Mom, Dad, I humbly suggest you save some money and shop Amazon for back to school. It's for my growth, meaning my body's growing at an alarming rate. And clothes you buy me this year will be very small, very soon. Plus, the clothes I love today will be out of style tomorrow. But at least your wallet doesn't have to be my fashion victim if you shop low prices for school at Amazon. Hopefully this is helpful. Amazon, spend less, smile more. I know a girl who thinks of ghosts. She'll make you breakfast. She'll make you toast. She don't use butter. She don't use cheese. She don't use jelly. For any of these, you're going to have to listen to the rest of the show to find out what she uses. It's insane. It's going to be a complete surprise to you. Welcome to Waterproof Records. Let's not waste any more time. Let's get into it. It's time to talk about the flaming lips, transmissions from the satellite heart. Let's go. Make sure you're going to change everything else. You've done totally that kind of body. Waterproof Records. Waterproof Records. Waterproof Records with Jacob Diddens. Yes, another solo, just you and I. Jacob and you sitting down to talk about an album show. I love having these with you, so just sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee, pour yourself a cocktail. I don't know what time of day it is. Light up, smoke them if you got them, whatever you got going on. Do it right now and let's get into this album together. But before you do that, let's give a shout out to DistroKid. DistroKid has been here with me for so long since the beginning. It helps support the show and sponsor the show. So I want to make sure you use and take advantage of my link with them, which is DistroKid.com/VIP/Waterproof. That kind of rolled off pretty sloppily up my tongue, but you get the drift. It's always in the bio. It gives you 30% off your first year of using DistroKid. So make sure you're using that at DistroKid.com/VIP/Waterproof. 30% off your first year of getting your music out in the world. So thank you DistroKid for being here. They have an app that you can use. It helps you see the money that you're making, how many streams you're getting, what your audience is and really grow your audience and your music out there in the world. So make sure you get on that right away. The Flaming Lips. Yeah, the Flaming Lips. Oklahoma City's finest. This band, I have such a great connection with them, the dates way back. And I was excited to do this album because there's really two Flaming Lips. I mean, there's probably even more than that if you break it down. But there's two iterations of this band. Wayne Coyne has been in it since day one until this, you know, today. If you look at the band that started in 1983 in Oklahoma City, more specifically, more around the Norman area. But this band has been going since 1983, and Wayne Coyne's been in it since the beginning. Other members have been with him a long time, and that would be one of the most key members of the Flaming Lips to their sound as Stephen Drosed. But there's been other people who've come and gone over the years and, you know, Staples and the man Michael Ivins has been there for many, many years, and he just departed in 2021. And he was an integral part of the band. But being from Oklahoma City, I had exposure to these guys at a pretty young age. And they've just been a big influence on my life. And what I mean by the two chapters is what we're going to get into here. This is the Flaming Lips, 1993, transmissions from the Satellite Heart. This is the first album I buy from this band, and that's why I'm going to cover this one. Because this version of the band doesn't really exist as it was a rock band, a guitar-driven band. They really, really change the end of the late '90s with the soft bulletin, and that metamorphoses their sound into what will become Yoshimi, and the whole Flaming Lips vibe and sound, and loops and samples and electronica and synth and all the different elements that they started incorporating in the band. During this time, in the '90s, from the '80s into the '90s, it's a guitar, alternative, psychedelic, art rock, noise rock band. That's what they are, and it's because of all of the elements that are coming together to make the Flaming Lips. Now, there are die-hard Flaming Lips fans up there. So if you're listening to this episode and you're one of those, and I don't get things correctly, I am a fan of the band, but there are people that I have met recently that have seen them 100 times, 50 times. I am not that well-versed in my Flaming Lips. I have so many bands that I love and adore and follow and support that I can't give that much of my time and energy to one. If you know what I mean, I wouldn't be able to do this show if I was going to 100 Flaming Lips shows. But I have been to two, and they were separated by 30 years. Yes, in 1993, people always ask me, and I know you who listened to this show, who've listened to every