LISTEN TO: The Flaming Lips - I Found a Star on the Ground (Warner)
4/5
By: Stan Morgan
The Flaming Lips love getting high, this is no secret, but they have obviously found a problem which needs fixing. Whenever they drop some acid (is that what the kids call it these days?) they don’t have any music that will last the duration of their trip. Rockfeedback’s research into the effects of LSD indicate that the peak usually lasts between 4 and 6 hours, a length that far exceeds the average length of a song (just over 4 minutes according to a dodgy looking study I found on the internet). That means that it would take approximately 90 of your average human songs to last the duration, which is completely ridiculous. Who has time to change the CD or, even worse, the LP when there’s barely enough time to lie on your back and see all your skin falling off in slow-motion from above (or something)?
The Flaming Lips, who, if I haven’t mentioned before, love getting high, have solved this problem by sitting down in a studio for three weeks and recording a six hour song. Genius. What’s more, people who purchase the song will also receive the ‘Strobo Trip’, a toy devised by Wayne Coyne for people to play with while they listen to the song. “You could play with it for hours. I mean, I don’t know if you could play with it for six hours, but it’s kind of meant so that kids can, like, take LSD and play with it” says Coyne. Sound the alarm.
The content of the song is pretty irrelevant, it meanders through a variety of psychedelic styles, sounding like The Doors, Pink Floyd and even The Flaming Lips in places. There’s a lot of ambient sections, and an 11 minute part that is almost unlistenable due to an assault of high pitched noises, but they’re not the only highlights. Before the track was recorded the band gave fans the opportunity to get their names in the lyrics if they donated id="mce_marker"00 to the Central Oklahoma Humane Society, and so there are two sections (one of which sounds a bit Spinal Tap) where the names of those generous or fame-hungry enough are read out.
This project is ridiculous in so many ways, and has the potential to be seen as a pretentious journey up each of the members’ arseholes, but if these kinds of things didn’t exist then music would be even more boring than it already is. Don’t do drugs. Or if you do, listen to this.
The Flaming Lips - I Found a Star On the Ground [Part One of Three] by Slow•Nerve•Action 3
The Flaming Lips - I Found a Star On the Ground [Part Two of Three] by Slow•Nerve•Action 2
The Flaming Lips - I Found a Star On the Ground [Part Three of Three] by Slow•Nerve•Action
Artists in this article: The Flaming Lips
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