An awful lot of article links were tweeted at twitter.com/FutureHeartDay the weekend of Bonnaroo 2010, June 10-13. Here’s a “scarpbook” of the highlights…
Follow twitter.com/FutureHeartDay for Bonnaroo updates and music news. Check out Psych Explorations of the Future Heart’s Bonnaroo 2010 photo and tweet recap here, a fan-voted webcast poll here, and video rewinds here, here and here.
See Your Favorite Bands at Bonnaroo with SPIN!:”If you aren’t heading to Bonnaroo, don’t fret: You can watch the interviews on SPIN.com, the day after they happen in Tennessee. Get the interview schedule below.
(All times Central Standard Time)
FRIDAY, JUNE 11:
1:15 PM: Dr. Dog
3:00 PM: OK Go
4:00 PM: The Gaslight Anthem
6:00 PM: Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips
SATURDAY, JUNE 12:
2:15 PM: Weezer
5:30 PM: Norah Jones
7:00 PM: Avett Brothers”
Associated Press (via boston.com): “Nearly 100 acts… will be spread out over a multitude of stages and tents on the Tennessee farm owned by Superfly Productions and AC Entertainment, the organizers of Bonnaroo. More than 70,000 fans are expected to attend the festival, which runs through Sunday. But perhaps as many, or more, will watch … at YouTube.com/bonnaroo. Thousands more might listen to the Dave Matthews Band, the Flaming Lips and others at NPR.org/music. And still more may catch up watching “Live From Bonnaroo 2010” on Fuse on June 17.
No one is claiming any of these online offerings come close to mimicking a weekend at Bonnaroo. But, increasingly, you don’t need to get your feet muddy or your skin burned enjoying the biggest music festivals.”
Rolling Stone: “12:00 a.m.—2:00 a.m: Flaming Lips + StarDeath & White Dwarfs
What do you do if you can’t get the band that recorded Dark Side of the Moon to perform it from start to finish? You get the Flaming Lips to do it instead. For sheer gonzo wow factor, this is the show to see. The Lips have built a career on their carnivalesque live shows, and sister Oklahoma band Stardeath and the White Dwarfs are turning out to be a kind of Lips-in-training (lead singer Dennis Coyne is Lips singer Wayne’s nephew). There are one of two ways this performance goes: so ridiculous that it actually works, or so ridiculous that it just ends up being ridiculous. Either way, there won’t be much else on the Bonnaroo bill like it.”
Spin: “The Flaming Lips- Hometown: Oklahoma City, OK
Why they matter: Fireworks. Psychedelic stage sets. Singer Wayne Coyne surfing the audience in a giant bubble. These are just a few reasons why this outfit is the go-to festival headliner. Oh, and the tunes are amazing, too — just check out their dark, experimental, SPIN-approved new double album Embryonic.
You should know: With help from Stardeath and White Dwarfs (fronted by Wayne Coyne’s cousin Dennis Coyne), the Lips will perform Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon late-night at Bonnaroo. Don’t forget to drink the Kool Aid.”
The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs at Bonnaroo, 6/11/10, nashvillecream.com, June 14, 2010 at 2:03 PM: “As always the band balanced out their abrasive assault of psychedelics with more good vibes than a Beach Boys song courtesy of Coyne — The Raffi of rock showmen — and his optimistic calls to affirm life at every opportunity. Unfortunately, his message was no match for the wandering mind of one person in our party who, as the band began their take on Floyd’s Dark Side, went to a dark side all his own and started whispering morbid non sequiturs to strangers before fleeing the crowd in a panic, forcing us to follow and use our third eye to guide him out to more manageable territories — which was utterly impossible considering that Centeroo at 1 a.m. is a terrifying mélange of moving bodies, flashing lights, clashing sounds and muddy puke-laden sinkholes that’s disorienting by design.
Suffice it to say, we weren’t able to commit our undivided attention to the more notable second half of the Lips’ set, but instead had to settle for using it as the soundtrack to some misadventures in babysitting, all the while struggling to keep our own heads together. Whether it was by way of the band’s sonic adaptation or our own harrowing experiences, we’re fairly certain we’ll never hear The Dark Side of the Moon the same way again.”
