaimed TV writer and show creator Aaron Sorkin to turn the group's 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots into a Broadway musical.
Sorkin's reps confirmed on Tuesday (March 20) that the West Wing creator has officially signed on to write the musical's script. ''Maybe that means they'll need to build a stage with lots of hallways on it,'' joked Coyne of Sorkin's fondness for walking-and-talking characters. ''It will be a giant tube that's always moving!''
Sorkin is just one of many marquee collaborators attached to the project: Tony Award-winning director/producer Des McAnuff (Jersey Boys, The Who's Tommy) will be overseeing the show. In fact, the unexpected collaboration grew out of McAnuff's fondness for the Lips' acclaimed Yoshimi album. ''When Des heard the record, he heard a lot about death and loss and the triumph of your own optimism... he had an emotional attachment to it,'' Coyne says. The San Diego-based theater producer pursued the idea and convinced the band that the album would make a compelling musical - other songs from the Lips' catalog will likely be included as well - despite the abstract, trippy nature of the source material. ''I tell people all the time, it's not really a story. It's more like a mood,'' Coyne says. ''There's a Japanese girl; she fights some robots; that's five minutes. After that I don't know.''
Sorkin was brought in by McAnuff, who recently directed Sorkin's play The Farnsworth Invention at the La Jolla Playhouse. According to Coyne, the TV scribe listened to Yoshimi while driving from San Diego to Los Angeles; the next day he signed on to write the ''book'' of the musical. ''I didn't know if that was a big deal or not,'' Coyne explains. ''But then Des [McAnuff] called me and said, 'Believe me, that's a big deal!'''
The musical's debut is likely years off, and details of the plot aren't specific yet.
Coyne compares the proposed concept to Terry Gilliam's dystopian sci-fi movie Brazil. ''There's the real world and then there's this fantastical world,'' explains Coyne. ''This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of something. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital. And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It's almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive. Or something like that.'' Sounds bizarre, but so does a musical about a ''deaf, dumb, and blind'' pinball virtuoso. That one turned out okay.
SOURCE CREDIT: Entertainment Weekly; By Michael Endelman
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This is fuckin' cool....