Friday Featured Track
The song that has been on my brain the most this week:
- “Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung,” The Flaming Lips, from 2006′s “At War with the Mystics.”
Simultaneously solemn and trippy, this is a pretty interesting song to have lodged in your head for a week. I’ve listened to it at least a dozen times since it’s just been stuck in my mind’s ear. I’m not complaining, but if you’ve noticed me acting a bit weird (well, weirder), this just might have something to do with it.
Earlier this week, I endorsed the Lips’ “Do You Realize?” for Oklahoma’s official rock ‘n’ roll song. (Go to www.oklahomarocksong.org now to submit nominations - and they better be actual rock songs that you’re nominating - and later this summer to vote.) I probably love this song just as much, but it’s not as suited for the official rock song moniker, since it’s just not as joyous and accessible as “Do You Realize?”
I mean, come on, it’s about people dying in an Italian volcano and has a German word in the title that literally translates to “God dawn” and essentially means the end of the world. Not exactly something you hear every day on the Top 40. (Again, not complaining; the Top 40 could use a shakeup.)
The music is beautifully bizarre, an evocative, otherworldly sound with definite Pink Floyd overtones. Multi-instrument wizard Steven Drozd sings this track instead of Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, which only adds to the mystique. And those “Romeo and Juliet”-esque lyrics are simultaneously heartbreaking and oddly uplifting.
Go on, get weird, try a little Flaming Lips this weekend. (If some variation of that isn’t printed on an awesome-looking T-shirt, it really should be.)
-BAM
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
I had no idea you were such a Flaming Lips fan, but it certainly explains a few things.