Jay-Z, Stevie Wonder, Kings Of Leon Beat The Heat At Bonnaroo, mtv.com, June 14, 2010, 12:19 PM EDT: “There was mud, rain, oppressive heat, a set by a world-beating rap superstar (Jay-Z), a classic soul icon (Stevie Wonder), a former “Tonight Show” host (Conan O’Brien) and a jam-band legend (Dave Matthews Band). In other words, just another action-packed weekend at the ninth-annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.
From Thursday through Sunday, more than 75,000 fans tried to escape triple-digit temperatures by tuning in to ferocious sets from Jay, a midnight mindfunk from the Flaming Lips, anthemic rock from kind-of hometown boys Kings of Leon and just about every flavor in between.
For Friday night’s headliners, Nashville-bred Kings of Leon, the gig was somewhat of a homecoming. Their latest tour is both a victory lap for their 2008 breakthrough album, Only by the Night, and a preview of their next album. They were preceded by the moody rock of the National and the ‘Roo debut of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, who perked up plenty of ears with their bluegrass twang and harmonies.
One of the most highly anticipated acts of the festival, the Flaming Lips, didn’t disappoint as they played one of their usual confetti and prop-filled sets and then covered Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon with Stardeath and the White Dwarfs. The intermission allowed some fans to wander over to check out some of grungy blues from duo the Black Keys.
After two days of sweltering heat, a light rain glossed the crowd giving everyone a must needed cool-down at during the Avett Brothers’ show.
Jigga gave a shout-out to the White Stripes’ Jack White, whose other other band, the Dead Weather, played a snarling distorted blues set on the same stage earlier, and even spilled that he couldn’t wait to tell his mother that, “Stevie Wonder stuck around for my set.”
Even though the Thievery Corporation faced tough competition, sharing a timeslot with Jay-Z, a large, dedicated crowd danced away to the veteran group’s world-music-influenced techno.
After Saturday’s hectic schedule, Sunday provided a mellow closing to the festival.
One Dead, More Than 100 Arrested At Bonnaroo: 29-year-old David Sloan appeared to die from heat exhaustion., mtv.com, June 14, 2010, 10:11 AM EDT: “A 29-year-old man, North Carolina’s David Sloan, died on Sunday (June 13) after falling ill at the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tennessee. According to the Tullahoma News and Guardian, officials believe that Sloan was overcome by heat, which caused him to collapse early Sunday morning in front of medical personnel after his core body temperature reached 108 degrees. Sloane was rushed to an area hospital, where he later died.
The Tennessean reported that, with temperatures in the low to mid-90s and a heat index over 100 degrees for much of the weekend, air-conditioned medical tents were treating about 25 percent more concertgoers than in years past. As of noon on Saturday, more than two dozen fans had been transported to area hospitals for heat-related emergencies or other injuries that couldn’t be treated on site.
The festival, which featured sets from Jay-Z, the Dave Matthews Band, Stevie Wonder, Conan O’Brien, the Flaming Lips, Kings of Leon, Weezer and Kid Cudi — who jetted to the site just hours after his arrest for criminal mischief and possession of a controlled substance — also saw a fairly typical number of arrests.
WSB reported that the local sheriff’s office had begun a crackdown on drugs in the days leading up to the event’s Thursday kickoff, issuing more than 100 citations for offenses ranging from possession of marijuana to underage possession of alcohol along the I-75 corridor leading to Manchester. More than 70 Bonnaroo-bound drivers were arrested before the music even started.”
Today and Yesterday Sing Harmony at Bonnaroo, nytimes.com (“a version of this article appeared in print on June 14, 2010, on page C1 of the New York edition”), June 13, 2010: “The aspirations and survival tactics of the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, the annual four-day marathon of musical overload and muddy shoes, were neatly summed up in its headliners this year: a jam band, current hitmakers and a longtime pop giant. They balanced Bonnaroo’s neo-hippie aura with attention to the present.
