Flaming Lips’ lead singer Wayne Coyne drives across America to collect collaborations from a wide array of big-name, stylistically diverse performers—everyone from Chris Martin to Erykah Badu to Ke$ha—then packages it alongside vials of the contributors’ own blood.
By any ‘normal’ standard, this Record Store Day project, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, would be described as unusual. For the Flaming Lips, however, it’s pretty much business as usual. As a band that has released albums via gummy fetuses, as simul-playing quadruple LPs, and has conducted cell-phone alarm symphonies, it would be more unusual for them to record and distribute an album in a conventional way (something which, despite remaining very active, the band hasn’t done since 2009).
Needless to say, the Flaming Lips are a special case—there aren’t many figures in music as merrily over the top as Wayne Coyne—but the record industry could stand to learn a thing or two from him. Despite the essentially unlimited potential of digital production and distribution, the large majority of artists and labels are sticking to models that have barely been updated since the birth of Napster (and the subsequent “collapse of the record industry” that no one will shut up about).
You’d have a tough time selling that notion to the creators of Record Store Day, a fast-rising event that seeks to preserve the halcyon glory days of brick-and-mortar record shopping and record store culture (celebrating its sixth year on April 21, RSD has expanded to include over 800 stores around the world). That’s becoming a rarefied experience for all but the most strident collectors, while those without ties to physical ownership or the real-life experience of flipping through the crates can satisfy themselves with almost anything they could think of at the tip of their fingertips with a simple Google search (or iTunes store query, for the more law-abiding music enthusiasts out there).
There’s very little novelty or exclusivity about collecting or “owning” a piece of music that takes little more than a few clicks, and preserving it takes just a few MB of space on your hard drive. That’s doubly true in hip hop, where rappers often release two or three free mixtapes between their more official releases, mixtapes that sometimes rival or exceed their more “legitimate” partners in quality. And the concept of ownership might erode further soon if subscription streaming services like Spotify and Rdio continue their rise towards standardization.
One possible solution is to fetishize the physical product itself, which seems to be a major element of Record Store Day’s M.O. By sourcing highly collectible (read: rare) records from artists big and small and selling them in limited small-runs available exclusively at participating independent record stores, organizers limit an enviable card of interesting music to the exclusive physical realm. Or at least you’d think so, until that music inevitably ends up streaming on Pitchfork or Stereogum, or flipped on Ebay for three times the price.
That’s always been the great, unavoidable problem of appealing to collectors: it’s nearly impossible to tell actual enthusiasts apart from opportunists looking to make a buck. And outside of selling the product on Ebay themselves, there’s really not much the labels can do about it.
But if artists and labels are looking to preserve the ineffable specialness of present, impassioned music fandom,, they shouldn’t do it by attempting to preserve the bona fide experience of physical ownership. Instead, they should take a clue from Wayne Coyne and his eccentric soul brother Jack White and focus on creating music that legitimately inspires such a reaction.
Due to his enthusiasm for vinyl production, analogue recording and pre-war American pastoral living (to catch a glimpse of his batshit James Bond-meets-John Wayne persona, this New York Times profile is an absolutely essential read), Jack White is often labeled as a Luddite, but despite his Third Man record label’s old-school tendencies, White is very much a forward-thinker. He may cling to an old-school format, but he’s breathing new life into it, not only as a musician, but also as a producer and label boss. After the huge success of the White Stripes and his subsequent freedom from its strict, self-imposed limitations, the blues-rocker has reached the point where he can do whatever the fuck he wants without anyone calling him on it.
And he’s chosen to exercise that right, recording songs for everyone from Tom Jones to the Insane Clown Posse, and releasing records within records, via helium balloon, at 3 RPM speeds, or smelling of peaches. White has freed himself from the confines of his imagination, and he’s using his grand ambition and fondness for gimmickry to expand the possibilities of a format often thought stead, old-fashioned and overly precious.
Where Jack White has gotten significantly crazier in the last few years, the Flaming Lips have been taking these kinds of batshit risks since their inception. And they’re certainly not afraid of technology. Take their 21st century re-imagining of their own Zaireeka experiment for iPhones, for instance, or their wide-eyed collaboration with automated Apple assistant Siri. Hell, if you have a day to spare then have a listen to their 24-hour song, perpetually streaming on its own dedicated website.
These are the kinds of things you couldn’t do before the Internet. And while the Lips have taken childlike glee at this limitless potential, many artists are sticking to the same narrow song-and-album format and regimented release schedule. There are a few exceptions—Bjork, Radiohead and Fucked Up all spring to mind—but for the most part many musicians seem far too hesitant to shake up the formula.
Record Store Day has done a good job of soliciting legitimately interesting, outside-the-box exclusives—it’s hard not to get excited at the prospect of Feistodon—but such ventures outside of the ordinary shouldn’t be restricted to the third Saturday of April. Take a hint from music’s Willy Wonka figures and embrace the absurd.
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