episode of Waterproof Records. You know this story 'cause it's come up multiple times because I've talked about Stone Double Pilots, or I've talked about the pumpkins and seeing those early shows and what was my first concert. But for anyone who's just now listening to this show, my first concert ever, I was the summer before my freshman year in high school. And it was 1993, it had to have been around August. And my brother and I, and a friend, he was like, "Hey, there's this concert in Mohawk Park in Tulsa, and it's going to be Stone Double Pilots, the Butthole Surfers, and the Flaming Lips. And for some reason, my parents let me and my brother go. Notoriously strict, notoriously like not the kind of parents to let us go see a rock and roll show, let alone one that had a band on it named The Butthole Surfers. I have a feeling that either we omitted that from the details or they thought it was so dumb that it would be funny. I have no idea. But they let us go. And my brother and I were just kind of dumbfounded the whole time that we were going to get to go see this concert in Mohawk Park, which was outdoor. We went with another friend, we drove in the car, and we're just kind of, we can't believe this is happening. But a lot of my other friends were able to go as well. I remember bumping into friends that I had at the time that I was hanging out with. And they were also there to see this big concert in the park. But this was a historic moment for me. And I believe She Don't Use Jelly had already released the song that I was singing at the beginning. A spoiler alert, she uses Vaseline. Okay. So if you didn't know that, that's what she uses on her toast. That's what the lyric is. I know you were shocked at the beginning to find out what it was. If it's not butter, if it's not cheese, it's Vaseline. It probably doesn't taste good. That song had released, I think, in June or July, that summer. And I think it was getting some attention because of Beavis and Butthad. That was really because of Beavis and Butthad, which was a great source for weird music. You know what I mean? Like you could watch 120 minutes or you could watch head bangers ball and you'd have to sift through an entire night, two hours of bands to find those gems, which would happen. And I felt cool sometimes when I would know an artist that was being lampooned or made fun of or rocked out to on Beavis and Butthad. I remember feeling really cool being like, "Yeah, I already knew about this band." But I actually don't recall if I first heard she don't use jelly, you know, listening to, you know, watching 120 minutes or if it was the episode of Beavis and Butthad. But that really helped skyrocket that song and getting it a lot of attention to making everybody find out about this Oklahoma City band known as the Flaming Lips. And that song was getting some air play, so I get down to the concert and I'm there to see Stone Double Pilots because now remember, I've just finished my eighth grade year. Core has, that's really where my head's at in terms of like rock and I think Siamese dream is going to be coming out, you know, pretty much right around this time. And I am, so I think it's, yeah, it's this summer. But that's where my head's at. I'm excited to see Stone Double Pilots Core and I know Pepper by the Butthole Servers. But I get to the park and the Flaming Lips take the stage and honestly, it, it blew my mind. They blew my mind, the performance, the entertainment value. And that was what the Flaming Lips were known for. They were known for adding this tremendous amount of entertainment to the show from pyrotechnics to confetti to balloons. And to this day, if you've never gone to see the Flaming Lips now, you have to go. I insist because in 1993, I saw him at Mohawk Park play this show and it was spectacular. And the thing that stuck out to me then was there were these noises and sounds coming from the guitar to this day. You know how when you have a memory and you don't have it recorded and it tends to grow and blossom into this thing that it's so much larger than it probably really was. But I remember either Wayne or the guitarist Ronald Jones the time doing something to their guitar, like a hand slamming down on the strings or something like that. And it sounded like a paddle, an ER paddle that is to boost somebody to shock them back to life, whatever those are called, defibrillators. It was like somebody going clear to the guitar and it just going gosh. And I remember over these speakers in Mohawk Park while the Flaming Lips were playing this sound like that guitar was being resuscitated like it was just like clear and it just surged through the crowd. It surged through my body and I don't know how that was being done. It probably was just a cool special effect. It was probably just striking the strings with your hands over them to make this kind of sound. It's probably not even like if I go find a YouTube video when something has a camcorder