For those staying to the end of this improbable extravaganza on farmland in rural mid-Tennessee, the finale on Sunday was the Dave Matthews Band, reaffirming, in Bonnaroo’s ninth year, its origin as a gathering of jam bands. (Other jam bands were scattered throughout the festival’s lineup, but on smaller stages; past mainstays like Phish and the Dead were absent.)
The leading hippie among the performers may well have been Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, who followed Kings of Leon on Friday night with a nutty, eye-popping video and stage spectacle, playing their own anthemic songs followed by a boisterous reworking of a full Pink Floyd album from 1973, “The Dark Side of the Moon.” Mr. Wonder called for peace and love; Mr. Coyne called for peace, love and legalizing marijuana.
Bonnaroo’s setup, on 650 acres owned by the festival’s promoters, pays tribute to hippie nostalgia, with a rainbow-shaped entrance gate and tall bobble-head statues of figures like Jerry Garcia. Exhibits and recycling stations strive to instill environmental virtue (which can’t make up for the actual impact of vehicles and trash from the festival).
The audience at Bonnaroo is famously participatory, usually ready to dance, sing, shout or clap along with the slightest encouragement (or none at all). Yet where earlier festivals were full of loose-limbed, noodle-dancing jam-band fans, recent ones have been more mixed, particularly this year. The jam-band twirlers and flailers are now joined by hip-hop and frat-party-style dancers — arm-waving and finger-pointing, doing what might be called the “go ’head” motion — and, increasingly, by more aloof, hipster-style spectators.
Jam bands cherish the spontaneity of the live moment, even though, paradoxically, their fans tend to be obsessive archivists. Meanwhile many hipsters make themselves digital documentarians first, intent on holding a video camera steady. Bonnaroo had music for them, too.
A visible gray-haired contingent was part of the festival’s approximately 75,000 visitors. (Bonnaroo’s attendance is about the same size as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival’s in California or the daily turnout at Lollapalooza in Chicago.) This year’s lineup here included musical patriarchs like John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, John Fogerty, Jeff Beck — whose guitar solos seared and sang — and Jimmy Cliff, whose voice is undiminished at 62.
Bonnaroo has also become a noncoastal destination for comics; Conan O’Brien headlined the festival’s comedy tent and doubled as a main-stage master of ceremonies. Amid heat and humidity that turned the festival into a steambath occasionally punctuated by a downpour, Mr. O’Brien offered advice to hippies and hipsters alike. “Take a shower,” he urged.
From Pixies to Floyd, covers heard across Bonnaroo, Associated Press (google.com/hostednews), June 13, 2010: “Knowing who’s playing where at Bonnaroo can be challenging — especially when those bands are frequently playing music by other acts… the Flaming Lips’ fuzzy, full-length rendition of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”
SLIDE SHOW: Kings of Leon, Flaming Lips, Dead Weather, Jay-Z and more light up Bonnaroo fest, soundcheck.ocregister.com, June 13, 2010, 3:39 pm: “Things here are just designed to be wacky. For example, the stages are humorously named This Tent, That Tent and the Other Tent, and then there’s Which Stage and What Stage (that’s the main stage, actually). Imagine how that plays out when attempting to direct a less-than-sober friend. Plus, sets tend to go longer (up to three hours in some cases) and later (until about 5 a.m.) than at any other festival, making Bonnaroo as much a shared test of endurance as it is a supremely cathartic experience.
For myself and other ‘Roo regulars, bands included, Bonnaroo is a second home — a place to forget about normal society and have loads of unencumbered fun with roughly 80,000 other music enthusiasts.
The Kings certainly deserved their crowns Friday evening, but others would argue that the best performance belonged to Bonnaroo veterans the Flaming Lips, who delivered one set of typically confetti-engulfed original material, followed by a visually mind-blowing performance of Pink Floyd’s 1973 opus The Dark Side of the Moon, with assistance from Stardeath and White Dwarfs.
