The Flaming Lips...

perhaps that sounds a bit harsh - I just meant that the motivation to go onto 90210 looks essentially like the same motivation to record with Miley Cyrus, ie "aren't we WACKY to be associating with this mainstream goofiness? It's going to be so fun and crazy and unpredictable!" Which, okay, that's what he wants to do. At a certain point (ie 30 years on) the juxtaposition isn't quite as entertaining, to me, as it maybe once was.

The 90210 thing is soooo different from what he's doing now. Different time, different goal, different context. It was a novelty not the norm.

he's made it the norm by virtue of necessity - how else do bands stay in the spotlight in the current media climate

and he's made it the norm by pursuing that tactic for 30 years

aren't most people into psychedelia also assholes? isn't that the point of the michael cera movie with the cactus?

― the glimmer man (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, May 12, 2014 12:42 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, otm. Psychedelic people tend to put a religious emphasis on their drug experiences, which is fine if you want to unwind once in a while but if you do that constantly then you just keep getting more and more self-absorbed the longer your addiction lasts.

Growing up loving the Lips Clouds/Zaireeka era in all the old interviews he kept stating he doesn't do drugs but good for people that do, but restating that personally he doesn't do drugs. It wasn't a huge focus of their act. Feel like it's a big part of the band brand nowadays. First Miley collab pic was not her singing or them working on music but her rolling a joint. When he was working w Kesha he kept hammering on about how cool she was because she does acid. Etc. Saw an interview last night where someone asked him about a collab and what brought them together and he just said "Well, they do a lot of drugs, so they must like us".

Someone upthread mentioned coke(???). I had no idea about this. It would certainly explain asshole behavior.

I've known a few assholes, all of them have a particularly charming side.

it does not mean they are not sincere when they are being charming

it means, etc

Is it really that unusual for music journalists to encounter engaging, entertaining, charismatic people who are also capable of being gigantic assholes when they turn off the charm? This is a personality trait you run into in classical and opera constantly; given the various stories I've heard about a number of famous pop/rock musicians, I assumed the trait carried over to that arena as well.

so in summary: gross disrespect for women, defies contractual agreements, blames racism on dog.

no racism is the name of his dog

Someone upthread mentioned coke(???). I had no idea about this. It would certainly explain asshole behavior.

He's definitely tweeted/instagramed a few pictures of coke in the studio, I specifically recall one with Kesha with a bunch of lines laid out on table in the studio.

xp Give journalists a little more credit, DJP. When someone's charming you probe the charm. You work out if it's just diverting patter or if they're willing to be candid and self-critical. You look for little cracks in the charm that suggest something less pleasant. You look at how they interact with other people, whether they've had the same bandmates, mgmt, crew, etc for years, what their general reputation is. That's why I'm surprised. This kind of disconnect really is unusual.

I started writing a bunch of irrelevant nonsense that doesn't really belong on this thread, but yeah I have dealt with several (would-be, perceived and actual) sociopaths in my life and Wayne Coyne's behavior doesn't shock me, nor his ability to be massively charming to the right people.

you're fooled until you're not

Would totally read a DJP thread about megalomaniac opera/classical musicians.

I didnt see it before, therefore it wasnt there, and now that i see it, it must be that they've changed - otherwise I would have spotted it before.

obligatory morbs obama zing

As I say, DL, they can be totally sincere with the charm, there's nothing to see-through, it can all be for real...

Anyway, I've said "They" enough now..

I have met a few of those people in the opera world too, and more of them are coke heads than you might think -- at least in Europe.

i have definitely interviewed some VERY charming actors and then heard horror stories from the publicists.

not the same thing at all (unless......??????) but i've read a lot of stories abt the lost prophets dude and how incredibly charming and "gracious" he was.

well, quite.

Next up...

very bad people can be very charming. in fact this is how they often get away with and are able to be even badder.

exactly.

We all like to think of ourselves as "good judges of character" and so on...

I feel like we've gotten a little too serious, can we go back to unregistered's takedown of some dude's Andrew WK joke?

I've never fully understood the whole Steev Mike thing.

or why anyone would care about it so deeply so as to produce these nutty time-cube like exposes

Someone upthread mentioned coke(???). I had no idea about this. It would certainly explain asshole behavior.

― ▴▲ ▴TH3CR()$BY$H()W▴▲ ▴ (Adam Bruneau), Monday, 12 May 2014 17:23 (3 hours ago) Permalink

From an interview with The Quietus last year:

I wanted to talk about your drug experiences while recording The Terror – were you sort-of inflicting brain damage on yourself?

WC: I only take MDMA and coke and stuff. I've only done acid a few times, but these drugs are like the recreational fun drugs. That's what I call them. I'm not doing them in any soul-searching way. Even mushrooms, I'm like [high voice] "ah, it's fun, we're awake and we're having fun!" Never "I need to go inside myself and discover". There are drugs that let you relax, there are drugs that let your mind not be whatever it is that's torturing you for a while, and sometimes when you wake up you have a different perspective. "Why did I worry about that so much?" That, for me, is the beauty of those sorts of drugs. Your mind that can't escape itself, drugs allow it to be not so intense.