Mohawk Park Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1993, it's probably not that impressive. But it was to me then so I took that memory and it grew like a garden, a sound garden. It grew in my mind. That truly is a sound garden, isn't it? But that was 1993. Saw them. Butthole servers took the stage. They were great too. I remember that being a lot of fun and the installable pilots. They were amazing. I have since gotten to know Robert DeLeo and I told him about being in that show and he told me the story about how they were literally off the plane, brought over in their limo, and got out of the car and like walked on a stage and started playing because there was delays to the flight and the travel getting there. And they were like their instruments were there and they just like walked on and started going. And I remember being blown away by their performance as well, while in killing it, the DeLeo brothers, Eric, all of them amazing, and my brother and I drove home that night from the concert playing core in his car and just like, you know, singing to the top of our lungs for the best night of our lives at that first concert. But I bring up the flaming lips in 1993 because in 2023, I got invited to go with a group of flaming lips fans, a friend of mine can't be. He invited me to go to see this show. And he's seen them so many times and he's a big, big flaming lips fan. And his friends, he has a group of people that are huge flaming lips fans. And of course, I've done my best to keep up with the band over the years and listen to the songs. Like I said, it's hard to keep up with a culture and a community of a band when you're invested in so many. And I've taken the time to be invested in a lot of different bands. And so I didn't have my eye on the ball. Did I check out flaming lips releases a little bit here and there over the past 20 years, you know, I have behind me, I have the flaming lips greatest hits volume one, which I mean, don't scoff at me for having a greatest hits record. It was a, it was a gift. So I enjoy it and it says limited edition, let's take a look at this real quick. Let's look at it together. Limited edition gold vinyl. So on this one has, do you realize Yoshimi battles the pink robots race for the prize waiting for a Superman when you smile? She don't use jelly. Bad days, the wand, silver trembling hands, the castle and the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah song. So I had paid attention to a lot of the songs coming out of this band over the years, but I hadn't followed what they were like live. So I get a chance to go see them at the YouTube theater in 2023, 30 years later, almost to the day, it was like September or something like that. And when I tell you this band, the energy, the performance, the giant inflatable pink robots, the confetti that shoots down on you, the balloons, the confetti, it's an experience. And it was lovely. It was beautiful. It was the whole crowd. The energy in that room is one of love and acceptance and any chance that I get to go see the flaming lips again, count me in, you know, what an experience. So I highly encourage it. So let's, let's get into transmissions from the satellite heart and the reason I talked about it being a guitar band, Ronald Jones leaves the flaming lips around 1996. He's a huge, you know, integral part of building the sound of this band during this era, but once he's out, the lack of that guitar influence and his unique style really leaves Wayne and Michael and Steven with this, like, well, what now? And it allows them to experiment with tape and a different sounds and try and explore things that leads them to these beats and things that become the flaming lips that we know today. Because when you go see them now, anything from this era, you don't hear a lot of it. You hear, she don't use jelly. They play, she don't use jelly because I think it's an important song. And they know that. There's a lot of people like me that that was our entry points. They play it, but a lot of this other stuff. My favorite early flaming lip song is, is ginger ale afternoon. I love that song and I don't, I, I doubt they ever play that live. I don't know. Again, die hard flaming lips fans out there. Maybe you have a performance of ginger ale, ginger ale afternoon. But that's from the album before this hit to death in the future head. They talk about heads and brains a lot. I've noticed that in their lyrics, heads and brains. So during this era of the band, we have, like I said, Wayne coin. We have Stephen Drost, we have Michael Ivins, and we have Ronald Jones, those, those are the members. And the early days of the flaming lips in 1983, Mark coin, Wayne's brother was the singer of this band in the early, early days. I think just on their first album, he sings, but he gets out of flaming lips and Wayne takes over and he's the singer of this band. And he starts doing that kind of strained vocal that he has, where it's that