Skip to main contentI fully expect the heads of Flaming Lips fans and inveterate music collectors to explode at the news that came down the e-pipeline from Jackpot Records last night.
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne will be at the downtown Jackpot Records location (203 SW 9th Ave) at 5 p.m. today to help introduce and sell the Strobo Trip Light & Audio Phase Illusions Toy. This weird little gewgaw (pictured above) features a series of spinning disks that you place on a "player", spin around, and shine a strobe light on. The effect makes it look like the pictures on the disk are animated.
If that weren't enough, the toy comes along with "I Found This Star On The Ground," a new six-hour track by the Lips. You read that right: a single song that goes on for six hours. Coyne has described the track as sounding like "the Velvet Underground meets Super Mario Brothers." And as someone who went to great pains to try and play all four discs of their Zaireeka album on my own one lonely night at home, I will admit my giddy excitement at the prospect of this.
Here's the part that's going to drive you over the edge: you will only be able to get the toy/song at Jackpot Records. Not at the merch table at the Lips show that night at the Keller Auditorium. Not online. Not in no other record stores nowhere.
It's gonna be a madhouse down there at Jackpot come 5 p.m., but when you're a fan of the Lips, you'll follow them down whatever twisted path they want to take you.
WWeek 2015