The Flaming Lips had already made their mark in psychedelia. They were doing sold out shows, creating music for a cult following. Their fans? Purists of music, people who know about composition, production and music overall. This is the story of their creative album Zaireeka-a commercial flop but a step in music no one talks about.
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Guitarist Ronald Jones had left the band. Warner Bros. Records was already breathing down their neck. The previous album, Clouds Taste Metallic hadn’t done very well commercially. Yet, The Flaming Lips went another route. Wayne Coyne was inspired by something unique from his experience-and wanted the new album to be reminiscent of it.
The Parking Lot Experiments
In his youth, Wayne Coyne had experienced several car stereos playing the same song in synchronisation. He created 40 cassette tapes to be played together in a parking lot, instructing people when to start them. He had become a cassette tape conductor, and it taught him some interesting things.
Production, like for any big group was plagued by individual problems. Michael Ivins was involved in a car crash, and multi-instrumentalist Steve Drozd’s hand had become infected due to heroin use.
With a new philosophy of “make records, not friendship”, the band finished the 8 songs. They were of varied length, had different sonic layers. What had to be done is-you guessed it-played together in different timings to make some unique music. According to the sequence that you played the song, you made something perhaps only few others would. It was revolutionary at the time, but appealed to a niche audience.
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The Play-Play-Play of the Music
The music was an experience of a lifetime for hardcore fans. From Rolling Stone to Pitchfork (who initially trashed the album), they were all ears. Literally. You needed multiple players, or at least friends, to be able to experience the true intent of making this music. The Flaming Lips were crossing boundaries they never knew they’ll set for themselves. They had created a psychedelic audio experience in the 90s-which has not been done ever since. While people lauded the brilliance of Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (for good reason), there was an album that became a gift to all Flaming Lips fans. The original albums from the years now sells for thousands of dollars on eBay.
The story of the songs is something of an experience in itself. The band took seemingly random, sometimes surreal moments of experience and designed a soundboard. If you were to press play on 2 different CDs, you were combining tales and experiences, while making a whole new experience in music. From “demented vegetables” to an “airplane pilot who (somehow) hangs himself mid-flight”, there was a dark mix of everything Flaming Lips were capable of.
The album itself is a combination of Zaire (now called Congo and a symbol of anarchy) and Eureka. The portmanteau is one that brings complex emotions and layers into an experiment that went under the radar commercially. For fans now, it is a coveted piece of 90s music history with an incredible tale.
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Self professed metalhead, moderately well read. If the music has soul, it's whole to me. The fact that my bio could have ended on a rhyme and doesn't should tell you a lot about my personality.
