Song 53: Race for the Prize

Race for the Prize - The Flaming Lips

The Flaming Lips was the first gig I went to. Well, no, not the first. I went to see Slushfund, a band a boy from school was in (who were actually pretty good, and offered a record contract which they turned down) five times, in various classic north London venues.

But the Flaming Lips was the first gig I went to out of something other than friendship (I am not friends with Wayne Coyne). I was already 20 or 21 so quite a late starter really. From that point there was no stopping me - literally 100s since then. Which is slightly surprising, as I'm not entirely sure I enjoyed it all that much. I certainly said I enjoyed it, and I know Alex and John, who I went with, enjoyed it, but I think I remember vague discomfort more than sheer bliss.

It was at the Garage in Glasgow, a venue I remember only slightly, and the support band was Wheat, who had an extremely large drummer, while the Flaming Lips, bizarrely, had no drummer at all, and relied on a drum machine (though they made up for that with some rather excellent video displays).

Wayne Coyne was, of course, extremely engaging, and they played various of the songs I very much enjoyed from their album 'The Soft Bulletin', which I'd been enjoying all year [produced, like The Delgados' 'Hate' by Dave Fridmann], and I remember my surprise that they played some song about tangerines as if it was their well known hit (I later found out that 'She Don't Use Jelly' was a rather a significant radio hit of the mid-90s).

The one moment I do remember unambiguously enjoying was 'Race for the Prize' the first song and first single from 'The Soft Bulletin', in which Coyne enthusiastically banged a gong, an action myself and Alex would feign whenever we heard that song in the following year.

It's a thrilling song, woozy but exhilarating, smart but anthemic. Along with the very sad 'Waiting for a Superman' it lifted 'The Soft Bulletin' to classic status and made them, for a while, one of my favourite bands. But they have become one of those bands I loved long since and lost awhile.

I now have only moderate interest in any news of them, and don't hold out high hopes for my enjoying it. Rather as I described with Animal Collective's 'My Girls', Flaming Lips are one of those bands who seem to have briefly chosen to coincide with relatively straightforward, popular music, before drifting back into weirdness.

I mean, they like weirdness. Most of their early back catalogue is a mystery to me, and famously, 'Zaireeka', the album that went before 'The Soft Bulletin' was four different CDs which had to be played simultaneously to get the full effect. Well, ok. I haven't thanks.

After 'The Soft Bulletin' came 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots' which was similarly acclaimed, and certainly has its moments, the most obvious being 'Do You Realize?' which has deservedly become something of a modern classic (and is, I think, the official Oklahoma state song), but also includes 'Fight Test' and the title track. Overall, though, I found the album hard work. My bad.

And by the next album 'At War With the Mystics' the deal was done. I could no longer abide Wayne Coyne's reedy voice where once I found it delightful, I could no longer abide song titles like 'Free Radicals (A Hallucination of the Christmas Skeleton Pleading With a Suicide Bomber' and, most of all, I could no longer abide the fact that the band were still capable of producing beautiful little ditties like 'Goin' On' but only put one on the album.

I suppose the Flaming Lips make me realise that my tastes are actually quite generic and conservative - I like tuneful, beautiful Flaming Lips, not acid-fried experimental Flaming Lips, and, well, 'Race for the Prize' is the very best of that tuneful, beautiful side.