SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS & STARDEATH AND WHITE DWARFS featuring HENRY ROLLINS and PEACHES doing The Dark Side of the Moon (2010).
You’ve got to have balls to cover the most popular album of all time. Everyone knows Dark Side of the Moon, according to Billboard charts everyone probably owns a copy of Dark Side of the Moon. So, you’re taking on a pretty big task here. But the Flaming Lips aren’t called The Fearless Freaks for nothing.
What delights me about this album is that it is utterly unfaithful to the original. There’s nothing worse than a cover song that just apes the original version. With that in mind, the Lips have put their bizarro stamp on the classic album, oftentimes rendering the songs almost unrecognizable–but more on that in a moment.
The two guest stars on the disc are Henry Rollins and Peaches. Rollins recites all the spoken word bits from the original. He actually makes a lot of those weird ramblings clear for me for the firs time. The originals were spoken by a (presumably) high Englishman. Rollins’ delivery is much more abrasive (but then so is the music). It works pretty well, especially since Rollins’ laugh is maniacal, although if he sounded a bit more drunken I think it would work even better. Peaches sings a few of the female vocal bits. I’ve never been much of a fan of hers but, man, she does an awesome job in covering “The Great Gig in the Sky,” the track from the disc that features a wondrous diva singing and screaming her heart out. Peaches really lets loose and showcases the power of her voice.
The Lips play on 7 songs and StarDeath play on 6. They work together on 2 tracks.
StarDeath is fronted by Wayne Coyne’s nephew, Dennis. I’d only heard one track from them before, and I liked it. Dennis’ voice is a higher register, like Wayne, but he’s also a bit more subtle. Musically they are less noisy as well, and it’s a good counterpoint to the static of the Lips’ tracks.
So the opener, “Breathe” (Lips) is distinct right away, because the main focus of this version is a loud throbbing bassline. “On the Run” (Stardeath) is completely indistinguishable from the original. You would never suspect it was a cover. It’s a bass-propelled, very cool song, but there’s almost no similarity.
“Money” (Lips) stays fairly faithful to the original, except that the vocals are totally auto-tuned. It makes the song sound really alien, as if coming, yes, from the other side of the moon.
“Time” (Stardeath) on the other hand, is a very delicate, acoustic track, (sounding somewhat like Mercury Rev, actually). It is something of a counter to the rocking version on the original.
“Us and Them” (Lips) is probably the closest sounding to the original. It has simple washes of sound and Wayne’s delicate voice. But, once again, the louder sections of this song are left out. “Any Colour You Like” (Stardeath) is a much closer instrumental to the original than “On the Run” was. And “Brain Damage” (Stardeath) is really quite spot on (and may be even creepier than the original).
The ender, “Eclipse” is like a distorted indie rock version of the original. It works pretty well.
There’s surprisingly little in the way of sound effects (which are all over the original). I’d have thought they’d populate the disc with all kinds of fun things, but no, they actually play it pretty straight.
My one real complaint about the disc (and actually about Embryonic as well). The Lips have always pushed the envelope of music. But lately, they seem to be redlining a lot of their sounds, making them distort and crackle. Now, I love distortion when it’s used well, but this “too loud” distortion actually hurts my ears, even if the volume is low. I find the sound to be unpleasant, and not in a good way. And I think it’s a shame because the Lips write such great music, that I hate to have it obscured by clouds of noise.
So, yeah, this will never replace the original for anyone. But it’s a fun experiment and actually sounds a bit like a rough demo for the final release. In fact, in many ways it sounds like it’s coming from outer space and may be conceptually more accurate for the title.
I saw The Lips and Star Death on Jimmy Fallon. They played “Breathe” and all eight (or more) guys were on stage. It was a big wonderful mess. And they sounded really good together.
[READ: May 11, 2010] ; or The Whale
In 2007, a book was published called Moby Dick in Half the Time. And, as the title implies, it took Herman Melville’s Moby Dick; or The Whale and truncated it. The editors basically kept in all of the “plot” and excised most of the “wandering” parts of the story.
