x h A H ia esq.) i " r T _. " Pyromania: Flaming Lips are hot By HEATHER PHARES Inspired. Inventive. Insane. Ignored. *All of these adjectives (and more) ap- ply to the Flaming Lips, one of the most critically acclaimed but overlooked bands of recent memory. Until now, that is. After touring almost continuously since the release of 1993's "Transmissions From the Satellite Heart," with such "alterna- tive"luminaries as Tool, Stone Temple Pilots and now Candlebox, the Lips are g most impossible to miss. Indeed, ayne Coyne, the Lips' guitarist and lead singer is starting to feel the burn from life on the road: "it seems like' we've been touring since 1975, you know, it seems like we've been playing these songs forever," he chuckled rue- fully. You'd think that after such an ex- tended amount of time spent in a bus that Coyne would be deeply burned- but on touring, and just dying to get home? "No, notreally. You get tired on tour, like if you do ten shows in a row and you have to drive to each one of them. But some shows are great, it doesn't matter how many you do. I equateitwithpeoplegoing to theirjobs everyday. Some shows are really great, and some shows, for whatever reason, just suck," he explained in his Okla- oma City drawl. But touring with acts so much big- ger than the Flaming Lips, it seems likely that some people might think thatthey'rejumping on the sellout band- wagon. Not so, says Coyne: "I don't think the idea of contamination by as- sociation necessarily holds true for music. When we toured with STP we were touring with the Butthole Surfers, and it was like a big summer rock tour sort of thing. We do tour on our own, but it's these big tours that everyone looks at. "The first couple of shows that you play with anybody are a little weird, but for the most part the bands that we've gone out with have never done the really big, overblown rock star thing. It's always been sort of just guys. Whether you like their music or not is sort of a moot point, when people are nice. I always think it's better to be a nice person than a famous person. Sometimes famous people suck, but the people we've toured with haven't been that way. If we were on a tour with people that we just couldn't deal with, we'd just go home; we always have that choice. "The guys in STP are very nice people - and the way they treat their fans and their crew - was great. They were very nice people, and the way they did their business was fine by me. And Tool is much the same way; they're very cool people, and their ethics are as righteous as anybody's. Candlebox are much the same way; we know a little something about each of the bands before we tour with them." Far from being an alienating expe- rience, supporting these big bands has actually given the band a chance to strike up a rapport with their audiences. According to Coyne, "In mostparts it's young girls, who applaud when you play and are just glad you're there." Coyne is surprisingly unconcerned with whether or not his fans think that he and the rest ofthe Lips have sold out, yet has faith in those who truly like his music. He illustrated it humorously: "I think that people who like the Flaming Lips like us because of the music we make, and if someone is going to say, 'Well, now that they've toured with Candlebox I don't like them anymore,' I'd be like, 'Well, fine.' If someone was going to decide the fate of our art based on something like that, well, who fuckin' needs them? "If I saw that the Jesus Lizard was touring with Metallica, I would think that's funny, and it wouldn't make me think that the Jesus Lizard's music was any less than before. I guess it crosses the minds of fans - 'Gee, what are they doing? Are they selling out?'- but I don't care. We play the music that we play, and we do the records that we do," he said firmly. Perhaps the Flaming Lips are the ideal band to open for these relatively new, rapidly successful bands. After 10 years in the music business - the band's first EP came out in 1984 - Coyne and his bandmates are unfazed by big venues and other trappings of success; "we often sell out shows in 1,000 seat venues on our own." he said. That ability to take things in stride was especially helpful on this summer's biggest tour, Lollapalooza. As headlin- ers of the second stage, Coyne feels that he and his band had the best of both worlds: "there were so many bands that we know and like on the bill. It was great for us. I got to watch bands like Evidently, the excitement of opening for Candlebox has gotten to the Flaming Lips and everyone in Wayne's world. L7, th e Boredorms, Nick Cave, Rollrskate Skinny, Guided By Voices and the Breeders. To see them every- day was just great. Indeed, he believes that the hand's place on the hil couldn't have been better. "The spot that we had in the show was just about as good as it gets for a hand like us. I saw the Boredoms and Nick Cave play to almost no one most of the time. If you play too early, there's no way most people are going to see you." He added, "there were some ven ues that were general admis- sion. where it didn't matter where you went. But a lot of them had reserved seating and the people in the front row were there to see Smashing Pumpkins, who didn't come on until eight o' clock at night. Those seats were empty when the earlier bands were playing, so our slot was fun. It was a blast!" But when a band has been around as long as the Flaming Lips have, the question of just how successful the group is going to be is bound to be asked. Coyne considered this with his usual laid-back diplomacy. "There's a couple of different categories of suc- cess, I think. There's some people that succeed financially but not at all artis- tically, which doesn't really bother me one way or the other, and then there's people who make good music and make money and support themselves. When bands who are in it for artistic reasons get successful, they will usually use their art in other ways -- a band like REM comes to mind --and make and promote artistic music, as opposed to money-making music. "That's the sort of thing that a band can't control. The only thing that we can control is how we make our music. If we succeed artistically, then we win, because people give us a lot