Flaming Lips Sell Out for April Fools’
The Flaming Lips‘ recent companion album to Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side of the Moon, dubbed Flaming Side of the Moon, naturally, looks to be part of an elaborate April Fools’ stunt done with Funny or Die.
While the companion piece does exist – you can watch the band record it above, and sync it up to Pink Floyd’s original and The Wizard of Oz if you’re in the mood for media multi-tasking – the Lips and Funny or Die released a handful of videos, and one tell-all essay written by frontman Wayne Coyne, proclaiming the Flaming Lips have finally sold out.
In one clip, the band gathers around a boardroom table to discuss what’s next with a smarmy record executive played by comedian Jon Daly (who was behind the fake Red Hot Chili Peppers Super Bowl song). His goal for the Lips in 2014: “Stop thinking of this as a band, and start thinking of this as a brand.” Daly’s got all sorts of synergy lined up, from a Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots movie (directed, of course, by Michael Bay) to Flaming Lips-brand e-cigarettes and ChapStick.
To boot, they even created a trailer for Yoshimi, in which the band, actress Lyndsy Fonesca and some egregiously poor CGI pink robots act out the song’s lyrics in the most literal way possible.
With all these multi-million dollar projects on the table, Coyne – who slicks back his wild gray hair to great effect – has to take a break from the band, so the group brings in Fred Armisen to audition for frontman. Though impressed, and moved, by the band’s catalogue, Armisen has big ideas for the Lips, and leads the group through a wide array of genres he thinks would behoove their ever-evolving sound, like Krautrock, two-tone ska and “Coldplay.” But despite the comedian’s best efforts, Coyne gives him a thumbs down.
The Flaming Lips have a few other surprises up their sleeves in the coming months: The group will celebrate Record Store Day with two releases, a 12-inch vinyl of their 2011 hour-long single “7 Skies H3” and a silver 7-inch called “Gates of Steel,” that finds the band covering the 1980 Devo track. And Coyne recently posted a few photos of the group in the studio with Miley Cyrus, working on a rendition of the Beatles‘ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” reportedly for a cover version of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Tame Impala and MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden are also lending a hand).