Flaming Lips smack of success

Flaming Lips

April 5, 2000
Web posted at: 7:02 p.m. EDT (2302 GMT)

(CNN) -- The Flaming Lips, the punkers who slipped on the scene in 1993 with "She Don't Use Jelly," may be losing its status as a one-hit wonder.

The group's 1999 release, "The Soft Bulletin," has landed on many of last year's top album lists, primarily on the strength of "Waiting for a Superman" and "Race for the Prize."

The Lips are doing well on the road, too. The band's concerts, festivals of light and sound, are drawing attention -- and fans. Using Technicolor images, background audio of thundering drums, and confetti -- lots of that -- band members erect their version of a theater. And then the show begins.

	SOUNDS OF   FLAMING LIPS
"Buggin'" [200k MPEG-3] or [280k WAV] "Race for the Prize" [220k MPEG-3] or [305k WAV] "Jelly" [220k MPEG-3] or [305k WAV] (Courtesy Warner Bros. Records)

"People think its more high-tech than it really is with all the video and all that," says Wayne Coyne, the band's founder and guitarist. "It's still held together with duct tape."

The Flaming Lips were patched together 16 years ago in Oklahoma, a fact that perpetually bewildered concert announcers who introduced the neo-psychedelia band.

"They'd say, 'The Flaming Lips! And you won't believe it: They're from Oklahoma City!' as if we're from outer space," Coyne says. "And we thought, 'That's a good thing.'"

The Lips' popularity may be greater in Europe and Japan than the United States. That's OK with the band, too.

"To try to please people is an endless chasing of one's own tail," Coyne says. "That's not very satisfying, so we do what we like and that satisfies us. When it does work out, its a bonus, really."

Pass the jelly, say the Flaming Lips
May 31, 1999

Official Flaming Lips site

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