The Flaming Lips...

very bad people can be very charming. in fact this is how they often get away with and are able to be even badder.

exactly.

We all like to think of ourselves as "good judges of character" and so on...

I feel like we've gotten a little too serious, can we go back to unregistered's takedown of some dude's Andrew WK joke?

I've never fully understood the whole Steev Mike thing.

or why anyone would care about it so deeply so as to produce these nutty time-cube like exposes

Someone upthread mentioned coke(???). I had no idea about this. It would certainly explain asshole behavior.

― ▴▲ ▴TH3CR()$BY$H()W▴▲ ▴ (Adam Bruneau), Monday, 12 May 2014 17:23 (3 hours ago) Permalink

From an interview with The Quietus last year:

I wanted to talk about your drug experiences while recording The Terror – were you sort-of inflicting brain damage on yourself?

WC: I only take MDMA and coke and stuff. I've only done acid a few times, but these drugs are like the recreational fun drugs. That's what I call them. I'm not doing them in any soul-searching way. Even mushrooms, I'm like [high voice] "ah, it's fun, we're awake and we're having fun!" Never "I need to go inside myself and discover". There are drugs that let you relax, there are drugs that let your mind not be whatever it is that's torturing you for a while, and sometimes when you wake up you have a different perspective. "Why did I worry about that so much?" That, for me, is the beauty of those sorts of drugs. Your mind that can't escape itself, drugs allow it to be not so intense.

I'm like [high voice] "ah, it's fun, we're awake and we're having fun!"

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121217060553/simpsons/images/4/49/Mr_Burns_needle.png

Oh no, MDMA, it's even worse than i thought :(

STEREOGUM: I noticed at festivals Diplo has started running around in a bubble much like yours, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that.

COYNE: Well, I don’t have that many thoughts on it. We played a show with Diplo in Costa Rica about two years ago, and we all hung out together. And we went and explored some forest together and got drunk together and did some cocaine together and talked about music and live shows and all this and hung out with his people from his Major Lazer ensemble and stuff. And we talked about, literally, the space bubble and lasers and confetti. And I had a feeling, not in a bad way, but I just had a feeling. He was like, “Man, I gotta do some shit that isn’t just me standing there behind the record player.” And I was kind of — not because it was bad — I was kind of wanting to stop doing the space bubble anyway.

so basically everyone hates Diplo

He's definitely tweeted/instagramed a few pictures of coke in the studio, I specifically recall one with Kesha with a bunch of lines laid out on table in the studio.

― djenter the dragon? (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, May 12, 2014 6:20 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That was this story

In what can only been seen as an effort to work with someone even less-talented than Yoko Ono, Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips were in Nashville over the weekend recording some music with Ke$ha. We know this because Wayne Coyne sent out several tweets about it.

Being a good judge of character, I say this journo is an asshole.

Yeah, I linked that more for the pics rather than the writing.

A rolled up single?

http://www.ntwha.com/episode-063-kliph-scurlock/

This is a pretty interesting listen. He sounds pretty chill for a hatefilled hater hating guy.

wayne coyne seems like one intensely passive aggressive dude

Thanks for linking that story Turrican, I'm at work and didn't really want to try googling for it. But I somehow missed Kesha's dumb-ass follow-up tweet when I first heard about it.

Kliph sounds like a really good guy on that podcast and I know from personal experience that he's a really nice guy online. Never met or spoke with Wayne...

xp: Yeah, I had some of that googling guilt in response to this thread.

lmao @ tweeting ke$ha's coke

irl lols at Ke$ha's response

Unsurprisingly, the protesters are unsatisfied with his half-apology

This has a lot of the FB conversations between Pink Pony and the protestors that got Kliph riled up in the first place. The responses were tone-deaf and unbearably smug:

http://www.thelostogle.com/2014/03/07/christina-fallin-appreciates-native-american-culture-and-other-beautiful-things/

Wayne and Badu recorded "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" for a collab album curated by Wayne. Wayne wanted to make a video for it that involved Erykah naked in a tub while fake blood and semen was poured over her. She demurred but said her sister would do it on condition that they would get a say in editing and final approval before it went out to the public. Wayne agreed, they shot the video, he edited it, Erykah didn't like it and exercised her veto, Wayne released it anyway, Erykah got pissy about it on Twitter, Wayne egged her on and crowed about the triumph of art while behaving like the whole thing was a fake controversy created to generate interest in the project, Erykah got even more pissy, Wayne pulled the video, Amanda Palmer popped up and said "hey, you can pour fake semen and blood on ME ME ME ME ME ME" and then that video was released and as far as I know no one cared anymore.

― chillin' on an "awesome pretzel" hoagie (DJP), Monday, May 12, 2014 11:53 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I watched the Palmer version this morning*. She was nude in a tub, but was not given blood and semen treatment.

*the fucking internet wormholes I go down as an ilxor, I swear to christ.

This whole thing feels so puffed up and manufactured to me – from Fallin (who I had never heard of before) and her "you don't know what's in my heart" response, to the legions of protesters up in arms about this nobody, to Kliph's internet crusade, to Wayne's rambling RS interview.

It's not that what Fallin did wasn't offensive – but that it was so easily and obviously offensive that it doesn't actually seem like it comes from a place of ignorance as much as old school shock value.