With the Lips scheduled for the same midnight slot as the Black Keys, Bassnectar and this fest’s much-touted Daryl Hall/Chromeo collaboration, sacrifices were necessary — but I did manage to catch the tail-end of the soulful Ohio-based Keys, who for the first time since I began keeping track of them fleshed out their rhythm section with an extra bassist and keyboardist, the better to reproduce tracks from their new disc, Brothers.
But even early Saturday afternoon, with temperatures nearing triple digits by midday, the talent set the tempo for a fast-paced run that concluded with a sweltering 3 a.m. dance party with LCD Soundsystem at This Tent. (The final date of the group’s latest — and possibly last — U.S. tour, this show may have actually trumped the band’s astounding performance at the Hollywood Palladium last week.)”
On The Ground At Bonnaroo: Friday, npr.org/blogs/allsongs, June 12, 2010, 4:57 PM: “With almost 24 hours of concerts under their hemp belts, Bob Boilen and the All Songs Considered Bonnaroo crew took a breather late Friday night and Saturday morning between The Flaming Lips‘ highly anticipated rundown of Dark Side of the Moon and LCD Soundsystem setting controls for the heart of the sun in the dead of night. Delirium was beginning to set in.
“Good,” Bob said. “That makes things better.”
Bob, Jill and Andy Uhler from KUT in Austin had just witnessed Wayne Coyne’s R-rated Pink Floyd interpretation. As always when it comes to Flaming Lips performances, there were lasers, animal costumes, smoke and lots of confetti — but it wasn’t quite as perfect as the album it paid tribute to.
“I wish the piece had been continuous,” Bob said. “I wish Wayne hadn’t stopped and said ‘Come on!’ and dropped a couple F-bombs. The audience didn’t need to ‘come on’ at all — they were there.”
Bonnaroo 2010: The Flaming Lips Turn to the Dark Side, pastemagazine.com, June 12, 2010, 1:43 PM: “It takes guts to cover an album as legendary as Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety, but the Lips and Stardeath seemed totally possessed by a practiced ease throughout the performance. “Time” was a punky, gritty take on the original’s bluesy stomp; “Money” thundered with the swagger and intensity of a T.I. track, Floyd by-way-of rap-rock; “Us and Them” sunk deep into the track’s familiar acid haze before exploding with furious, blistering guitar riffs. And throughout, Coyne leaped and screamed all over the stage like a man possessed.”
Cover Songs Set Free at Bonnaroo, artsbeat.blogs.nytimes, June 12, 2010, 12:58 PM: “It’s not a Bonnaroo set without a wild-card cover version. The Flaming Lips and an allied group, Stardeath and White Dwarfs, played the entirety of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” with no deference at all. With fuzztone bass and wah-wah guitars, a garage-rock kick and non-portentous vocals, it went lurching toward Flaming Lips’
disheveled version of madness rather than Pink Floyd’s majestic one.
Wayne Coyne, to stir up the crowd, claimed there was actual money inside some of the balloons released during “Money.” Who knows?
Kings of Leon, Friday’s headliner, went pre-grunge for the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?,” then teased that it was one of their own new songs, which they had been sprinkling through the set. Tori Amos applied her quasi-classical piano counterpoint to what turned out to be Nirvana’s “Smells like Teen Spirit.” But the biggest genre leap was from the Punch Brothers, the band led by the mandolinist Chris Thile (formerly of Nickel Creek) that uses bluegrass instruments but has more complicated song structures under its fingers. It started with quiet, scurrying runs hinting at dissonant harmonies; then, as chords coalesced, Mr. Thile’s high croon came in to sing “Morning Bell”: Radiohead’s alienation song with a new brisk undercurrent and speedy picking and fiddling heading far from Appalachia.”
Flaming Lips, Kings of Leon Ignite Bonnaroo 2010, rollingstone.com, June 12, 2010, 11:45 AM EDT: “There are a few hallmarks of summer music fests: the smell of thick mud baking in the sun, the sound of three different bands colliding and the sight of Wayne Coyne in a giant plastic bubble. That vision arrived at the start of a set that was ambitious, even by Flaming Lips standards, last night at Bonnaroo.
