Working informally in Oklahoma City, they began filling cassette tapes with strange music - fragments of songs, sound effects, drones - and constructed events in parking garages where the tapes would be played in car stereos of a few dozen volunteers and then the concrete structure would be transformed into a collective art installation. “It’s an album you return to and hear differently as your own life moves forward and endings of every kind become all too real, a reminder that this flash of now is all we will ever have.”ĭuring this tense period, when The Flaming Lips weren’t sure what would come next, Coyne, Drozd, and bassist Michael Ivins experimented. And bandleader Wayne Coyne’s father was diagnosed with cancer in October 1996 and then died three months later. Ronald Jones, the brilliant guitarist whose leads and textures had been one of the group’s sonic signatures, left the group Warner Bros., The Flaming Lips’ label, was in turmoil following reorganization and some of the band’s initial champions departed Steven Drozd, the superstar drummer, had a growing drug problem.
THE FLAMING LIPS SOFT BULLETIN VINYL PATCH
Their next album, Clouds Taste Metallic, didn’t sell nearly as well, and after a lengthy tour supporting it, they hit a patch of trouble. By the mid-1990s, The Flaming Lips had been playing music together for a long time and they lucked into a certain amount of success when “She Don’t Use Jelly,” from their 1993 album Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, became a whimsical MTV-fueled novelty hit. One way to understand why The Soft Bulletin has endured is to go back to the anxious period it emerged from. By some measures, 20 years is the length of a generation, enough time to reflect on those around you who were born and grew up and grew old and those who might not be around anymore. Twenty-year anniversaries are the best album anniversaries - long enough to say the album truly comes from another world, but not so long ago that this particular world is entirely unfamiliar.