Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Monday, December 28, 2009
The Lunatic Is Again On The Prowl

Every once in a while do questionable things to remind me why I shouldn't make decisions late at night. The most recent particular such incident occurred last week in the wee hours before heading off on the upstate adventure with Odd Job Jaffe, where I decided that it might be worth my time to purchase the just-released Flaming Lips cover of Dark Side of the Moon.

Nope.

It seemed to me like it might actually be cool in theory (at least to the me of 10 years ago--better than Phish covering them on 11/2/98 anyway), though I can understand how it wouldn't even seem cool in theory to many of you. However, it sadly just isn't really worth any ears--much like Beck's recent attempts to cover classic records with his Beck & Friends Record Club project (which are, by the way, worth checking out nonetheless).

I picked out three songs for your "listening pleasure"--Dark Side's concluding suite "Brain Damage>Eclipse", the sweetest and most pleasurable part of the record, and "Great Gig In The Sky", featuring Peaches on full-throated scream-mongering.

The first choice is obvious enough--while much of Dark Side is more or less atmosphere working to conjure sonic ambiance, "Brain Damage>Eclipse" are just two relatively straightforward pop tunes. Wayne Coyne makes this salient and I think often underlooked point on the record: "From a musician's stance... it's not very long. It's only nine songs and some are reprisals of the same theme over and over." Most of us never put much thought into the depth of the record while getting geeking out to it in dark bedrooms or upstate forests, but it's really a pretty short little number with only a couple of actual tunes.

The other track I'm offering is a bit more of a head-scratcher, given that "Great Gig In the Sky" is generally considered by many as the one track on the original record that most of us think we could do without. As a sort of non-Floyd number featuring a swirling instrumental underneath an opera singer more or less belting her heart out to the end of a nonsense world, it's inclusion on the record always seemed a little weird--which I think is why, in some ways, "Gig" ends up surprisingly as the most interesting cover here. Bringing in Peaches was actually an inspired choice, as a) hearing Coyne wah-wah his way through this one would have been about one tick less annoying than hearing Jon Fishman wail and vac his way through it, and b) she obviously brings something different and modern to the fold outside of the psych-drugs-haze Floyd and the Lips. I'm not suggesting that I would try to convince any haters that this is worth their time, but for any of us who wanted this record to work, it's definitely worth a listen.

On this point though, strangely enough most of the other tracks on this record are pegged as "Featuring Henry Rollins"-- but for the life of me I can't really tell what exactly his contribution is to all of this. Most of the leads sound like Wayne Coyne (or else at least not like Henry Rollins), but am I mishearing? All I can make out of the former Black Flag singer are some moments where I hear a speaking voice that appears to be his. It could have been interesting had Rollins been screaming all over this disc, but the end product turns out to be more of a non-event.

In the end... this record would be more interesting were it given away for free. Instead, I feel slightly like a bozo for having given them any dollars (especially when I haven't even bought or heard the most recent Lips record Embryonic, which is actually supposed to be pretty good).

LISTEN:

Flaming Lips ft. Henry Rollins - "Brain Damage", from Dark Side of the Moon

Flaming Lips ft. Henry Rollins - "Eclipse", from Dark Side of the Moon

Flaming Lips ft. Peaches - "Great Gig In The Sky", from Dark Side of the Moon

And one bonus: the always fantastic "Turn It On", from the Lips's '94 poptasmagoria, Transmissions From The Satellite Heart:

Flaming Lips - "Turn It On", from Transmissions From The Satellite Heart

Labels: fucktactics, mp3, music, old flames

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 12/28/2009 02:02:00 PM 0 comments

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