Pitchfork

If you were a scientist celebrating Christmas on Mars for the first time, what would you ask Santa Claus for? We'd request some of that space ice cream from the local museum, 'cause hey, it's out of this world! Anywho, everyone must have been pretty good (or naughty?) this year, as the Flaming Lips have finally... finally... FINALLY wrapped up their feature film, Christmas on Mars.

Wayne Coyne told Billboard.com, "We transferred it all down to computer land within the last couple of days. Now I just have to remember what it is that we were trying to say [laughs]." So don't expect to see Wayne Coyne in an alien suit at the local multiplex just yet. Now that the shooting process is over and done with, it's time to crack down on the editing... or, as the Lips seem to prefer, just get around to it whenever.

The band will offer teaser clips on their website in the coming months, and they're aiming for the finished product to be viewable in late summer 2006, at which point the Lips will be touring in support of their upcoming album, At War With the Mystics. So it will probably drop around the same time that common folk like us are actually celebrating Christmas in outer space.

Coyne also told Billboard, "I'm thinking of taking it to theaters and having it be an experience where we bring in giant sound systems, smoke machines, Christmas lights, shit falls on you from the ceiling and you can smoke pot and do whatever you want. There's something about the communal experience while something intense and unexpected is happening. I'm sure it will come out on DVD and there'll be a soundtrack, but that isn't the real experience." Zaireeka! We think he's got it! Speaking of smoking pot and communal experiences, the Flaming Lips set sail on the Xingolati Groove Cruise this weekend, traveling on the high (heh heh) seas between Long Beach, California and Ensenada, Mexico with stoner faves G. Love and Special Sauce, Banyan, DJ Logic, Slightly Stoopid, Particle, DJ Greyboy, Medeski, Martin & Wood and more. Next month, they play a couple of Brazilian fests.

Dates:

10-14 The Open Sea - Xingolati Groove Cruise
10-15 The Open Sea - Xingolati Groove Cruise
10-16 The Open Sea - Xingolati Groove Cruise
10-17 The Open Sea - Xingolati Groove Cruise
11-26 Sao Paulo, Brazil - Claro Festival
11-27 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Claro Festival

Billboard.com seems to be Wayne Coyne's best buddy these days (what, no love for Pitchfork news?!), as he also provided them with some new details about At War With the Mystics on Wednesday. The album's heavier rock vibe was inspired by a cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" the Lips have added to their live show.

He said, "You can't tell if [the members of Sabbath] are farmers, wizards, hippies or members of a cult. It's mysterious territory. Part of that, we really fell in love with. So, there are some tracks we've delved into production-wise, where we're trying to get some of that heavy rock'n'roll with heavy guitar riffs, but not just to be aggressive. On the last couple of records, we've tried to be more expressive in beautiful ways. But sometimes, volume and intensity are great too." Yes, and volume and intensity are also things you want your hair to possess, if those shampoo commercials are to be believed.

Another song, "The Wand", is a riff on an Oklahoma City homeless man who walks around carrying a big stick: "I feel like the stick, to him, is a magic wand. So much of your confidence is in how much you believe in yourself, and there was something about the day I saw him holding this old stick. He thought it was magic, so it seemed like he could do things that a less confident person couldn't do. It's just a dumb old stick, but it was like, 'I've got some power here. My magic stick will get me through the troubles of the day.' If only we all had something like that. Within the song, hopefully this is an empowering mysticism and not something silly from the Dark Ages." Insert "walk softly" or Lil' Kim/50 Cent joke here.

"The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" features Queen-style harmony vocals, influenced by the Lips' cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" on that godawful Queen tribute album that came out this summer: "We were perfectly able to conquer the challenges Queen presented, so Steven [Drozd] continued doing these strange vocal arrangements of him singing into a microphone 30 times or something. We took that vocal treatment and made a song out of it. It ends up being a self-empowering thing -- almost like an MC5 thing, but it's not talking about external things. It's talking about the power within you. What would you do if you had the power?"

"Time Travel" might feature a special guest: Lips buddy and former "Blue's Clues" star Steve Burns. Coyne said, "One version was me sort of acting like a deranged priest, talking about the idea of time travel being something we're all able to do in our own minds. Since then, we've had Steve Burns try it and now we're putting different music to it, so we'll see how that works out."

Since there aren't enough drugs in the world to contain this band, they've recently allied themselves with a much more addictive and sinister substance: Coca-Cola. That's right, the Flaming Lips, as well as Guided By Voices, Fischerspooner, Swedish psych rockers Citizen Bird, and Japanese DJ Towa Tei have joined that long list of esteemed pop stars, from Tom Jones and Elton John to New Kids on the Block and Paula Abdull in lending their music to the caffeine empire.

It's all part of some mysterious internet ad campaign called "M5". According to the M5 website, the soda giant approached five style-conscious design groups to create "visions of optimism" through forward-thinking Coke ad campaigns. Positive thinking via cola consumption? God, that's a depressing thought.

The Designers Republic, MK 12, Lobo, Caviar, and Rex & Tennant McKay each signed up and banded with a different artist to create an online music video collage. Guided By Voices' and MK12's "Back to the Lake", Citizen Bird and the Designers Republic's "Joy", and Caviar and Towa Tei's "Milkyway" are all currently viewable on the site, with The Flaming Lips/Lobo and Fischerspooner/Rex & Tennant McKay coming soon. Accompanying the clips are making-ofs, band bios, and related links and downloads.

And while you can rest assured that the official "Pitchfork sellout detectors" are all equipped with fresh batteries, we can safely say that the resulting audio/visual mashups are definitely more successful than the Cosby-promoted "New Coke" blitz of the 80s. Now if only Radiohead would ante up "Fake Plastic Trees", they'd really be onto something.