higher pitch, tenor, strained vocal. And when I tell you the first time I heard it, I had been raised in choir church. I've been raised with, you know, my mom listening to opera vocalists and just all sorts of things in the house that I thought perfection was so important when singing. Being a flat note or soaring over something a little wobbly coming in a little under over or having just kind of a carefree nature about singing, I thought that was wrong. So during this time, you would have these vocalists that would come out and challenge these notions of how you're supposed to do something, right? Like how is it supposed to sound? And the era that we live in now of pro tools and everything so polished, everything sounds perfect. Right? I mean, I'm sure there's indie bands and underground bands. They're doing what they want to do and doing garage and DIY and having that raw, it doesn't have to be perfect sound. And I encourage that. I encourage that. You know, Johnny Polonsky and I talked about that when he was on the show before about how a mistake isn't really a mistake when making music, you know, you're making an art form. And so having something just exist and be in that sound in that moment is really part of the art to make it perfect. That's one way to go. Look, I love finely tuned songs. You know, I love songs that people have worked very hard to make sure it sounds amazing or it's the vocal has been taken 30 takes to make sure they hit it just right. I love that as well. But deflaming lips. This was something that I was being introduced to that I was like, wow, are we allowed to do that? Are we allowed to put music out in the world so carefree and able to not necessarily hit the note perfectly, kind of like a child singing at the top of their lungs. Wayne coin has this carefree, hippie like, and I mean that as a compliment. I mean that as a compliment because there's, there's an element of the flaming lips that's like psychedelic, hippie, punk art, noise rock. You know, because during the time in the 1980s and the 90s, there was a lot of kind of frowned upon towards hippies because you had like punk, you had metal. And then you had the grime scene and people like Kurt Cobain were always so like anti tie dye, anti hippie. And so that put this taste in your mouth, whether you were punk, metal, or grunge alternative that you were like boo on hippies, you know, I probably fell into that a little bit too. Because part of the scenes back then is you, you was so important to be cool and to not be that thing over there. But I think the flaming lips allowed you to be whatever the fuck you wanted to be. You know, you could, you could just, I don't know, man, I don't know, man. And that's the feeling you get from she don't use jelly. I don't know. What do these lyrics mean? They're about idiosyncrasies of unusual people that don't make a lot of sense, but it's carefree. It's fun. And here's this, there's this wailing, I think it's a pedal steel guitar, you know, it's just got this sound. And Steven Drozed, this is, this album is when Steven Drozed is joining the band. They bring him on as a drummer only, but they don't realize the gems, the gold that is in this man's brain and in his talents, the things that he can do as a multi instrumentalist and thinking outside of the box, just like Wayne had, and then Ronald Jones thinks outside of the box as a guitarist in a ways that these guys never had. So the sound that comes together from the three of these, and I'm not being dismissive of Michael Ivan's. Michael Ivan's also very influential on what creates the flaming lip sound. But as a bass player, when he joins the band in the early 1980s, he's their friend. Their tall, skinny, I think they called him a goth albino or something like that joins the man and he actually doesn't even know how to play the bass when he joins in the early 80s. Like when he plays the gig, he just doesn't even know what he's doing. But of course, he learns he gets better. He becomes a great musician, helps produce and do, you know, dozens of different artists and songs and really gets into music. But it's since he's there in the beginning with Wayne, he's kind of like part of the Wayne coin machine, right? The project coming together, but Ronald and Steven coming from the outside and coming in. That's where we get this sound that you hear on this album. This album released June 22, 1993. I'm pretty sure I got it from one of those CD orders, those BMG Columbia house, 10 CDs for a penny. And I got it because I wanted, she don't use jelly. That's what I wanted. And I knew that the rest of this album might be interesting and boy was it ever. But you wouldn't know that at first listen, track one because track one comes at you. I actually think track one is the more clear alternative rock radio hit on this album. And I'm surprised that it didn't take hold maybe because so many things were coming out in 1993 that were like guitar with