of money to make our records, and we See LIPS, Page 8 .......... Various Artists Music From the Motion Picture Clerks Chaos/Columbia Yes! Another haltf-assed Genera- tion X Soundtrack ! With movies such as "Singles, "Reality Bites" and now "Clerks." movie makers are trying to sell mediocre pictures with mediocre soundtracks, made up by anything but mediocre bands. "Clerks" has such "alternative" powerhouse acts as Alice In Chains, Bad Religion, Soul Asylum and the Jesus Li/ard, but the album is just a collection of less than average material, bound together by the touch- ing story. of e ty ehing conve- nience store clerks. "Clerks" does offer some good new material, but the majority of it is aver- age at best. The now defunct-Alice In Chains' contribution, "Got Me Wrong" is a good song, but is the only track on the soundtrack that was previously re- leased; it appears on the band's 1992 EP, "Sap." Others like Bad Religion's "Lead- ers and Followers" and the Jesus Lizard's "Panic In Cicero" are average tracks for the bands, and are most likely outtakes or B-sides that didn't make the cut for each of their latest studio albums. Soul Asylum's "Can't Even Tell" is reminiscent of the bands earlier days, with even more loose rhythms and more whining than anyone thought Dave Pirner was possible of. The track is one of the better ones, and is one of the few big-name successes on the al- bum. Many of the smaller bands' tracks outshine material from some of the big fish. Seaweed's cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" is one of the best on the album, and gives new life to the song. Howevermostof the album is chock full o' filler. The remix of Stabbing Westward's "Violent Mood Swing" and Supernova's "Chewbacca" are very pathetic tracks, and well, suck. As like many other recent soundtracks, "Clerks" has a bunch of stupid dialog clips from the movie. These make the album even more un- bearable, and drives it further down into the pits of soundtrack and showtune hell. -Brian A. Gnatt M elvins Stoner Witch Atlantic Yep, right on the heels of this summer's "Prick" album, the Melvins are blasting back with this mostly more commercial offering. Ever-changing for the better, the band has gone off in several directions on this album. Overall, the album has many types of sounds on it. The first song, "Skweetis," is a noisy but powerfully melodic (for the Melvins) number. The first single, "Queen," has some almost- whispered vocals and some catchy hooks, making it nearly a viable single. Certainly a change for these ex-Se- attleites. Several songs (like "Revolve") ac- tually have a Metallica or Anthrax feel to them. This is not a good thing for the Mel vins.The guitars are way tooheavy in the mix. Not good. But most of the songs are still cool. Some songs are more Ministry than Melvins, and that's fine. "Sweet Willy Rollbar" is one such song, and moves with speed and energy that'd make Al Jourgensen proud. Several songs also See RECORDS, Page 9 My God, Donald! What have you done? After all these years, you've actually mE 'up asr pl te Pppet MaStell 5pus hISe By SHIRLEY LEE There is something lackadaisical aboutprincipally terrifying horror films, something unenlightening, something that is undeniably unheavenly. "The Puppet Masters," molded to- getherby Stuart Orme and based on the Robert A Heinlein's The Puppet Masters Directed by Stuart Orme B with Donald Sutherland, Julie Warner, Eric Thal 00 and Richard Belzer ing characters; this one spark of genius in this film cannot go unnoted. The all so wacky and pain-inflict- ing creatures do not divorce us from our concept of reality. Although ex- treme violence, one trite commonalty often associated with all Hollywood fictional thrillers, is very much present, Orme's careful manipulation of funda- mental human concerns between An- drew Nivens (Donald Sutherland), Sam Nivens (Eric Thal) and Mary Sefton (Julie Warner) puts "The Puppet Mas- ters" at the forefront of a rapidly grow- ing genre. On par with other ever-popular slick Hollywood scientific motion pictures, "The Puppet Masters" throttles us into theslimy interiorofaspacecraft, where an eerie alien with thick-stringy ten- drils shoots out a tentacle into its host, leaving him screaming inhorrified pain. It is painful. But for all its startling and somewhat gruesome scenes, star- ing at thousands of these silicon gelled creatures is like mouth pain, wiggling that loose tooth or biting that canker sore. You keep at it because you get some kind of sick pleasure from it. "The Puppet Masters" gives you that same kind of "I can't believe I'm en- joying this" feeling. Yet when it comes to its storyline and its ability to engage you in its ade a half-decent movie! right strigs horrific world, Orme's arguably fruit- less efforts fall short. Frankly, gross and tasteless creatures with five-foot- long tentacles salivating in every frame of film can leave you feeling more than somewhat nauseated. Beneath all its attention to sophisti- cated technology and believable char- acters, "The Puppet Masters," is, in the most endearing of ways, a light and fluffy film. It encompasses a three- some who seek to rescue the world from the slimy tendrils of these ruthless invaders and ends with everyone living happily ever after. Fear not. Grit your teeth and see it. Just be prepared to need a stiff drink afterwards. ROBERTA HEINLEIN"S THE PUPPET MASTERS is playing at Showcase. *k T-shirts $ Long sleeve T-shirts $1 t Sweatshirts $30 3 colors available: air Ash Grey, Navy Blue & W I ' ' * On sale now at the Michigan Daily Board Office 420 Maynard, 2nd flo:.: Meet Henry Rollins author of Get in the Van: Life on the Road with Black Flag cience-fiction thriller by Robert Heinlein, plummets you into a futuris- tic infinity so insidious and nonsensi- cal that your first instinct is to wince and cover your eyes. Chronicling alien parasites that fas- ten themselves on the backs of human beings and send piercing tendrils to the brainsoftheirhosts, Orme's fantastical creation juggles the pulp prose of the "me with a string of futuristic actions. 'The Puppet Masters" evolves into a shockingly believable tale of convinc- _ A MAYOR WHO CARES ABOUT THE YOUTH OF ANN ARBOR T/77 " .. ,,; ,w ,, ..,.