So, in 2009, Damion Searls decided to print all of the excised material as a book itself. This exercise was published in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 2009 | Vol. XXIX. So, this “book” is Moby Dick without the “plot” or as the introduction puts it, “all Moby, no Dick.”
This book includes “every chapter, sentence, word, and punctuation mark that Anonymous removed to produce [Moby Dick in Half the Time]” (10).
And so what we get is a very surreal story indeed. It comes across as a fascinating look into the mind of the (in this version) not named until Chapter 11 or so narrator (since we’ve obviously lost “Call me Ishmael”). It also comes across in many sections as bizarre poetry.
; or the Whale’s opening line is:
“methodically.” (31).
The first chapter is a lengthy discussion of people’s desire to be on or near water (and yet all of the context is removed, so we don’t know why he is talking so much about it). The third chapter is all about beds. And, since very little was excised in the truncated version, we have a section like this:
original
, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously
–not a bed unoccupied
I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do so, about a strange town
like a bench on the Battery
Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet
“he don’t”
“Is he here?” (36-37).
Very much like a weird poem. And yet, right after this, there are several full paragraphs. Which leads to Chapter 4 in which we get a very funny story about the narrator trying to climb up a chimney after watching a sweep do it, and how his grandmother punished him by sending him to bed in the middle of the day (horrors)!
Some other things that this text focuses on: a large portion (possibly all?) of Rev Fowler’s Jonah and the whale speech (he gives far more detail than I ever knew about the story…. I have to look that up further).
Since there is no “quest plot” in this version, we focus on a lot of incidentals. Queequeg is fasting for Ramadan–although the whole Ramadan thing is very weird to me as Queequeg is a cannibal–what exactly is he saying here?
Another thing which makes it seems that Melville was paid by the word is his Folio of Whales (!). He gives a detailed breakdown of every type of whale that he can name. It is quite astonishing as an inclusion in a novel. Again I don’t know if the condensed version includes any of that but it’s very surprising that this more or less non-fiction section is included in the novel.
The story follows some fascinating diversions from here: a brief look into why Ahab is obsessed with Moby Dick (surprisingly it’s not included in the edited version). There’s also a long passage about Moby Dick himself, how he has become legendary among all sailors; they believe him to be ubiquitous and immortal.
Another astonishing section concerns whiteness. How all blessed things and, conversely, all wicked things are white (from priest’s garb to albinos)–and yes, there’s a passage about white people as well. Ishmael also seems hell-bent on convincing his readers that what he says is true. So, he cites many examples of how vicious whales are: they attack ships whether provoked or not.
When (offscreen) the boat starts filling with water, Ishmael and Queequeg are sent to help bail. Ishmael wonders whether this is typical (it is), and then sets off to make his will! Then there’s a very lengthy story about the Town-Ho, a boat wherein personalities almost led to a mutiny. In rather excruciating detail, we learn how a first mate insists that a man who is a high rank should sweep the deck (my nautical terminology is for the birds, so I won’t even guess at ranks). When he says that it is beneath him, a fight breaks out with the insulted party hitting the mate and then being put in the hold.
Religion is pretty ever present here (which I guess mens it is not in the edited version?) so when the cook “prays” (in delightfully offensive “black speak”) to a bunch of sharks (!) to quiet down while eating a whale (?!) it’s bizarre and offensive at the same time. But religion is also present in the interception of the Jeroboam. On board this boat is Gabriel, a shaker (and boy do shakers get a bad rap here), who claims to be an angel and who the silly shipmates believe to be one (so consequently they will not seek Moby Dick).
And, then of course, there’s yet even more classification of whales. Melville was quite obsessed with the fact that everyone know all the details of whales (even if no one could possibly ever draw one correctly, ever). He even goes into extensive detail about the skeleton of the whale (including a lengthy explanation of how he came to know what a skeleton looks like).