distortion and just really straightforward. But turn it on is actually my favorite song on this album. I love that song. It comes out perfectly. It's got that radio tuning frequency sound right out of the beginning. And then there's these acoustic guitars that are just mic'd and surrounding your ears perfectly. And then when it the drums, and then it goes, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. That sound, ugh, that sends me. And just the whole lyric of turn it on, you know, in my brain as an adolescent, I'm thinking to myself, turn on the radio, turn on the TV, crank it. But as you get older, and you start to realize that it's like, turn on your mind, turn on your spirit. And you could look at it at a drug meaning because I know the drug culture of LSD and things like that. It was like getting turned on was like a thing. But this is turning on your heart, turning on your spirit, like get ready. Let's fire it up. Let's go. If flaming lips in this era, she don't use jelly doesn't really click for you. I think turn it on will. I feel like that's the most accessible kind of alternative pop rock song on this album. And then you get to track two, and you got the title, I mean, we pilot can at the queer of God. There's a flaming lips title for you. Just what are we talking about here? But this one has this kind of sludgy, noisy, and I was no stranger to sludgy, noisy rock because sonic youth was in my life at the time, you know, I was familiar with this idea of things could be noisy and loud and feedbacky and screechy. This was this was a thing back then. You had that a lot. But Wayne Quinn's voice over it was that unique touch. He wasn't singing kind of understated and mumbly. He wasn't just going like this with the noise. He was like, I got a thing for that kind of vocalist, you know, I do because if you think about Billy Corgan and the nasally, nasally voice that he has and how that really clicks for me, I like it when there's a vocalist who kind of has this treble-y, high-pitched noise vocal that's over like really full, thick sound. It connects for me, I guess. But pilot can at the queer of God, it's a fun little ends with that. ♪ She's got helicopters ♪ Oh, my pregnant head. This one has that tremolo guitar kind of makes you feel like somebody wandering through the desert, like a troubadour, like a cowboy. And again, what really sticks out for me is these Stephen Drosed drums. Stephen Drosed has that full arena rock Led Zeppelin, like, let's get these drums mic so full that there's a bit of distortion on him, whether he's recording it, you know, on analog, like tape to tape, or he's, I don't know what he's doing, but just so full, so thick, these drums. I always loved that about the flaming lip sound, and that's something that is carried on through their entire career from here onward, is these drums that just, when they kick in, you're like, "Yes, let's go." And then after that we get to She Don't Use Jelly, which I've talked about a ton, got that boost from Beavis and Butthead, got into the cultural zeitgeist, people fell in love with it. You either loved it or hated it. I made a video about She Don't Use Jelly, but it was just me, you know, kind of making fun of like a waiter standing at a table and taking the order from somebody as the lyric was coming. That was the video that I did for that. And so many people would write like, "Oh, I love this song, I love this song," but then you'd get the comments like, "I hated this song then, I hate it now," and it grates on people's nerves, just doesn't click for them, they don't like it. But that song takes me back to my teenage years, that concert, that time, it has this carefree, running a field of grass with your friends, and all of your friends have colored hair, you know, and like thrift store clothes. And somebody picks up a sunflower, somebody picks up what are those things called that you blow and all the little daffodil? That's where it takes me. Takes me right back there. Somebody next to you for some reason has a guitar that they don't know how to play because it's got like a hole and a sticker on it. That's the visual of She Don't Use Jelly. You don't use Jelly Got Them so popular that they ended up playing that show on like John Stewart and talk shows and late night, and they were even on an episode of Beverly Hills 90210. They play on the show, and I think Ian Ziering's character, Steve, was it? He like says they're playing the song, and he's like, "You know, I don't really like, I don't really like that alternative music, but these guys really rocked the house." And that's that moment where all of us went, "Oh, bleh." For you Gen Z's out there, you Gen Alphas, it would happen to us too, you know, where something that was really cool was co-opted by pop culture, by television, by older people, and they'd try to insert it into something like Beverly Hills 90210 and we go, "Oh, thanks. Thanks for ruining a good thing." You know, it's just