Every once in a while, there is a band so important, it defies classification and deserves to be in a category all its own. The Flaming Lips is one such band. This issue of Thriller is devoted entirely to the Lips, who just released a new double-album in October – the stunning Embryonic - and a remake of
When you are sixteen years old and working at Long John Silver’s and lying face down on the floor certain you’re about to die, while a man holding a gun screams at you to stay the fuck down as he robs the cash register, the constant proximity of death is seared into your brain in a very personal way.
Most of the time, he’s thinking . . . Can these people support all 150 pounds of me plus sixty pounds of bubble? . . . and listening to the intro music, always
In 1983, if you wanted to play bass with the Flaming Lips, all you needed was the right hairdo. Enter Michael Ivins. It was Oklahoma City in the early ’80s when a couple of freaks decided they’d start a rock band. Brothers Wayne and Mark Coyne weren’t very good musicians, so Ivins fit right in. He couldn’t really play, but the Coynes liked his hairdo, so he became the bass player. In the intervening twenty-odd years, many members have come and
