Zaireeka: An Antithesis

Again, if you're into literature, join this week's guest blogger, Myke, on his Steinbeck adventure blog over at Earthbound But Aspiring. I give you Myke:
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I see Wayne Coyne -- front man and driving force behind the wonderfully bizarre Flaming Lips -- as a sort of musical prophet, or at the very least, a visionary. In support of this thesis I give you Exhibit A:

Zaireeka by the Flaming Lips
If you're a casual Flaming Lips listener you've probably heard of this record but you likely haven't heard it. Which isn't a stretch to assume because it's a hard album to listen to. Musically, it isn't challenging or inaccessible. But listening to the album itself is difficult on a logistic level. It's an album comprised of four CDs, which may not seem that odd -- but here's the catch: you listen to all four CDs at the same time.

I love this album because it goes against so many of today's popular musical conventions.

It's only available in a physical format. I dare you to try to buy it on iTunes; you won't find it. Call me old fashioned, but there's something about being able to 'handle' the music you listen to. Whether the format is CD, vinyl, or lowly cassette, there is just something about being able to heft the physical media in your hand as you load the piece into its appropriate music player.

While we're at it, let's talk liner notes. Sure, some mp3 retailers offer a digital booklet with lyrics, photos, etc., but let's get real, who looks at that more than once? Zaireeka has some great liner notes -- several pages detailing the album's origin and a couple paragraphs explaining each song along with lyrics. (Isn't there's something satisfying about sitting down with lyrics in hand as you listen to a song?)


Not long after the Flaming Lips completed Zaireeka, rather than launching a traditional tour, the band conducted the "Boom Box Experiments." In the spirit of Zaireeka, the band traveled to different venues and conducted an "orchestra" consisting of 40 boom boxes and just as many cassette tapes.

"All humans are urged to attend." Listening to Zaireeka is a social experience. Do you personally own four CD players? Have you tried synchronizing four CD players by yourself? Friends or similarly minded acquaintances are required.

I took this science class back a few years in college. At the end of the course, we were each assigned to a small group. Each group was required to formulate a hypothesis and then come up with a way of testing it. One group in my class tested an interesting hypothesis: they proposed that students who listened to music with headphones while walking to class were less likely to stop and help another student if he or she were to trip and drop their books. The group set themselves up in a high-traffic area on campus and went to work. They would purposefully trip and drop their books in front of a student with headphones and then do the same in front of a student without. The results were interesting but predictable: in almost every case, the student with headphones would step around the fallen student, while the student without would almost always stop to help. Sure, an experiment by inexperienced college students doesn't prove anything scientifically; but it nevertheless begs the question: what do we miss out when we keep music to ourselves?

The songs themselves are pretty unconventional. The Flaming Lips have always embraced strange subject matter and even stranger song titles. The band has in their catalog multiple songs about robots, outer space, time travel, and yes, even a couple about a plastic Jesus doll.

But Zaireeka even defies Flaming Lips convention. Song times vary greatly in length -- the shortest is 2:23, the longest is 10:23. One song is nothing more than Wayne Coyne reciting an amusing anecdote about the family dogs, which appropriately ends in a glorious crescending cacophony of barking dogs. Referring to the song "How Will We Know (Futuristic Crescendos)", the album cover boasts this warning: "This recording also contains frequencies not normally heard on commercial recordings and on rare occasion has caused the listener to become disoriented."

Zaireeka just might be the Flaming Lips at their weirdest.

I like to think that somewhere back in 1997, Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips somehow peered into 2011 and saw what music as it is today. And then, just because, they made a record that was the exact opposite.