groaned at it, but thankfully the Flaming Lips survived that because even though they had this huge hit that many would say on the outside, they'd be like, "Oh, that one hit wonder from the 90s with their, "She don't use Jelly, no, not at all." That just got them a lot of attention from the right people that would end up becoming huge fans and following them through, staying with them through Soft Bulletin and Beyond, and really appreciating this band. And then after that, we get to chew in the apple of your eye, and this is just a nice little acoustic Diddy, but what I like about it is they added in the vinyl scratch sound. I always loved it. I found a lot of charm to that. You know, you can hear the vinyl scratch. You can hear some strings on it as it's kind of building, it's very sweet. And vinyl scratch, that sound for us then reminded me of like listening to my parents' records. So I loved that they added that touch in there. Here's this percord, and it sounds like you're listening to an old record. Yeah, I like that song. I think that would be a neat thing to see them perform live, that little Diddy. Then you get to Superhumans, and this one says that, "See the world's collide, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da." This for me is where you get a sense that this album is kind of like a 90s alternative Beach Boys Pet sounds. This song to me, Superhumans, feels very Beach Boys, but with surrounded by, you know, soaring swirling guitars and Wayne's kind of wobbly tenor voice, but it feels like a Beach Boys song. There's like bells in there. So much production, so much sound. But I always loved Superhumans, and then Be My Head. Be My Head is kind of got this like, it's like, it's like, you can be my head. It's this like children's song. It's got this childlike enthusiasm behind it. It's so great, so great. This is such a, by the way, in preparation of this episode, I went and sat down and listened to this album, start to finish about two or three times. And I hadn't done that in a long time, and I mentioned before on the show that that's one of the fun things about doing this podcast, is it forces you to just spend time with an album? And not that I hadn't heard some of these songs over the years, but you know hitting play on Turn It On and going all the way down a slow nerve action. And doing that two times through, it's remarkable the feeling that you get when a song fades out from one and starts the next, like you're listening to a CD again, or you're listening to a tape, or you're back in your room, and you've made the decision, I'm going to listen to an album from track one to the last track. And that's an art form that I am loving to embrace again, to experience a piece of music from start to finish. And I know you are too, because we live in the era of playlists. We live in the era of, I hear this song by this band, that I move on to this band, or I have a playlist that's built around this energy, I have this playlist that pumps me up, I have this playlist that I listen to when I cry, I have this playlist that I listen to when I'm on a road trip, and it's tons of bands, it's like mixtape heaven out here. We're living in the greatest mixtape era of our lives, we can get music and we can adapt it around the environment, we can make it about the feeling of the day, you can create an entire playlist around just a specific guitar tone. But when you choose to say, no, I'm going to listen to the transmissions from the satellite heart from turning on to slow nerve action, then you get that artist book, their vision, their story, what they went into the studio to complete, what you got at the end. And it does leave you with a very clear emotional connection to that and that alone. I highly recommend it. For those of us who grew up with it, it really does spark a lot of feelings, a lot of emotions and a lot of memories. And for those of you who are younger and are discovering these artists for the first time, it really locks in your relationship with the artist at that time. It gives you an understanding of who they were and what they were trying to do. So try it, do it, I promise you, if there's one piece of homework that I can give you when these episodes, it's listened to the album start to finish. We get to moth in the incubator and this song is a cool song because it almost has three different parts to it. I mean, flaming lip songs often do that. But the song itself is great, but there is this sound at the end, the way that the guitar comes in that is like the flaming lip sound that I thought of other than 90s. Like this for me is you go, if I was to hear that playing anywhere in the distance, I would be like, oh, that's the flaming lips. I don't think you do that with any of their songs, to be honest. But moth in the incubator, that last part, and you'll know what I'm talking about, it switches in that last act of the song. Then we get to plastic Jesus as it's listed on streaming