Meanwhile, “Stand in Line” is a strange, slow acoustic number with some freaky electric guitar fills and Coyne dragging his words way, way out on such lines as “Ten men stand in line/Waitin’ for some personality/Put out on the corner/Today ain’t garbage day/Ain’t no garbage taken today.” And you’ve got to love the way a guitar starts to hum and buzz leading into a big, ascending “Day in The Life”-style build-up that ends before the song does, leaving just that weird humming guitar, the acoustic guitar, and Coyne singing and whistling. This is the only one of 12 billion versions of “Wonderful World”-whose thesis I find completely dunderheaded, being an unrepentant pessimist and world hater-I’ve ever been able to stomach. That horrid chestnut “(What a) Wonderful World” could have blown the whole album for me, but Coyne’s voice is so out-of-kilter it’s lovable, and the guitars that come barging in at the 1:12 mark save the song from mawkishness. Take the wonderful “Five Stop Mother Superior Rain,” which opens with acoustic guitar and features Coyne sounding like an Okie (well, he is an Okie) as he sings (and an ecstatic electric guitar joins in), “My hands are in the air/And I swear they always are/You’re fucked if you do/And you’re fucked if you don’t/Five Stop Mother Superior Rain.” And “I was born/The day they shot John Lennon’s brain/And all my smiles/Getting in the hate generation’s way.” And almost as cool is “Shine on Sweet Jesus,” which features some furious feedback and some weird bass backing vocals and kicks along at a fair pace while Coyne sings in a raggedy voice and one fantastically distorted guitar solo (and some song-ending guitar caterwaul) blow your mind.Īs for “Unconsciously Screamin’,” it’s one raging psychedelic blowout, with the guitars kicking down the barn door during the chorus (“Unconsciously screamin’/And whispering/At everything she brings”) and Coyne singing, “Screaming till our lungs are full/Kicking down the teeth/We’re not what we used to be/We’re just paranoid.” Then comes one insane guitar solo with Coyne singing nonsense above it, and then he’s very consciously screaming as the song comes to its freak-out of an ending. Ranging from raw acoustic numbers to full-blown psycho rockers, In a Priest Driven Ambulance never fails to make me happy.
Dave Fridmann, phony Phil Spector of phreak rock, get lost! And take your damned singing saw with you! Both The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev utilized producer (and arch-villain) Dave Fridmann, whom I personally hold responsible for transforming both bands from LSD mutants into overly produced, bloated, symphonic shadows of their former selves.
Donahue of course later returned full-time to Mercury Rev, whose 1991 debut Yerself Is Steam is that band’s In a Priest Driven Ambulance. The Flaming Lips’ line-up on the LP was Wayne Coyne (guitar, vocals), Michael Ivins (bass), Jonathan Donahue (guitar), and Nathan Roberts (drums). It’s sublimely bleak, religiously obsessed, ragged, and sublimely strange: The Lips’ very own equivalent of Neil Young’s in-the-gutter masterpiece Tonight’s the Night. Indeed, the only Flaming Lips album I continue to love and think is utterly brilliant is 1990’s In a Priest Driven Ambulance (With Silver Sunshine Stares). I haven’t been able to listen to their new stuff-it’s far too lush, high tech, smooth, and “inspiring” for my jaded tastes-since. This seemed like recess for elementary school kids. The Flaming Lips I loved were psychedelic schizoids who played their guitars real loud and sang wrong. This was sometime after 2002’s Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, and the sight of Wayne Coyne in his plastic bubble and all those happy people playing with those wacky giant bouncing balls left a sour taste in my mouth. Such was the case for me with The Flaming Lips. You know there’s something wrong when you go to see a band you thought you loved, only to discover you’d sooner be at Altamont. Celebrating Wayne Coyne on his 61st birthday.
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