The Flaming Lips

Friday, August 7
Venue: Sands Steel Stage at PNC Plaza
Price: $49 / $39 / Steel Terrace: $169

5pm: GATES
8:30pm: The Flaming Lips

WHAT IS THE TERROR??

It is a strange thing when humans are very sad, the stories and music they want to hear is not hopeful or happy; they want to hear SAD stories and music…so we suppose happy people wanna hear happy things maybe we only hear ourselves or we only LISTEN to ourselves Well, then, what had happened to us? Why would we make this music that is The Terror – this bleak, disturbing, hopeless record…?? I don’t really want to know the answer that I think is coming: that WE were hopelessWE were disturbed (but we didn’t have a longing to NOT be disturbed) and, I think, accepting that some things are hopeless…or letting hope in one area die so that hope can start to live in another?? Maybe this is the beginning of the answer. Making music is such a haphazard activity, especially when done by a group. The individuals each have their own states of mind and each are, in a sense, listening to or hearing only themselves and so it can be a mishmash of moods or sounds or themes depending on the members’ assertiveness or their ability to conquer others (ha ha). It is a wonder that anything gets expressed (or maybe it is BECAUSE of these different agendas that music is, sometimes, its MOST expressive) It’s a motherf**ker and a mystery. So toward the end of the mad frenzy that was the “Heady Fwends” collaboration record, a second studio was being used to record in while the main studio was being used to mix in. And often the demands of the main studio would be so overwhelming that when we would retreat, starting sometimes at 1:00 in the morning, to the second studio, our music would be made in a kind of sleepwalker’s dimension…meaning, lead only by pure desire, pleasure and curiosity. All creations, if you are lucky, begin like this. They can quickly turn unpleasurable but that’s the nature of all production. So when “The Terror” was beginning to take shape, Steven and I were determined to navigate around this drudgery of production, trying our best to keep every moment, every sound, every word as it happened in this “sleep walker’s dimension”. You see, we weren’t really trying to make a new record and we were being completely self indulgent. We started to be affected by this music eventually affected so much that we could not tolerate any other music we had an inflated sense of self-importance and belief that this music this sound this mood is all that will ever matter to us from now on. Being obsessed is fun!! But The Terror is NOT fun…