Thursday Scenester Pick: Flaming Lips at Liberty Hall / Also: Erotica Pick of the Week

Readers, tonight kicks off the Flaming Lips two-night stand at Liberty Hall and LFK's ready to get freaky with Wayne and the gang.  Bring on that fucking hamster ball, Coyne!

So which drugs are you all planning to take for their shows?  We're thinking it may be a good time to sample bath salts.

While LFK loves the Lips as much as ever, others are a little less enamored, as you can see in this recent AV-Club piece called..."Falling Out of Love With The Flaming Lips," which charts the Lips' transition from the days when their weirdness was experimental and artistic ("Zaireeka") to the live-show spectacles of today:

"That spectacle has become the major selling point for Flaming Lips concerts. Come see Wayne walk in the plastic bubble! Stay for the exploding confetti and projections of naked girls! Be dazzled by all the spinning shapes and vibrant colors!"

Chip: " 'Projections of naked girls,' my ass!  If there aren't real, live naked LFK chicks dancing on stage by evening's end, as there were at the Wakarusa gigs, I'm asking for a refund."

And another excerpt:

"While I’m willing to concede that Embryonic just didn’t connect with me, I have a hard time seeing the musical value in what the Lips have produced lately. Perhaps that 24-hour song starts to pick up around the 17- or 18-hour mark, but I gave up on the interminable composition long before that."

Richard: "How can I take this critic seriously if he did not listen to the full 24 hours of that song?  For my money, hours 19-21 are really where it peaks and one begins to make connections to the 18 hours that have come before."

Here's a touching (get it?) moment from one of the Wakarusa gigs via Jambase




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But perhaps you'd rather stay home and read sexy books instead of engaging in a hot sweaty spectacle of sex, drugs, and rock and roll at Liberty Hall.   And surely there's something out there better than the poorly-written erotica of the 50 Shades books?  We may have just the thing:  Dodie Bellamy's Cunt Ups.

Here are excerpts from a Vice magazine review: 

"Cunt-Ups  is an intense array of hyper-collaged sentences mostly about fucking, and being fucked... Bellamy’s configurations of cut-up sentences, inspired by the processes of William Burroughs and Kathy Acker, make the language act as if it is in the process of fucking itself.  Gender shifts and perspective shifts and grammar shifts midsentence carry a wild lyrical energy. Each line surprises. The text seems to want to make you fuck it too...She bangs necrophilia against childbirth, murder, and dirty fucktalk with a want for more...Anyone writing about sex in any way should read this book, and read it hard."

Chip:  "I'm going to read this book so hard!"

Let's look at a few excerpts of the book itself via this site:

"Large cows fed me sacredly, this occurred after you cut up my body. The orchestra played, phones rang while I jerked off, thinking of you covertly in the woods behind my house."

"Can I take the knife my father gave me and peel your scrotum into an ancient parchment? Can we do this in Florida for approximately one year?"

"Do you want me to come all over you, squirrels and stones stuck to our skin?  I thought so."

Chip:  "I'm starting to think this may not be as hot as I first thought."

Richard:  "If PBR Book Club ever reads a work of erotica, this may be the place to start."