As the story reaches its conclusion, the chapters grow shorter and shorter (because more and more of the story is included in that Half the Time version). This leads to some great chapters like 117 which in its entirety is
,
,
, face to face,
“, old man”
“–”
in the gloom
“–” —
And Chapter 131 and the Epilogue are completely blank. This leads to the bizarre anticlimactic ending of the book. The final words are:
“The ferrule has not stood, sir,” said the carpenter, now coming up; “I put good work into that leg” (342).
Of course, since there was no plot to begin with, I guess there can’t really be an anticlimax.
So, let’s see. This version is utterly fascinating. I’m completely glad that I read this before I did the full reading of Moby Dick. I think if you were familiar with the story, this edition wouldn’t be quite so surreal. (If I have read Moby Dick at all, it was so long ago that I don’t remember any of the details). Of course, if you were mostly just interested in the Whale parts of the book, this is an easy way to not have to sift through all that plot business.
The funny thing for me is that when I started reading this story I assumed it was going to be all kinds of weirdly disjointed things like the excerpts I quoted. But by the end, I was really interested in the longer passages and the weirdly scientific stuff that makes Ishmael sound paranoid that no one will believe him.
It has actually turned into a fun teaser for Moby Dick itself. And we’ll be beginning that task over at Infinite Zombies in just a few weeks!
An interesting tidbit I’ve got a post queued up about is that in the British edition of Moby-Dick (titled only “The Whale”), the epilogue was either lost or intentionally left off, and this wrought havoc with the book’s reception.
I think you’re jesting about Melville being paid by the word, but I can report that he in fact was not. The payment terms back then are interesting to read about, and it’s worth noting that after Moby-Dick, Melville got the shorter and shorter ends of the payment sticks.
Thanks for posting this. I don’t think I’ll go and get this (or the derivative text of which it is a derivative), but I’m glad to have read your summary.
I’m only half joking about the paid by the word bit. But there’s so many things that seem not extraneous exactly just, well, like bonus tracks, that it really seemed like he was looking for a huge tome.
There is something about the British version of the book and the epilogue in the introduction to this title (and how some sections were actually put in different places!).
As for this version itself, there’s no reason to get it, especially if you know the book as well as you do. I wasn’t planning to read Moby Dick when I ordered this title; it was meant to be a weird diversion from what I normally read. But now that I got to read it as a precursor to the proper book, it may it quite a coup, timewise.
I don’t know if it’s a weird coincidence or an inevitable conclusion that you two would end up contacting each other? Also, I’m being to suspect that I live in a “Tommy Westphall Universe.”
Andrew, are you acquainted with Mr Houston?
Yes, he is the web potentate of a forum I’ve been a part of for the last seven years.
Andrew, that’s freaky. I lacked the context myself (and had no idea what you were talking about) until your clarification just now (thanks for your discretion, btw; I’m still generally in favor of keeping my alter-egos separate in public [but don’t worry, Paul — nothing too unsavory]). This is not the first coincidental acquaintance that has arisen out of my blogging group reads. It’s at least the third, I think. Andrew, you’re not too late to play along with the Moby-Dick read, which we tweeted back and forth about not too long ago if memory serves.
Daryl,
Unsavory is fine with me. And, I work in a public library, so I know all about aliases.
Where do I sign up?
And keeping with Paul’s theme of soundtracks accompanying readings, might I suggest Mastodon’s “Leviathan”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_%28album%29
I’ve heard Leviathan was great. I only have Blood Mountain. I’ll see if I can get it before I delve too deeply.
Andrew, visit http://infinitezombies.wordpress.com/. It’s a six-week whirlwind through Moby-Dick, with the first 100 or so pages (depending on your edition) due on Monday (where “due” means only that people at the blog may be writing about spoilers, so if you don’t want to have the book spoiled, keep up).
[…] don’t normally try to have my soundtracks correspond to the book. But since Andrew suggested that Mastodon’s Leviathan was a good match, I decided I’d try to have all six […]
[…] but it’s still a fascinating and enjoyable book. Then, shortly after reading that, I read ; or the Whale, compiled by Damien Searle (read the post to find out about this odd little book, it’s too hard to explain briefly). […]