Good! The Flaming Lips are one of my favourite bands, for a whole list of reasons I won't entirely go into. They're just the coolest middle aged men ever. Wayne Coyne is basically the musical version of Robert Downey Jr (though I think that he's probably still taking drugs)
Anyway, this post in inspired by the fact that Wayne and co have just announced that they're going to be releasing a new song for free every month in 2011. It's similar to Kanye West's "G.O.O.D Fridays" scheme last year, where he released a new track every Friday between summer and Christmas. It was, I have to say, pretty awesome.
They've also announced that their first release may very well be a collaboration with chillwave heavyweight Neon Indian; so we should be in for a whole load of crazy. But this announcement from a band as high profile (in indie terms) as The Flaming Lips just got me thinking about the way bands release music.
We all know that we live in a world where paying and waiting for music is becoming an increasingly alien concept to people, teenagers especially. And in such a climate, bands are under increasing pressure to find new ways to release their music, keep it interesting, show their fans that they're passionate about their music in a real way. That's just what The Flaming Lips are doing here. So I've got 4 thoughts about The Flaming Lips' model of release for the coming year; thoughts that I hope are relevant to both them and other musicians who do similar things:
1. It creates anticipation
Like I said, the idea of queueing up outside a record store in the pissing rain for hours to get hold of your favourite band's record is alien to pretty much everyone my age (18) When music can be downloaded (legally or illegally) in seconds now, no one has any sense of anticipation for music any more. In such a world, a band has to hype up anticipation even more. It's (rarely) enough to rely on one release date to create some genuine anticipation. But when you know there's new music to look forward to every week (like with Kanye) or every month (now with The Flaming Lips) though, that gives the excitement back. Maybe it's reduced version of the old kind of anticipation people used to have over a much longer period of time, but it certainly does the trick. It's a counter to being satisfied with whatever plops itself in the charts.
2. It's on their own terms
Again, illegal downloading is what comes into play here. The horrendous over-accessibility afforded by downloading means that acquiring music has been put onto the terms of the downloader. They get music when they want, where they want and who they want. Couple this with internet record leaks and grainy YouTube videos, and artists have so little control over how their music is distributed and controlled. With a scheme like this, it puts that control back in their hands. Sure the tracks will be available on P2P sites soon enough, but it's been released entirely on the terms of the artist.
3. It keeps the artist on their toes
Wayne Coyne himself has said that the prospect of putting out another album in the conventional way this year didn't really appeal to the band. It's great to see a band (especially one as middle aged as The Flaming Lips, though Wayne Coyne is a silver fox if ever there was one) challenging themselves in new ways, changing the way they do things. It keeps them fresh and means they're not going to keep churning out albums just because that's what bands do. And a logical conclusion of that is...
4. It stimulates creativity
Doing things in a new way, against a different time frame and with a different focus will always stimulate your creativity because you've got to go about things differently. If you keep doing the same processes and routines then, even in a band, and one as trippy as The Flaming Lips, creativity starts to fizzle out. This whole thing has already got them onto talk of a collaboration with Neon Indian, so this new avenue of releasing and creating music has, in turn, meant they get to collaborate with another artist, which will send both the Lips and Neon Indian off into awesome new realms of psychadelic creativity. Over the last couple of years, Beck has been running his "Record Club" project, where he gets a load of the indie communities greatest together (participants have included Thurston Moore, MGMT, Devendra Banhart, Wilco and err... Wolfmother) and they cover a classic album in a day. It's yielded (largely) very good results. It stretches the artists involved, throws up fantastic creative interpretations of great music and spills over into the rest of the world. Beck is set to produce Thurston Moore's forthcoming solo album (and I pee a little in excitement whenever I think about that...)
I don't think it's gimmicky or a commerical ploy (the tracks are free remember) As they're such a big band, they can afford to release everything for free in a given year, I'm not saying that's a precedent for other, smaller bands of course. But The Flaming Lips really love their fans, and really take themselves seriously as a group.
So I'm massively excited for the forthcoming releases. This way of releasing stuff is great for them and, whilst I do love listening to whole Flaming Lips albums, its going to be a great experience for me as a fan.
Now watch this hilarious video from the brilliant site The Black Cab Sessions:
Flaming Lips from Black Cab Sessions on Vimeo.
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