The Flaming Lips have for eight years been making some of the wiggiest pop records this side of Julian Cope. At one time, it might have been easy to dismiss the Oklahoma City quartet as overly enamored of whimsy (“One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning”) or excess (the 23-minute “Hell’s Angel’s Cracker Factory”) or British acid rock.
But unlike the insular, in-jokey atmosphere of previous Lips releases, Transmissions From the Satellite Heart doesn’t make the listener work as hard to enjoy the journey. At the outset, guitarist Wayne Coyne yelps, “When you ain’t got no relation to all those other stations/Turn it on!/In your houses when ya wake up/Turn it on!” — Rolling Stone (4/5 stars)
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'Turn It On' (1993)
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One example of the Lips’, uh, uniqueness was their 1997 release, Zaireeka. From Stereogum:
The Flaming Lips are no strangers to strangeness. But before the vinyl pressed with blood, before the flash drives encased in gummy skulls, before the flash drives encased in gummy fetuses, before the six-hour song, and before the 24-hour song, there was Zaireeka. Consisting of four different CDs that have to be played simultaneously on four different CD players to make up one musical whole, the Flaming Lips’ 1997 album is, depending on whom you ask, either the most groundbreaking experimental masterpiece released on a major label since Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music or the biggest troll job released on a major label since Metal Machine Music. Either way, when it first came out 20 years ago tomorrow, it had to come with a warning label to keep the squares away:
WARNING: This is a unique recording. These eight compositions are to be played using as many as four compact disc players, and have synchronized start times. This recording also contains frequencies not normally heard on commercial recordings and on rare occasion has caused the listener to become disoriented.
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'Pilot Can at the Queer of God' (1993)
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This one is gonna be on every “novelty hits of the 90s” compilation that is ever released. It was the “big” hit from the album.
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'She Don't Use Jelly' (1993)
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'When Yer Twenty-Two' (1993)
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WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Tracee Ellis Ross, Simu Liu, Yola, guest host Sean Hayes
Jimmy Fallon: Octavia Spencer, Common, Black Thought & Seun Kuti
Stephen Colbert: Sean & Dylan Penn, Crowded House
Seth Meyers: Cecily Strong, Patton Oswalt, Jeff Bowders
James Corden: Heidi Klum, Ed Sheeran (R 6/30/21)
SPOILER WARNING
A late night gathering for non serious palaver that does not speak of that night’s show. Posting a spoiler will get you brollywhacked. You don’t want that to happen to you. It's a fate worse than a fate worse than death.
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Crowded House ‘Into Temptation’ (1988)
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LAST WEEK’S POLL: HOW LONG DO YOU THINK YOU WOULD SURVIVE IN A HORROR MOVIE?
5 minutes 15% 3 votes
1 hour 5% 1 vote
Near the end 20% 4 votes
I'd make it out alive 60% 12 votes
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