An enormous orange arch took up the entire rear of the stage, and in its center a digital screen projected a series of bizarre, multicolor images — most of them involving naked women. Enormous cannons fired huge clouds of confetti into the sky during the rousing “Do You Realize???” and Coyne donned massive prosthetic hands and used them to shoot green lasers up at a pair of planet-sized disco balls, which reflected the beams out above the crowd. During “See the Leaves,” the stage went blood red, Coyne twirling around in the center like a maniacal sorcerer. But special effects aside, the band worked hard to to incorporate the bleak psych numbers from their last record, Embryonic, alongside the sunnier material for which they’re known. Opening with the throbbing “The Ego’s Last Stand,” the group resisted the impulse to soften the tone, and the newer songs stood out like grim, magnificent ogres.The Lips were pulling double duty at Bonnaroo: In addition to performing their own material, they were also enlisted to play Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety, assisted by fellow Oklahomans Stardeath and the White Dwarfs. The setup was tricky: a 15-minute intermission after the Lips’ proper set almost derailed momentum, but by the time the group hit the grinding center of their aggressive reimagining of “Breathe,” the audience was enraptured. “The Flaming Lips play for the best fans in the world, because you guys, you give us love,” Coyne cooed.
The National have also figured out a way to operate between two worlds. Their records may be small, tense and quivering, but their set at Bonnaroo was explosive, a snapshot of a band on the brink of new success. Wisely abandoning their customary suits in deference to the Tennessee sun — vocalist Matt Berninger donned a vest only to remove it one song in — the National swelled up to stadium size, every song a lit fuse that smoldered slowly and then fully detonated.
LCD Soundsystem inspired that same level of hysteria, even though they took the stage at 2:30 in the morning. Like the National, James Murphy seems detached on album, but onstage in the early morning, he was invested and electric. His voice is alarmingly soulful live, and he poured himself into each note, singing “Time to Get Away” as if it was a lost disco single and working up to a fevered scream in a full-throttle run through “Drunk Girls.” The lateness of the hour seemed irrelevant to the audience, who hollered back “there’s advantages to both!” on cue during “Pow Pow” and bellowed the “oh! oh! oh!”s in “Drunk Girls.” Murphy repeatedly improvised lyrics to songs, changing references in “I’m Losing My Edge” and rushing through key passages of “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House.” His songs deftly hybridize rock’s pummel with the slippery groove of dance music, and his music was puffed out and enormous at 3 a.m., as revitalizing as an adrenaline shot to the heart.”
Flaming Lips Wow with ‘Dark Side’ at Bonnaroo! It Happened Last Night, spin.com, June 12, 2010 10:05 AM: “Their take on Dark Side of the Moon was gloriously shambolic, with walls of guitar buttressing the parts of Gilmour or Waters, accompanied by some combination of accented crooning from Coyne, Drozd, and Stardeath’s Dennis Coyne.
Huge chords verging on metal fueled “On the Run,” which crashed hard into the broad sprawl of “Time,” which in turn became a huge psych-rock freak-out that was soon recognizable as “The Great Gig in the Sky,” with Drozd doing the gospel part fair justice.
And Coyne did have one more trick up his sleeve. “Alright, Bonnaroo,” he said while reaching for another outsize orb. “These balloons have real fucking money in them.”
“Money” inspired a massive sing-along, as did “Us and Them,” which the band played from complete darkness while the combination of colorful lasers, excess fog, and 3D lyrics upped the trippy factor considerably.
The Lips brought Pink Floyd’s psychedelic opus to a close with a squall of blown-out noise that connected “Brain Damage” to “Eclipse” and brought to mind the performers’ own heavily distorted single, “Watching the Planets.”
And though the entire set stretched well over the headliners’ allotted two hours, the show was over too soon. The greatest audience ever cheered for more, but settled for singing along to a recording of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” The sentiment rang exceptionally true.”
