If there were a list of bands not from Austin that we’d love to claim anyway, the Flaming Lips would certainly be near the top of that list. The psychotropic trio, backing Beck at the big, sold-out Bass Concert Hall show next Tuesday, aren’t without their local connections, either. For starters, Lips drummer/co-conspirator Steven Drozd‘s previous outfit Janis Eighteen made the old Cannibal Club their home base lo those many years ago. Drozd is a tad less loopy than frontman Wayne Coyne, who claims Beck took the Oklahomans on as a backing band for this tour after ingesting 10 hits of acid. Drozd offers a simpler story. “We’d run into him a few times over the years, then out of the blue this summer, right as our record was coming out, he called and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this record coming out in September! I wondered if you guys would be interested in going on tour and being my band?’ Before we thought about it too much we just said ‘Yeah!’ like a bunch of jackasses.” The reality of learning an entire set of Beck material and performing it along with their own full show (they’ll open, then join Beck for his set) should have given the Lips pause had they stopped to consider it. That they didn’t is the public’s gain, as the team-up has already been tagged by reviewers and fans as “pure brilliance.” The Lips’ current release, the concept album Yoshimi vs. the Pink Robots, continues to expand their fan base, Drozd saying he’s astounded over just seeing one of the band’s videos on MTV. As far as what’s in store after the Beck tour, Drozd says, “We’re in your standard, ‘We put a record out and now we’re touring’ mode — nothing special.”
This article appears in November 8 • 2002.