Flaming Lips are streaming their 24-hour song for free today, playing the O Music Awards tonight
Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips (Photo by John Clanton, The Oklahoman Archives)
One of the most popular treats for music lovers this Halloween hasn’t been chocolate covered or individually wrapped. It’s been ear candy from Oklahoma City-based psychedelic rockers The Flaming Lips.
The Lips released today their new 24-hour song, “7 Skies H3,” which they are streaming for free at http://flaminglipstwentyfourhoursong.com.
The stream is limited to 999 listeners at a time, and it’s been maxed out much of the day. I’m currently on and listening, but it took a few tries to make that happen. If you’re a fan of the Lips, though, it’s worth the wait.
Oklahoma City-based Delo Creative, a “small collective of visual generalists” who works with the Lips, posted this afternoon on their Facebook page, “Sorry about the Flaming Lips 7 Skies H3 server overload. We’ll have another stream up this afternoon.”
As previously reported, the Lips are offering the option to buy the 24-hour-long song encased in an actual human skull. Thirteen of the skulls, which come topped with chrome “hair,” will be sold for the price of $5,000, which includes worldwide shipping.
“I would say nothing that we’re doing is bizarre or illegal,” Lips frontman Wayne Coyne said recently on the O Music Awards blog. “In parts of the world and even on eBay you can actually buy real human skulls. There’s a place in town (Oklahoma City) that’s called Skulls Unlimited that’s been here for almost as long as The Flaming Lips have been here, and it sells human skulls.”
“People heads come into this place and they have these flesh-eating beetles — I would have tweeted a picture of it, but they don’t allow it — literally eat every molecule of flesh off of these things and you’ll end up with a human skull,” he added on the blog.
The skulls will be packaged in elegant boxes, and inserted in each one will be hard drive containing the 24-hour-long song, according to the blog.
As for the song itself – what I’ve heard over the past 20 or so minutes is what I think of as classic Lips: otherworldly, contemplative and appropriately eerie for Halloween – Coyne told the blog, “It’s a song about death and it’s a song about f—ing and it’s a song about life… It’s another element of this Flaming Lips connection with death and beauty and all that.”
Along with today’s debut of the 24-hour song, the Lips have other big Halloween plans: They will perform a cover of the Beatles’ “Revolution” in memory of Steve Jobs on tonight’s MTV’s O Music Awards. The show starts at 10:30 Central tonight and will live stream at www.OMusicAwards.com.
The band’s Steve Jobs tribute will be recorded with an iPad for the broadcast, reports the Associated Press. The Apple co-founder, whose technological innovations like the iPod and iPad drastically changed the way we consume music and other media, died Oct. 5 at the age of 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
The awards show, which will take place in Los Angeles, “celebrates the artists, innovators and fans impacting digital music culture.” Other performers and presenters include Robyn, Kelly Clarkson, Demi Lovato, Travie McCoy and Tyler, the Creator, according to the AP.
Coyne will compete for The Digital Genius Award, along with Bjork, Girl Talk, Devo and music video director Chris Milk, at the second O Music Awards.
He has certainly earned his Digital Genius Award nomination this year. Throughout 2011, the Lips have devoted themselves to artistic exploration and kept a vow to release new music every month. Some of the new songs have come on flash drives contained in gummy skulls or gummy fetuses, while others have been accompanied by trippy music videos.
The 24-hour song follows the band’s six-hour track “Found a Star on the Ground,” contained on a USB drive within a newly developed toy called “The Strobo Trip,” which provides a psychedelic visual display to enhance the music. The band made the creation of the six-hour opus a charitable event, offering fans the chance to make a $100 donation in exchange for having Sean Lennon speak their names somewhere in the song.
The project raised about $20,000 for the Central Oklahoma Humane Society and the Academy of Contemporary Music at the University of Central Oklahoma, according to The Oklahoman Entertainment Editor Gene Triplett.
-BAM
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Comments
I started it last night, and have missed some by being asleep or at work, but it was at a frisky point when I was home at lunch today, and I think it’s at hour 26 or 27 by now, so that’s bonus hours! I think it made me have weird dreams…
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Made it through 10 mins and wanted to end my life at 30