Head in to The Future Death Hit
“Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be, like the reality of yesterday, an illusion tomorrow.”― Luigi Pirandello
Transmissions from the Satellite Heart at 30 Pt. 1
I started working at Warner Bros. Records right after college. A few months before graduation from UC Berkeley, I got a call from Roberta Petersen, the great A&R person who signed Dire Straits, Devo, Janes Addiction (with Steven Baker) and so many others…and who had watched over me during the past three years during my internship at the label…telling me that she was going to sign the band I had turned her on to, the Flaming Lips, and that despite a hiring freeze at the label, I was getting a job in the A&R Department. I was to report right after graduation and start overseeing the day-to-day work with the band and begin my career. Up until that moment I never thought that my music work would be anything more than a hobby—I was about to apply to graduate school to get my PhD in English Literature. But there was no way of turning down the opportunity that Roberta had presented to me, to work at the most artist friendly label with the legends of the Renaissance of the music industry.
The first few years working with the band were tough years. The band recorded its first WB record which would be titled Hit to Death in the Future Head (Head in to The Future Death Hit?) and was set to release an EP to touring around featuring the assumed future single, Talkin' 'Bout The Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants To Live Forever), when guitarist Jonathan Donahue left the band (soon after shooting the video), to focus completely on his other project Mercury Rev. The tour was cancelled; I was crushed…and angry: angry enough to write Donahue a four-page letter explaining in detail the issues I had with his quitting the band. He had told us prior to Lips signing to the label that the Mercury Rev project was purely a side hustle—he lied (I wanted to make sure he understood that)—so, how could he live with himself ? (I am pretty sure I wrote that, too). I wrote that he had let everyone down and listed all of the people he let down, including his band, the band’s manager Scott Booker, his booking agent, myself, Roberta, the A&R Department head Michael Ostin and to put a guilt cherry atop sundae of scolding, also threw in Warner Bros. Records Pres Lenny Waronker and CEO Mo Ostin. How could he let all of us down, force us to cancel a tour, shatter the band before the record is released.
And yes, I sent the letter to him; as crazy as it sounds, that is what I did. And what is more, I cornered him at a club in New York during a New Music Seminar later that year and reaffirmed everything I had said in the letter. Ah, the upstartacitty of youth.
The Lips problems did not end with Donahue’s departure. The band had used a sample from the film Berlin during the heartbreaking moment of their record, You Have to Be Joking (Autopsy of the Devil's Brain)1. Clearing samples in 1991 was still a new, complicated process—one that Warner Bros. Records was taking very seriously since losing the first major industry-wide sample lawsuit between Biz Markie and Gilbert O'Sullivan, the latter claiming (successfully) that Markie had used his song Alone Again (Naturally) on the rapper’s song Alone Again. But what made this sample clearance even more difficult was the fact that the Lips had sampled a piece of Michael Kamen's score directly off of the film itself, which included other sound artifacts from the given scene, making the particular sample something unprecedented in the new world of sample clearance. And it delayed the record release for over a year.
During that time, and after the record finally came out, the Lips experimented with other guitar players, and upon the departure of drummer Nathan Roberts, drummers as well. And when I was told that they were testing out two young players that seemed promising, I flew down to Dallas to see the first show featuring guitar player Ronald Jones and drummer Steven Drozd (who was sporting a pageboy haircut). The show was a revelation, with both musicians falling right into place: Ronald, a guitar slinger of a blues/alien order with a slackered Allen Collins stance and enough fx peddles to through crazed sonic colors all over the Flaming Lips’ repertoire and Drozd…who grew up with a saxophone playing father who had toured with Doug Sahm among others…Drozd pounded the drums as if he was wielding the hammers of Thor (and at the time, I had no idea the guy could excellently play any and every instrument). Wayne had put together his own, completely unique combo of what Led Zeppelin might sound like on Mars.
Hit To Death From The Future Head came out to decent reviews…with college radio being the main tried-and-true supporting community, but faded pretty quickly from the press and public eye (a great audio documentary of the record was released a little over a decade ago). But in the camp of the Flaming Lips, it was all exciting, productive energy, with the new members locking into a musical groove with Wayne and long-time bass player (and original member) Michael Ivans. They had already done some recording…and were ready to go into the studio and start working on material for a new record. It was a new era.
They trenched out in a studio in Oklahoma and started tracking. I would hear from Booker how it was going, that progress seemed to be happening and the band was in a groove.
A month or so into their recording process, I received a DAT tape from Wayne that featured two songs that would completely change the trajectory of the band (to be continued)….
Watch The Cramps and The Mutants’ Infamous Mental Hospital Performance
I heard about The Cramps Napa performance at the I-Beam one night when I was in college…but given there was no internet available at the time, I am pretty sure it was not until I was at Ronnie Barnett’s apartment in the early 90s that I actually saw footage of the show. And now there is a doc about it, We Were There to Be There, which includes Mutants footage as well! Just click the link above and get ready for a good time….
Pioneering Video Artist Nalini Malani Awarded Japan’s $700,000 Kyoto Prize
“Malani is among India’s first video artists, though her practice has extended to include theater, installations, paintings, and drawings. She is being recognized for her “phantasmagorical spaces with approachable art forms” as well as her “pioneered artistic expression that brings the voices of the voiceless to more people,” per the press release.”
Robert Eggers’ ‘Nosferatu’ has Wrapped Filming
VERY VERY excited for this new Eggers take on the Murnau classic Nosferatu. Two of my favorite film directors talking through decades of time.
World’s First: In Incredible Breakthrough, Scientists Managed to X-Ray A Single Atom
DIG IT:“Since its discovery by Roentgen in 1895, X-rays have been used everywhere, from medical examinations to security screenings in airports. Even Curiosity, NASA’s Mars rover, is equipped with an X-ray device to examine the materials composition of the rocks in Mars. An important usage of X-rays in science is to identify the type of materials in a sample. Over the years, the quantity of materials in a sample required for X-ray detection has been greatly reduced thanks to the development of synchrotron X-rays sources and new instruments. To date, the smallest amount one can X-ray a sample is in attogram, that is about 10,000 atoms or more. This is due to the X-ray signal produced by an atom being extremely weak so that the conventional X-ray detectors cannot be used to detect it. According to Hla, it is a long-standing dream of scientists to X-ray just one atom, which is now being realized by the research team led by him.”
How Do You Market Anne Frank to Gen Z?
Reboot is having a big week….first with the opening of Just For Us, and then this article in GQ magazine about a short film we produced (I was Executive Producer on) that is debuting in festivals in July….
Seeker Of Visions
By: Lucille Clifton
what does this mean.
to see walking men
wrapped in the color of death,
to hear from their tongue
such difficult syllables?
are they the spirits
of our hope
or the pale ghosts of our future?
who will believe the red road
will not run on forever?
who will believe
a tribe of ice might live
and we might not?
I Am Accused Of Tending To The Past
By: Lucille Clifton
i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother's itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.
I am pretty sure the sound sample was used on the record backwards, adding an outer-worldly affect in the moment it appears.
Scott Booker. Now there's a name I've not heard in awhile.
(Eagerly awaiting the next installment)