Which makes the outrage around all this seem just as manufactured as as controversy on a college campus – no one is actually hurt by any of it but everyone feels better about themselves for having spoken up about it.

we should definitely only get outraged by sophisticated and subtle racism

No doubt Fallin was aiming for publicity with her racist antics, but the response from the OK Native community and their allies is perfectly valid. Casual racism like this DOES hurt people. Coyne has attempted to distance himself from Fallin to an extent, but so far he's failed to really examine his own actions and understand why the offence was caused. Typical refusal to acknowledge his privilege.
I don't think he's a sociopath who has been pretending to be a nice guy. I'm sure he is, or at least was, a good guy overall, but a combination of factors, including cocaine and a bad hipster crowd, seem to have brought out the worst in him. I can only hope he comes to his senses.

I think Kliph's Internet crusade was forced out of him. There were at least half a dozen stories circulating the net about his being fired from the band and he finally typed up his little (big) statement on his personal Facebook. I doubt he expected to attract the kind of attention that he did. He's not exactly a high profile musician.

yeah Kliph was out of the band for like a month before he said anything.

Fallin is the daughter of the governor of Oklahoma don't think she qualifies as a "nobody"

Which makes the outrage around all this seem just as manufactured as as controversy on a college campus – no one is actually hurt by any of it but everyone feels better about themselves for having spoken up about it.

― Naive Teen Idol, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 5:14 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

come on

I think a better way to put it is that relatively speaking, the original sin was not such an unforgivable offense that had the parties involved acknowledged the aggrieved party's feelings and actually apologized, yeah, it probably would have blown over immediately. But no, Coyne had to be a dick, fire someone, stand up for the wrong friend and otherwise fan the flames, making everything so much worse.

Also re: manufactured outrage, OK has a substantial Native American population (8.6 percent of the state), 4th highest by percentage in the US. That (plus the aforementioned fact that Fallin is the governor's daughter) is pretty relevant.

http://m.pitchfork.com/news/55155-fired-flaming-lips-drummer-kliph-scurlock-apologizes-for-controversy-says-wayne-coyne-not-racist/

LOL Pitchfork, that's from last week

True

Now we have

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnhXk1wIMAEtqCI.jpg:large

and

http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/05/miley-cyrus-to-write-and-record-new-album-with-the-flaming-lips/

f you thought Wayne Coyne’s obsession with Miley Cyrus was just a fad, I have bad news for you: in a new interview with Rolling Stone, Cyrus revealed that she and The Flaming Lips are writing songs together for her next album. Not only that, but she expects the band to join her in the studio once she wraps up her Bangerz tour.

“On my last record, everything we did was with computers,” she told Rolling Stone. “But they’re real musicians – they can change keys on a whim. I’ve never seen anything like it. They’ve had me on this journey that’s greater than anything I’ve been on. It’s really deep.”

Cyrus and the Lips have already shared the stage not once, but twice. She also sings on two tracks off The Lips’ upcoming Sgt. Pepper’s covers album in “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and “A Day in the Life”.

In the interview, Cyrus also noted how she and the band have went clubbing, got tattoos on their lips, and even attended a 2 Chainz show together. She also credited Coyne for teaching her how to sing into sadness. “Because I would’ve felt like I can’t keep smiling, and I can’t, like, go dance on this gold car, and act like I’m happy when I’m fucking not.”

TBH...I'd check it out.

yeah the 1995 me is probably disgusted by how the 2014 me is not appalled by this.

will probably suck though.

honestly I'm more into Wrecking Ball than I am the Lips' new shit. they used to be great though.

I checked out their Kesha/Ke$ha(?) collaboration and it sounded surprisingly ok. I liked it way more than I liked the Neon Indian one.

Flips + Miley makes total sense really. Both of them try too hard to be "weird", all too happy to perform racially questionable stunts, they like to "party", Wayne's horny and single, Miley's horny and single I mean it really all adds up.

But they’re real musicians – they can change keys on a whim

tbh this depresses me more than anything else in the article

Miley's also going to quickly tire of her relationship with Wayne, leading to The Terror Pt. II.

I think a better way to put it is that relatively speaking, the original sin was not such an unforgivable offense that had the parties involved acknowledged the aggrieved party's feelings and actually apologized, yeah, it probably would have blown over immediately.

Yes – and I should probably have said "seriously hurt." Unless I'm missing something she said in the 8M Facebook threads and tweets about this, in the scheme of things wearing a sacred headdress because you think it looks cool is more cultural insensitivity than RACISM (related, both bad, but not the same). And I also agree that her position as the guv's daughter and being in OK adds to the insensitivity quotient.

Generally I'd say that even if you think Wayne went too long with his Disney science teacher routine following TSB (debatable but defensible) there's pretty much no other band currently going that has been able to stay as consistently relevant and productive for as long as the Lips have. A big part of their ability to do that is that they've taken a lot of weird twists and turns (garage experiments, pop culture moments like Microsoft ads and 90210). They don't always work but their refusal to be predictable is undeniably central to what makes them interesting as artists. Even more extraordinarily, they have rarely treaded into being an outright self-parody.

Point is, doing that kind of thing for 30 years in the public eye requires a certain amount of showmanship, risk and arrogance (and pure talent), and sometimes those ventures will pay off...and sometimes they will crash and burn.

Clearly a big piece of Wayne's persona in today's media culture is curated through social media – which just has had the effect of making his spiel more of a high wire act than it already was. Collaborations are more off the wall, media stunts are more outrageous and more personal. And that can cut both ways. All of which makes me think that one output of all this may be another left turn away from all this.

Regardless, that RS article seems to suggest he could stand to bone up on his print media skills tout suite.

interesting perspective, Naive Teen Idol

My only takeaway from that Kliph apology -- people still by records?

buckaroo banzai was miley cyrus' pappy???

http://pitchfork.com/news/55204-watch-the-flaming-lips-and-miley-cyrus-cover-the-beatles-lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds/

*scream*

*queefs*