star star star star star star parentheses, plastic Jesus. And this is another quiet acoustic ditty. It makes you wonder when they were in the studio with these kind of things and they were putting together records. It seemed like that happened often in a lot of 90s albums is you'd have all these great rocking songs. And then every now and then you just have like a song where somebody was strumming in acoustic guitar and singing some little thing like they were screwing around in the studio. And I would imagine the majority of the time they were clowning around or it was between takes and there's something that they catch and they go, yeah, let's put that on the album. Whereas now I don't know it's like everything's got to be so perfect and polished and every song's got to be a hit or everything's got to have all this production around it. And I love kind of the carefree spirit of just like, I don't know, this is pluck around guitar and sing about plastic Jesus. But we're approaching the end of the album and we get to win your 22. And that is a, that one's got this kind of like driving energy behind it, you know. The way that the guitar is feeding back in that certain tone, but it really gets moving and moving and moving. This is a, this song has like a bubbling energy behind it, something that you could probably be like driving as the sun is setting and you're just like on your way. Pretty inspiring feeling song. I don't necessarily know if I know what he's talking about on when you're 22. But if you're 22, listen to that song and let it fill your heart with joy. And then we close out this album, this 11 song, 43 minute album from 1993 with slow nerve action, and there's that Stephen Dros drum again, super heavy. And then that guitar sound is just kind of droning distortion, but it sticks in your head. I can still hear slow nerve action to this day, the way that drums start out. The drums start out very much like a lead Zeppelin, John Bonham drum lick. I wonder if it was even just that's what they were going for. That is transmissions for the satellite heart and there's so much more interesting stuff about the flaming lips in general as a band, a fascinating study. There's been documentaries and books written about this band and what they've been through. Because, you know, if I end up covering the soft bulletin later, we can get into some of the heaviness, the loss, the near death experiences, the things that led them to where they are to this day. But this was a snapshot in the flaming lips of 1993 with Ronald Jones being a part because that's that X factor right here, because Stephen Dros is still with the band and would go on to the everything post 2000 that really defines the flaming lips as we know them today. And so Stephen Dros has brought that creative clever instrumentation and out of the box thinking matched perfectly with Wayne coin. Those two together, lockstep, that is the flaming lips. And Michael Evans, your legacy, sir, thank you for your time in the band and, you know, none of the departures of these guys has been bad blood. I think they've all been okay. I think Ronald Jones, when he left in '96, I think he was frustrated with the creative direction and with Stephen Dros, his drug abuse at the time. So I think that was frustrating for him and that caused the split, but I know that since then he has returned to not only be like honored by the band for that important time in their life, but I feel like there's been some live shows where he's gotten up on stage to play with them. I may be wrong on that. I may be wrong, but I thought there doesn't seem to be much bad blood with any of the previous members or people who come in and out of this band. I do know that there was one record producer who has tried to say bad things about them, but I don't think there's been much water to what he said. Not much weight to it. You know, just one of those things would like probably rub the wrong way and just decided he was going to say something bad. But the flaming lips have notoriously been such loving, kind, generous people and created a loving community of fans. And so again, I encourage you if they pass through your town, go see him. It's a blast. Having a group of friends prepare to just feel a sense of joy with the celebration feeling. You feel like you're at a New Year's party. You know what I mean? You feel like you're like the balls about to drop. The balls are going to drop and they're inflated and they're filled with confetti. And sometimes Wayne coin is inside the ball and sometimes people are inside the balls. You never know it's insane in the best possible way. I'm trying to tell you go see the flaming lips. It's awesome. It's awesome. I can't recommend that enough. I've been a little bit more on that, even though this is such a fun album, I've been a little bit more on the subdued side this episode because it's early. I'm actually recording this early. I usually record these like at