“Watching the Planets”

Lips and assholes, pt. 3

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | musiX, pdX | 1 Comment

About a month and a half ago, I biked (and walked) up to the top of Mount Tabor—nearly giving myself a heart attack in the process —with the intent of possibly participating in a video shoot for The Flaming Lips‘ “Watching the Planets.”

The good news is I didn’t have a heart attack. The even gooder news is that I didn’t get naked … but it turns out Lips frontman Wayne Coyne did. It was anybody’s guess as to how the video would turn out (“Like with Christmas On Mars, we had no idea what it was about until it came out,” drummer Kliph Scurlock told me). Well, the video for “Watching the Planets” debuted today at NME, and you can watch it here. Lots of breasts and penises and vaginal fur ball thingies. I guess I don’t need to tell you that it’s NSFW.

The best news of all? I recycled the above headline yet again.

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Lips and assholes, pt. 2

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 | musiX, pdX | 3 Comments

Well, I didn’t get naked. I know, I know—it’s very disappointing. But I did recycle the headline above. Are we cool?

The Flaming Lips‘ Wayne Coyne and drummer Kliph Scurlock showed up at Mount Tabor along with a modest crew to greet the 50 or 60 cyclists eager for a naked stroll atop their aluminum stallions. Coyne, of course, was sporting his usual snug-fitting gray suit … and nothing else. The video shoot for “Watching the Planets” (from the forthcoming Embryonic record) had it all: mystery, intrigue, suspense … the latter of which came in the form of a park ranger threatening to shut the whole thing down and seize the equipment if the budding nudists/video stars didn’t keep their bottoms on their bottoms … breasts OK; buns and balls not OK … only in The Prude-nited States of America.

Fortunately by the time the fuzz arrived, the full-nude scenes had already been shot and given the OK by director Coyne, who understandably was more concerned with the bikers’ safety. “We don’t want anyone to crash … we don’t want any scraped-up boobs,” he told the clothes-less posse.

Coyne looked more worried about his own safety once he was inside of his space bubble, which was propped on top of a stack of milk crates inside of a bicycle rig. But the faithful volunteers held Coyne in place through the six or seven runs.

Scurlock, meanwhile, spent most of the morning chatting with onlookers and press, talking to park rangers who threatened to shut them down, and cueing up the music on a beat-up orange amplifier. His guess was as good as anyone’s as to what would come of the day’s shoot: “Like with Christmas On Mars, we had no idea what it was about until it came out.”

Photos by Mark Lore

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Lips and assholes

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 | musiX, pdX | 3 Comments

No one ever said this was a family-friendly blog so just pipe down about that headline.

This one’s a bit of a head-scratcher … even for the Flaming Lips. The new video for “I Can Be a Frog” features a bikini-clad woman impersonating animals for two minutes. That’s it. The song itself (with animal sounds phoned in by Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O) is only so-so … so let’s look ahead to the next video, shall we?

The Lips will descend on Mount Tabor today … that’s TODAY, right here in Portland to film the video for “Watching the Planets. As sort of a nod to the World Naked Bike Ride, the idea is to get a large group of people together for an exhilarating (and slightly chafing) bike ride in the nude while Wayne Coyne rolls around in his giant space bubble. Or as Coyne explained to BikePortland.org:

“I’m having one of my giant space bubbles covered in fake fox fur. It’s going to look like some giant fur egg, and the people on bicycles are gonna sort of be born and erupt out of this fur, vaginalistic thing.”

You can’t go wrong with fur, vaginalistic things. The shoot will go from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. (although no one has to stay for the entire thing), and the entire event works on a drop-in basis. Just show up at the basketball courts near the top of Mount Tabor (the earlier the better), sign the release papers, drop your clothes, shake hands with Wayne, and hop on your bike. More details here. The vid should be released in a couple of weeks, while the much anticipated new record Embryonic is out Oct. 13.

That’s it! I’m in. I’d better get out the hedgers and perform a little routine maintenance … sorry, I told you TDoL isn’t about being family-friendly. Or mature.

Video for “I Can Be a Frog”

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