I'm like [high voice] "ah, it's fun, we're awake and we're having fun!"

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121217060553/simpsons/images/4/49/Mr_Burns_needle.png

Oh no, MDMA, it's even worse than i thought :(

STEREOGUM: I noticed at festivals Diplo has started running around in a bubble much like yours, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that.

COYNE: Well, I don’t have that many thoughts on it. We played a show with Diplo in Costa Rica about two years ago, and we all hung out together. And we went and explored some forest together and got drunk together and did some cocaine together and talked about music and live shows and all this and hung out with his people from his Major Lazer ensemble and stuff. And we talked about, literally, the space bubble and lasers and confetti. And I had a feeling, not in a bad way, but I just had a feeling. He was like, “Man, I gotta do some shit that isn’t just me standing there behind the record player.” And I was kind of — not because it was bad — I was kind of wanting to stop doing the space bubble anyway.

so basically everyone hates Diplo

He's definitely tweeted/instagramed a few pictures of coke in the studio, I specifically recall one with Kesha with a bunch of lines laid out on table in the studio.

― djenter the dragon? (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, May 12, 2014 6:20 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That was this story

In what can only been seen as an effort to work with someone even less-talented than Yoko Ono, Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips were in Nashville over the weekend recording some music with Ke$ha. We know this because Wayne Coyne sent out several tweets about it.

Being a good judge of character, I say this journo is an asshole.

Yeah, I linked that more for the pics rather than the writing.

A rolled up single?

http://www.ntwha.com/episode-063-kliph-scurlock/

This is a pretty interesting listen. He sounds pretty chill for a hatefilled hater hating guy.

wayne coyne seems like one intensely passive aggressive dude

Thanks for linking that story Turrican, I'm at work and didn't really want to try googling for it. But I somehow missed Kesha's dumb-ass follow-up tweet when I first heard about it.

Kliph sounds like a really good guy on that podcast and I know from personal experience that he's a really nice guy online. Never met or spoke with Wayne...

xp: Yeah, I had some of that googling guilt in response to this thread.

lmao @ tweeting ke$ha's coke

irl lols at Ke$ha's response

Unsurprisingly, the protesters are unsatisfied with his half-apology

This has a lot of the FB conversations between Pink Pony and the protestors that got Kliph riled up in the first place. The responses were tone-deaf and unbearably smug:

http://www.thelostogle.com/2014/03/07/christina-fallin-appreciates-native-american-culture-and-other-beautiful-things/

Wayne and Badu recorded "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" for a collab album curated by Wayne. Wayne wanted to make a video for it that involved Erykah naked in a tub while fake blood and semen was poured over her. She demurred but said her sister would do it on condition that they would get a say in editing and final approval before it went out to the public. Wayne agreed, they shot the video, he edited it, Erykah didn't like it and exercised her veto, Wayne released it anyway, Erykah got pissy about it on Twitter, Wayne egged her on and crowed about the triumph of art while behaving like the whole thing was a fake controversy created to generate interest in the project, Erykah got even more pissy, Wayne pulled the video, Amanda Palmer popped up and said "hey, you can pour fake semen and blood on ME ME ME ME ME ME" and then that video was released and as far as I know no one cared anymore.

― chillin' on an "awesome pretzel" hoagie (DJP), Monday, May 12, 2014 11:53 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I watched the Palmer version this morning*. She was nude in a tub, but was not given blood and semen treatment.

*the fucking internet wormholes I go down as an ilxor, I swear to christ.

This whole thing feels so puffed up and manufactured to me – from Fallin (who I had never heard of before) and her "you don't know what's in my heart" response, to the legions of protesters up in arms about this nobody, to Kliph's internet crusade, to Wayne's rambling RS interview.

It's not that what Fallin did wasn't offensive – but that it was so easily and obviously offensive that it doesn't actually seem like it comes from a place of ignorance as much as old school shock value.

Which makes the outrage around all this seem just as manufactured as as controversy on a college campus – no one is actually hurt by any of it but everyone feels better about themselves for having spoken up about it.

we should definitely only get outraged by sophisticated and subtle racism

No doubt Fallin was aiming for publicity with her racist antics, but the response from the OK Native community and their allies is perfectly valid. Casual racism like this DOES hurt people. Coyne has attempted to distance himself from Fallin to an extent, but so far he's failed to really examine his own actions and understand why the offence was caused. Typical refusal to acknowledge his privilege.
I don't think he's a sociopath who has been pretending to be a nice guy. I'm sure he is, or at least was, a good guy overall, but a combination of factors, including cocaine and a bad hipster crowd, seem to have brought out the worst in him. I can only hope he comes to his senses.

I think Kliph's Internet crusade was forced out of him. There were at least half a dozen stories circulating the net about his being fired from the band and he finally typed up his little (big) statement on his personal Facebook. I doubt he expected to attract the kind of attention that he did. He's not exactly a high profile musician.