night, but it's been so hot here in Southern California that I've needed to wait until the temperature was cool enough that I could record. So I'm just waking up and I'm just now recording and talking to you. So I'm like that a little bit. That is transmissions from the satellite heart, which I love that title to. That's another album title that probably just kind of goes over your head as a teenager. And then you think about it now and you go, ah, transmissions from the satellite heart. This gives you the sense of this esoteric like there is a greater truth, a greater being out there that we're getting transmissions from the satellite heart outside of ourselves. A greater being the divine. Who knows? Maybe I'm overthinking it. I don't know. Hippy-dippy stuff, guys. Hippy-dippy stuff. But Flaming Lips, Oklahoma City. What a fantastic band to listen to when you're looking for some levity, some joy. And maybe the noise and the psychedelic and the art rock aspects don't land, but there is a whimsy, there is a carefree nature to the way his voice sounds over their instrumentation. But I would say the music now is probably easier to get your head around back then. This was part of that 90s. Let's see how we can push into the weird. Let's get weird and I love weird. I love weird and I felt weird back then. I felt weird because I didn't feel cool. I was always pretending to be cool. I was always pretending around my friends that were cool that I was like, yeah, but I just felt really, really, I don't know. I felt like I wanted to love everything. I wanted to love it all. I wanted to love things that people thought was cheesy and I, yeah, anyway, I'm getting me into early morning, I need more coffee, I need to get the day started. But that was, let's see, how long have we gone here? Yeah, that's a commendable episode. I think we can cut it there because I'm going to be putting in some clips for the podcast version. I can't show on YouTube. I can't put the song clips in the YouTube, but I can put them in the podcast version. I can do the, the fair use, you know, that 15 to 30 seconds for this song clip. So if you like hearing the show where I share parts of the song, then go listen to it on the podcast version, not the video version now. But if you like looking at my cute face, well, I do this show then, hey, watch me on YouTube. There's just no, you'll have to hit play. You'll have to have the album queued up and hit play when I'm talking about the song so you can kind of hear what I'm talking about there. But that's what I do now, now that I'm a part of Pantheon Podcasts, did you guys know that? Yeah, you did. Because you've been listening for a while now and there's a couple episodes where I've given them a shout out. But I'm a part of Pantheon Podcasts, which are essentially like the, the top music podcast in the world. Pantheon is the supporting network for music podcasts and I'm in that family and I feel so cool about it. So if you didn't know, go check out other Pantheon Podcasts. They got ones for Metallica and KISS. That's why I'm even here, is because those awesome dudes on that KISS podcast that I was a part of, they recommended me and then I got a part of the network. So Pantheon Podcasts is amazing and I'm so happy to be a part of this family and yeah, so support them as well. And then also you got to check out that district kid link that I gave you, district kid.com/VIP/waterproof get 30% off your first year. But this is it and I'm wearing my waterproof records T-shirt that I sell at my store that was done by a fabulous Mexican artist named Lady Love. This was like a one off. We just did it as a short, like a limited edition thing, but I've made it available again if you want to get one. It's got my goofy face on it. Look at that. I felt like this shirt was very flaming lips. So that's why I chose to wear it. All right. All right. I'm going to let you go. I'm going to let you go. We did it. We did it. We talked about flaming lips. We've done an amazing band and a band that I saw 30 years apart and wow, what a journey they have been on. So that's been waterproof records with Jacob Gibbons. I've been your fearless host that has some fears but will still stay fearless and we'll see you next time. Bye. [MUSIC] Waterproof records, waterproof records, waterproof records with Jacob Gibbons. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]
Being born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it wasn't long before I caught wind of The Flaming Lips-- an experimental psychedelic art-rock band rising out of our neighboring Oklahoma City. By summer of 1993, you could hear people singing 'Taaaaaangerines' along with front-man Wayne Coyne on MTV, but it was when I first purchased Transmissions from the Satellite Heart on CD that I witnessed the earliest days of this enduring band that has metamorphosized into a joyful celebration of art, music and life.
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