Getting Drunk With The Flaming Lips
Note: I wrote this in spring 2014 for a friend’s blog that no longer exists.
Seeing The Flaming Lips on the SUNY Fredonia campus, or at any of the surprisingly comfortable rural New York State college bars that surround it, is like seeing Bigfoot. It’s become a bit of a myth on its own, and like all urban legends, it’s actually rooted in reality. Once you see Bigfoot, or once you see Wayne Coyne is his all-white wizard-hippy tuxedo standing in a flock of kids barely 20 who attend one the nation’s druggiest colleges, you can’t unsee it.
I saw it all sometime in February 2012. Valentine’s Day was in sight, so I headed to Fredonia to see my then-girlfriend. A pal of mine accompanied me to visit his little brother. We listened to Born in the U.S.A.on the hour drive there and talked about why the impending end of college felt so strange. So we get there, and the four of us — my girlfriend (Steph), my friend (Kyle) and his little brother (Kevin) — sit on the floor at the campus Starbucks and drink espresso. Kevin teases that a friend of his had seen The Flaming Lips on campus recently, that they’d started to make spotty appearances out in town, but mostly that they existed as airy phantoms that only true believers could behold in their midst.
We think, man, wouldn’t that be cool — to live the legend. To say we have a story. To say we met them when.
Since 1990, The Flaming Lips have recorded nearly every ones of their albums with producer Dave Fridmann, who operates out of Tarbox Road Studios in Cassadaga, just 10 miles from the Fredonia campus. In February 2012, the Lips were in town tracking their 14th release, The Terror, which dropped in the following year. So timing-wise for us, it’s a perfect intersection of coincidence and cosmic intervention.
After espresso comes beer and whiskey at the girlfriend’s place, then an exchange of V-Day gifts. Now it’s closing in on 11, and we’re heading out the door to EBC West, a pub. EBC is dark but classy with its chandeliers and finished wood tables. Mood lighting. Large craft beer selection. No jukebox, but the bartenders play good jams on an iPod — some Hendrix, Room On Fire, and the like. And then, with a simple turn of the head, we realize: The Flaming Lips are here.
The Flaming Lips are fucking here.
Apparently, their go-to spot in Fredonia is BJ’s, a casually stonerish dive bar that closed down after a fire. EBC was, this night anyway, the next best choice. It’s Wayne, the neo-psychedelic pied piper bandleader, and Michael Ivins, the unassuming bassist. People are flocking to Wayne, clad in what you’d expect: wild wizard hair/beard, gray suit with exposed upper chest. Michael is decidedly low-key in a Detroit Red Wings jersey, a thick beard, glasses and a winter cap to cover his bald head. His blue-collar demeanor is more roadie than rock star.
Steph taps me on the shoulder to point them out as I’m mid-conversation with a high school friend I’d fallen out contact with. He tells me he’d just gotten engaged, and I think that’s wild, uncharacteristic, wanna hear more, but The Flaming Lips take priority. Sorry, dude. We walk over to them. Steph gravitates toward Wayne, and I exchange awkward hellos with Michael, who’s soft-spoken and self-effacing, not phased by the attention. He takes it in stride, politely declining repeated offers from college kids to buy his next beer.
Speaking of beer, I’m drunk. Tunnel-vision, blurry-eyed drunk. Drunk enough that I can’t think to mention ask who had the bright idea for the bubbling bassline on “It’s Summertime,” though it certainly had to be Michael. Too drunk to mention how “Waitin’ for a Superman” is one of the most emotionally resonant anthems of modern American life. Too drunk to even recall the most minor detail from their galactically orgasmic July 2010 show in Canandaigua.
Instead, I try to be edgy but fail to remember the name of Zaireeka, their late-’90s experimental endeavor designed to be played via four discs simultaneously. I say it was an awesome idea. Michael says thank you. We’re sitting at the same table now, next to each other. Only later do I realize I’m three inches from the man who, in 1983, started jamming in Oklahoma with Wayne and his brother, Mark, to form a noisy psych-punk outfit with pop ambitions lurking under the surface. So I pivot the topic to the only logical thing to mention amid drunken winter in Western New York: the NHL.
Michael’s got his Red Wings jersey on, so I say I’m a Sabres fan. He brings up the ’99 playoffs and the No Goal incident, mentions how his wife was from Western New York and how that was tied into something about their early life together. I don’t know much about hockey, but I know enough from my dad and brother, both lifelong devotees to both the Sabres and their own commitments. For a while, the conversation works. Meanwhile, Steph has taken to chatting with Wayne about music therapy, and he doesn’t seem to be too enthused by it.
“That seems like it would help you, the therapist, more than it actually helps them, the patients,” he tells her. She disagrees.
I ask Michael, who’s baby-sipping on a dark ale, why they come to EBC in the middle of a college town where they’re bound to get mobbed. “Gotta get a beer somewhere, man,” he informs me. “Plus, he loves this shit,” gesturing his pint glass toward Wayne.
My only interaction with Wayne is brief, and it occurs later on when I’m somehow even drunker than before. Do I mention how “Do You Realize??” awakened some kind of dormant sentimental capacity inside my core? How their Dark Side of the Moon cover album, though playful, was ultimately uninspired, all things considered?
Nope. I think the actual transcript of the interaction reads something like:
Me: “When you do that camera-on-the-microphone-stand thing on stage, that’s pretty cool, man.”
Wayne: (nods slowly in an overall displeased manner, glances around)
Me: (scurries away in shame)
As the end of the night swings our way, we snap some photos, say some goodbyes, and wish them good luck with recording. Then, we go home and promptly pass out. I dream about confetti ejaculations and bubble births. Life is good.
Days (and now years) pass, and I question my lionization of these musicians, even if they did create the so-called Pet Sounds of the ’90s. They’re just humans, you know, with wives and children. But music can beautifully transform the ordinary into millions of multicolored pieces and shoot them over the heads of adoring fans across the world. It can celebrate the mundane, totally random moments in dark bars in remote corners of the country for what they are—however extraordinary they begin to seem in retrospect. As the song goes, it’s hard to make the good things last. Better to hang back, swig your beer in moderation, and let your music do the talking.