Bonnaroo 2010 – Friday Recap – Conan O’Brien, The Flaming Lips, Umphrey’s McGee, Kings of Leon, Tori Amos, The National, Michael Franti, Tenacious D, glidemagazine.com, June 12, 2010: “Friday at Bonnaroo 2010 was one of those special days when you felt the collective electricity of bands and audience surge through your body as soon as your feet hit the ground on site. Just up the road waited a top-shelf open bar of music with enough spirits to create a limitless array of personalized audio-visual cocktails, and no two people concoct the same blend.
One of the most anticipated shows in Bonnaroo history occurred just after midnight as The Flaming Lips unveiled a revamped stage show and planned a performance of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The Which Stage field was crammed with glowing, gyrating revelers for the duration of the 2-plus hour show, which included a highly entertaining set of Lips material before an intermission. I think “The W.A.N.D.” is one of the greatest live moments in any band’s repertoire, and the band’s flashier stage setup turned the song’s intensity up even further. It was a nice mix of a few songs from Embryonic plus staples like ‘She Don’t Use Jelly” and “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” but the crowd was breathless for the Dark Side set.
“On the Run” is interpreted as a maddening techno number, “Money” is drenched in surreal venom, and “Time” sounds as profoundly desperate as possible in Wayne Coyne’s hands. The performance isn’t earth-shattering, and I don’t think the project was ever intended to reinvent or over-conceptualize the album. But touches like putting real money in balloons to toss into the crowd did give the affair a weighty tone. Watching people do exactly what the song rails against – strive for money regardless of the situation or circumstance – was somewhat surreal.”
From The Bonnaroo Beacon : Kings of Bonnaroo, jambands.com, June 12, 2010: “It’s appropriate that the Lips performed Dark Side at Bonnaroo since it was nearly seven years to the day that the group performed Floyd’s “Breathe” and “Us and Them” during their debut performance at the fest. Led by mastermind genius Wayne Coyne, the show began as an empowering moment of controlled chaos as confetti shot out of canons and giant balloons made their way to the audience. Two unlikely bands also nodded to the festival’s roots in jam and improvisational music. National bassist Scott Devendorf wore a bootleg t-shirt that meshed the Grateful Dead’s Steal Your Face insignia with the New York Giants’ logo. Meanwhile, roots rockers Dawes declared, “We heard this festival used to be all about jamming. We want to bring a little of that back.”
Flaming Lips’ ‘Dark Side,’ Conan O’Brien, Kings of Leon bring rock to Bonnaroo Day Two, hitfix.com, June 12, 2010: “The Lips had the added benefit of Death Star and White Dwarfs as they all worked in tandem to recreate the classic Pink Floyd album, and for the most part, they did it in stripes (and smoke). Everyone was positively swimming in “The Great Gig in the Sky,” and “Money” was played slow and grimey. Side two, after that, started getting blurry, “Brain Damaged,” if you will, and the final bows were followed by the house music: “What a Wonderful World,” Louis Armstrong.
see also: My life as a Flaming Lips spaceman dancer hitfix.com June 15, 2010
The Flaming Lips prepare ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ for late-night Bonnaroo set, USA Today, June 11, 2010, 7:54 PM: “The Flaming Lips’ late-night sets have become something of a Bonnaroo institution — colorful musical experiences full of whimsy and psychedelia.
The Lips have played Bonnaroo two times before — in 2003 and 2007. They’ll do their longest Bonnaroo show yet in Saturday’s pre-dawn hours, playing their regular set, then performing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety.
For Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, it’s about giving the audience an unforgettable experience.
“Probably half the audience has been here before, but, for half the audience, this is their first experience,” Wayne says. “To be part of these mostly young people’s summer experience … those shows that you see when you’re still forming your opinion of who you are and what’s cool, when you can be part of that, that’s irresistible.”
Wayne says some of the Dark Side songs didn’t get much of a reworking.
“But some are completely different,” Dennis adds. “On the Run is completely different.”
“We took Us and Them and said, ‘Can’t f*** with that,'” Wayne says. “There’s a part of that song that’s so unique and perfect on its own. Or maybe it’s just us being lazy, I don’t know.”
