Flaming Lips to Set Guinness World Record in New Orleans

[Updated] On June 28, the Flaming Lips will come to New Orleans to the House of Blues to break a Guinness World Record for the most live concerts in a 24-hour period in multiple cities. The eight-stop tour will begin in Memphis on June 27 and move through Clarksdale, Oxford, Jackson, Hattiesburg, Biloxi and Baton Rouge before concluding at a location yet to be determined in New Orleans. The official press release promises "a not-to-miss mini-set featuring many surprise collaborations and guests." Tickets for the shows go on sale tomorrow; here's the itinerary:


June 27 -- New Fumes  & the Flaming Lips  --  Memphis, TN @  Handy Park                                            
June 27 -- Gary Clark Jr & the Flaming Lips -- Clarksdale, MS @ Ground Zero Blues' Club            
June 27 -- Grace Potter & the Nocturnals & the Flaming Lips -- Oxford, MS @ The Lyric                                            
June 28 -- Neon Indian & the Flaming Lips -- Jackson, MS @ Duling Hall                                            
June 28 -- Hunter Hayes & the Flaming Lips --  Hattiesburg, MS @ Benny's Boom Boom Room      
June 28 -- TBD & the Flaming Lips -- Biloxi, MS @  Hard Rock Casino                
June 28 --  GIVERS & the Flaming Lips  --  Baton Rouge, LA @ Varsity                                              
June 28  -- Grimes & the Flaming Lips  -- New Orleans @ The House of Blues



 The shows coincide with the June 26 release of The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends - an album that includes collaborations with Ke$ha, Bon Iver, Neon Indian, Yoko Ono, Jim James, Erykah Badu and more - and the O Music Awards, a 24-hour online celebration of web excellence. The O webcast will follow the Flaming Lips on their attempt to break the record onstage and off.

 The track listing for The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends:
1.  "2012 (You Must Be Upgraded) "(w/ Ke$ha, Biz Markie & Hour Of The Time Majesty 12)
2. "Ashes In The Air" (Featuring Bon Iver)
3. "Helping The Retarded To Know God" (Featuring Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros)
4. "Supermoon Made Me Want To Pee" (Featuring Prefuse 73)
5. "Children Of The Moon" (Featuring Tame Impala)
6. "That Ain't My Trip" (Featuring Jim James of My Morning Jacket)
7. "You, Man? Human???" (Featuring Nick Cave)
8. "I'm Working At NASA On Acid" (Featuring Lightning Bolt)
9. "Do It!" (Featuring Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band)
10. "Is David Bowie Dying?" (Featuring Neon Indian)
11. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (Featuring Erykah Badu)
12. "Girl, You're So Weird" (Featuring New Fumes)
13. "Tasered And Maced" (Featuring Aaron Behrens of Ghostland Observatory)

My 2009 interview with the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, and my 2006 interview with Michael Ivins.

Updated 12:27 p.m.
Since this story was first posted, the House of Blues has been announced as the New Orleans venue. The text has been updated to reflect this.

Curren$y on Wiz, Pharrell and The Stoned Immaculate

Saying Curren$y's back seems wrong because he never goes away. The Stoned Immaculate is his second Warner Brothers release, and like Weekend at Burnie's, it presents Spitta at his most accessible. The beats are still luxurious and he still obviously enjoys his own languorous flow, but it's all slightly more precise, 15 percent less weedy (except for "Showdown" - he's post-verbal by the end of the track). As usual, he's chasing paper and smoking as much as breathing, but while the isolation that's implied in his rhymes is touched on here ("Privacy Glass"), guest spots by Estelle and Marsha Ambrosius particularly counter that remote vibe as women enter his musical world.

Unlike former runnin' pardner Lil Wayne, his major label releases don't seem like the things that the mixtapes were building to. Tha Carter II and III pulled together all of Weezy's musical and conceptual obsessions, while The Stoned Immaculate and Weekend at Burnie's feel like ads one more gambit in the Jets Life branding effort, and the truest expression of Jets Life comes on the mixtapes.

Check out The Stoned Immaculate on Spotify.

    

Don't Say "Extreme" Unless You Mean It

WWL-870 has dubbed its coverage of the Saints' preseason "X-Treme Camp Coverage." If nobody's on a skateboard or spinning a bike in the air, calling yourself "extreme" simply draws attention to how old and not-extreme you are.

For me, the only thing extreme about WWL's coverage of the Saints is the extreme rage I feel listening to Deke Bellavia ramble. As someone who conducts interviews, I'm irritated by TV and radio sports reporters' tendency to ask a question and feed the athlete the answer in the question. A typical question might be, "What's your approach to this lockout-shortened pre-season? Are trying to just take it one day at a time and give 110 percent?" The Deke version takes that to the "extreme": "What's your approach to this lockout-shortened pre-season? Are trying to just take it one day at a time and give 110 percent? Because I know you're sort of player who just tries to give it his all every day, every snap, and you know that you can't look down the line and overlook any opponent in the NFL. Are you just trying to work on your game and contributing to your unit and letting the chips fall where they may? Because one thing we know about the NFL is that nothing goes as planned, and as soon as you think you know what's going to happen, everything changes."

Needless to say, the cavalcade of inanity prompts cliche-prone interview subjects under the best of circumstances to pull the cliche shell up higher than ever as they address the general subject of training camp, the only thing they could hang on to out of all blather.