Mark Richardson - Flaming Lips Zaireeka

It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch.... The series... is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebrationThe New York Times Book Review

Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just arent enough Rolling Stone

One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planetBookslut

These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerdsVice

A brilliant series... each one a work of real love NME (UK)

Passionate, obsessive, and smartNylon

Religious tracts for the rock n roll faithfulBoldtype

[A] consistently excellent seriesUncut (UK)

We... arent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way... watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books.Pitchfork

For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our website at www.continuumbooks.com and 33third.blogspot.com

For more information on the 33 1/3 series, visit 33third.blogspot.com.

For a complete list of books in this series, see the back of this book.

Mark Richardson

2010

The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc

80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038

The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright 2010 by Mark Richardson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-8264-2901-8

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed in the United States of America

Thanks first to David Barker for the opportunity, guidance, and above all patience. Id also like to thank Ryan Schreiber, Scott Plagenhoef, Chris Kaskie, and my other colleagues at Pitchfork for pitching in to allow me time to work on this book. Im indebted to Wayne Coyne for taking time to speak with me about Zaireeka during a characteristically busy year for the Flaming Lips (unless otherwise indicated, the quotes from him that follow are from these interviews). Thanks to George Salisbury and Scott Booker for the media and generous offers of assistance, to Sean Redmond for the transcription, to Josh Lowman for being there when all this was going down in the 1990s, to the Saladays crew for continuing to abide, and to my family for their support.

Many things make this book about Flaming Lips 1997 album Zaireeka different from the others in the 33 1/3 series. For starters, Ive only really listened to it the way its supposed to be listened to a handful of times. Zaireeka isnt a record that Ive had on repeat at any point. While Ive thought about it often in the years since it was released, I havent played it over and over or had it take over my life. Ive never listened to it in a car, its never soothed me on a plane ride; Ive never put a track from the record on a mixtape, spun the record to lift my spirits after something depressing happened, or thrown it on randomly while having a few drinks with friends. Zaireeka doesnt lend itself to casual consumption. Like dinner and a movie for a young married couple with a new baby, listening to this album is something that has to be planned. Zaireeka is perhaps the most inconvenient album ever to receive widespread release. As records go, its a pain in the neck.

Zaireeka is an unusual album that comes on four CDs. Unlike a retrospective box set, each of the four discs contains different portions of the same eight songs. And they are to be played simultaneously. This means you need four stereos to hear it, which in turn implies that youll need at least four hands (a foot will do in a pinch) to press Play on four separate CD players. Since few people outside of those writing reviews for Stereophile have four full stereos lying around, Zaireeka requires the like-minded to pool their resources. Its designed for friends to get together and listen to the album collectively. Boomboxes are acceptable, but to really hear Steven Drozds drums and feel the immersive nature of some of the albums extreme frequencies and rich arrangements, at least one proper stereo with some decent bass response is preferred. All in all, Zaireeka takes some work.

When I told people that I was going to be writing a book about Zaireeka, a typical wise-guy response was, Are you going to write four books meant to be read at the same time? Id laugh, but in the back of my mind I thought, well, sort of. While this book is not a William Burroughs-style cut-up or fold-in with different sections overlapping in random ways, it is indeed a book with four discrete parts, each divided into eight sections. All along, I had an instinctive desire to approach Zaireeka from different angles, to think about what it is and how it works from as many perspectives as possible. Its that kind of record, one that doesnt lend itself to a straightforward chronological narrative. Im going to talk around it and beside it and on top of it and (occasionally) in the middle of it. And my hope is that itll all make some kind of sense in the end.

So in Part 2 of the book, Ill tell the story of how the album came to be, including a thumbnail sketch of the Flaming Lips development leading up to it. In Part 3, Ill immerse myself in the music, offering a detailed analysis of how the album functions, what it does, its approach to sound, and the themes running through it. And in Part 4 Ill talk about the aftermath, what happened to the Flaming Lips after the album was released. As it turns out, it was a decisive record for them, perhaps the most significant single record in their catalog. All the roots of the band they became in the first decade of this century can be found in what happened with Zaireeka. Ill follow those threads. And in each of the four sections, the discussion will be divided into eight separate tracks (as anyone who has listened to Zaireeka with four stereos knows, the excitement when you count off and hit play, and you hear four CDs saying, This is track number one together simultaneously stays with you), which will approach the subject at hand in a more detailed way.