The Flaming Lips have performed the album live only once before, at a New Year’s show in Oklahoma City.
“When you play to a crowd on New Year’s Eve, by the time you’re playing at 2 o’clock in the morning, they’re kind of zonked out and up for anything,” Wayne says. “A lot of people know the songs, but they don’t know every word, so it’s a little bit forgiving.
“There are moments in the show where it really is about what the words mean and about the intensity of the moment. Some of it’s not. Some of it is just silliness, and I’m throwing balloons that have money in them out at people. That always works.”
see also: Album-oriented rock goes live this summer USA Today, June 9, 2010, 10:31 PM
Bonnaroo 2010: Flaming Lips Play Pink Floyd, Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2010, 6:00 PM ET: “From Steely Dan to Suicide, countless music acts have performed popular albums from their catalog live, beginning to end. In a twist on that concert trend du jour, the Flaming Lips will be playing someone else’s album—Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”—tonight at midnight, when they’re scheduled to take the stage at Bonnaroo. Led by singer Wayne Coyne, the Oklahoma psych-rock group teamed up with Stardeath and White Dwarfs, a group that includes Coyne’s nephew, to record their version of the stoner classic in a couple days.
Speakeasy spoke with Coyne about the project.
Wayne on Floyd: “Without a group like Pink Floyd, there probably wouldn’t be a Flaming Lips, making this ridiculous, drug-damaged, expansive music.”
Wayne on Dark Side: “It’s epic, melancholy music, so it doesn’t feel optimistic, but doing it ourselves, I think it is. For that reason, I don’t like “The Wall” that much. It’s all about poor me, and that’s not really my trip.”
Wayne on making it fresh: ““Us and Them” is the only one you dread after awhile. The saxophone solo! It’s such a vault song that everyone knows. Once Steven [Drozd] came up with this silly hip-hop version of it, it made it kind of entertaining to us. Then there was the “Money” riff with a cheap keyboard sound that Lil Wayne would do. We discovered that the songs are pretty resilient.”
Wayne on Henry Rollins: “As much as he intensely loves music, he doesn’t care about Pink Floyd. He said sure, then he had to send his assistant to get the record because he’d never heard it. If you listen to the album it’s almost impossible to tell what the voice is saying. There’s about 20 Pink Floyd lyric sites, and I was utterly surprised at what they said. But he had to say them as they’re recorded.”
Wayne on which Flaming Lips material gets covered the most: “I think it’s the stuff off “Clouds Taste Metallic.” That group—the Flaming Lips around 1996—is a cool one to emulate, with two crazy guitars and a singer who could barely sing. We knew we were a freakish heavy rock group, and purposefully said, we’re not going to do that anymore. You think of things in five-year periods and I can certainly say I’m not that guy anymore.”
Bonnaroo 2010: a Little Less Jam, a Little More Indie, thecelebritycafe.com, June 11, 2010: “There are far fewer jam bands than ever before. Sure, Dave Matthews Band is Sunday’s headliner and the lineup includes bands like Umphrey’s McGee, Les Claypool, Blues Traveller, Medeski Martin and Wood, and the Disco biscuits, but that’s about half of the jam bands that used to own this music festival. This year, the acts aim to please the public and attract more people. The festival includes hip-hop god Jay-Z, the king of soul Steview Wonder, and the ever-popular Kings of Leon… as well as veterans like Ween and Flaming Lips…
The festival is also using its location to bring in some country music. These include Miranda Lambert, Jamey Johnson, Hot Rize, the Punch Brothers, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Steve Martin will also join the lineup for Friday evening.
In some way, all of these musicians are the new jam band. “As the recorded-music business shrinks, they’re making their careers onstage and on the road, gig by gig, the way jam bands always have. Tie-dyed or hipster-antichic, they’re in the same situation. And there’s a certain promise in Bonnaroo’s jam-band heritage—something in the Tennessee mud that seems to encourage musicians to break out of their standard set and try something different.”
