Lips Take On "Yoshimi" Again

The Flaming Lips will release a collector's edition of their most recent LP, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, padded with additional tracks and a bonus DVD, on September 2nd. The reissue will feature the songs like "If I Go Mad" and "Up Above the Daily Hum" -- recorded in sessions between 1999's The Soft Bulletin and 2002's Yoshimi -- that have been available thus far only as imports.

"By the end of recording Soft Bulletin, we were kind of done with it," says frontman Wayne Coyne of the decision to withhold the tracks from the original Yoshimi. "'If I Go Mad' has a lot of the same mood and drama and references of love, death and insanity, and even though we liked it a lot and felt it was powerful, we really didn't want to put out another record and have it be 'Soft Bulletin 2.'"

The accompanying DVD features videos, "making-of" videos, a trailer for the Flaming Lips upcoming movie Christmas On Mars, as well as animated representations of the songs "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Part I" and "Fight Test."

Shot in Las Vegas, the "making-of" footage of the "Do You Realize?" video features a menagerie of Lips-favored characters. "There's the usual assortment of giant frogs, zebras, wanna-be Victoria Secret's models, me and extras sitting around waiting," says Coyne. "I was sitting in a chair having make-up put on and they brought in an elephant that wasn't behaving the way they wanted it to. I was wearing a fitted Dolce and Gabana suit, and at one point, if you watch closely, the elephant gets snot on the white jacket. It still hasn't come out."

Continuing their year of odd couplings, which has seen them team with the Chemical Brothers and Justin Timberlake, the Lips recently paired with singer Tom Jones on the theme for Duck Dodgers, an animated series on the Cartoon Network.

"Tom Jones just belts the shit out," Coyne says. "He hasn't lost a bit of his bravado."

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Song Stories

“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

More Song Stories entries »

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