A Collaborative Editorial About the Flaming Lips

Here's me writing to James Andean, cut out of a longer email.

"I'm working on the monkey, getting all of the old reviews prepped to be up, and considering/working at a new ish. I'm pondering a new Jack Breakfast, the old Steve Martin records, replacements ... oh I can't remember. Oh, the Darkness. And an open letter to Flaming Lips about their using Do You Realize in a fucking car ad. Boo. I don't know when it'll be ready, but there's a head's up."

And here's James:

"Personally, while it is annoying hearing good music in car ads, i forgive Flaming Lips. Ya gotta figure: They've been working hard on this for a long, long time; they're getting old; and they've only very, very recently become commercially viable, with no guarantee of sustainability. They probably got more money for that car ad than they got from the album - hell, from all their albums. if it puts their kids through college, i say go for it; musicians have the right to make a $ just like everybody else, right? I mean, they live in a country without health care, and musicians get noooo benefits - what if they break their legs, or need a root canal? More importantly, what if the dough from the car ad allows them to keep making the albums they want to make, rather than the albums their record label thinks it can sell?"

I went and joined the Flaming Lips chat board to see what other people thought. There was outrage on both sides of the argument, and lots of reasonable "who cares?" type comments. Most touching were comments from people who were bummed that it was "Do You Realize" that had been sold and used, because that particular song is such a beautiful, profound song.

You'd have been surprised at the amount of time people had put into their thoughts -- links to articles concerning Eggers and Sartre and selling out. In the end, after spending some time in the time-delayed community hangout, I think everybody's right. I think it's worth spending time on, worth discussing, worth objecting to, worth supporting. And in the end, I think the whole thing is sad -- but sad in the same way that it is a sad fact that there's no way to avoid being corrupted if you live in our world.

As for the Flaming Lips specifically, James, as I have come to expect him to do, nails it nicely when he says that he forgives them. Having that song in a car commercial is a bit like having All You Need Is Love in a commercial: it's sad, it sucks. And if it diminishes some folks' idea of the band, remember that Justice is measured on a scale. On one side, this commercial (and an appearance on 90210, don't forget). On the other side, well, everything else.

-jep clayton, gunman king of toyah, 2004