The Taming of the ‘Roo, nashvillescene.com, June 10, 2010:
“The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs
Chances are, if you’re at a music festival, The Flaming Lips are there, too — Bonnaroo 2010 is no exception. However, this will not be your garden-variety F-lips show. While the seat-filler du jour in today’s concert industry is for artists to perform the celebrated works of their back catalogue in their entireties, The Flaming Lips — in conjunction with their Padawans, Stardeath and White Dwarfs — turn the concept on its head, opting to perform one of their favorite records: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Earlier this year it was rumored Floyd founder Roger Waters would appear at Bonnaroo to perform The Wall. Well, this will be better … or, at the very least, more interesting. Think local album-revivalists Long Players on acid. Midnight at Which Stage — Adam Gold
LCD Soundsystem
People — and by “people” I mean persons who love music so much they were at one of the world’s biggest festivals and bitching about it on Twitter — were shocked and disgusted that LCD Soundsystem drew a much larger crowd than Pavement at this year’s Coachella, Sure, the Pave are like indie rock’s Rolling Stones, but James Murphy’s funky-by-way-of-melancholy is a hell of a lot easier to dance to. Rock snobs may find cold comfort in the grooves of Murphy’s sophisticated disco, and that’s too bad. No one bumps the bummed-out dance jams better than LCDS. 2:30 a.m. at This Tent — Steve Haruch
Tenacious D
While every popped-collar douche-nozzle east of the Mississippi will descend upon this set like roofies to a Zima bottle, Generation Y’s answer to the Blues Brothers execute their rock ‘n’ roll comedy act with enough side-splitting showmanship to make braving the bro-herd of butt-chuggers worth the indignity. 6:30 p.m. at What Stage — Adam Gold
The Dead Weather
We’re not suggesting that just because Jay-Z and Jack White have been recording together lately, and play on the same stage just four hours apart, that there’s going to be some kind of Jigga White/The Dead Hova dual jam — but that would be a signature Bonnaroo moment, for sure. 6 p.m. at What Stage — Steve Haruch
Ween
When they played Bonnaroo ’07, the tent was no match for the thousands of ’Roo-ers dying for Ween’s sundry array of whimsical genre-jumping. This year they’ll be on a larger stage, where their wonderfully bizarre conflation of demented humor and Herculean musical dexterity is not to be missed, whether you fancy yourself a fan or not. 5 p.m. at Which Stage — Adam Gold
Play Bonnaroo Bingo and WIN (something)
Download and print
http://ireport.cnn.com/ir-topic-stories.jspa?topicId=456408, ireport.cnn, June 9, 2010: CNN.com is sitting down with some of the hottest names in music at the Bonnaroo 2010 music festival this weekend, and you’re invited to be a part of our coverage.
The following artists will be on hand to answer your questions:
The Flaming Lips OK Go Avett Brothers Norah Jones The Black Keys Phoenix Zac Brown Regina Spektor Jimmy Cliff Trombone Shorty David Rawlings Machine
We’re hoping to confirm even more bands, so check in often. To have your question(s) considered, please upload a video no later than Thursday, June 10. Please tell us which artist your question is for, and keep your videos to 30 seconds or less. We’ll ask as many as we can. Thanks!”
Skateboarding to Bonnaroo, WRCBtv.com, May 31, 2010 3:51 PM EDT: “One Florida man is making his way to the annual Bonnaroo Festival on an unusual set of wheels. Dale Louttit is making the trip on his skateboard. He started the nearly 750 mile trip in Punta Gorda, Florida. The 45-year-old Floridian says he’s carrying around 60 pounds of equipment. Luttit says he plans to make it over Monteagle by the end of the day.
“I’m gonna do something that nobody can take away from me, and this is it. But there is actually one person who can take this away from me and that’s myself with the decisions I make on my journey,” says Louttit.
Louttit says he’s looking most forward to seeing the Zac Brown Band and the Flaming Lips.”
Watch Skateboarding to Bonnaroo on WRCB NBC-3
Follow http://twitter.com/FutureHeartDay for more from Psych Explorations of the Future Heart
The Future Heart 
2 Comments