Flaming Lips' Bizarre 'Boombox Experiment'

Resting backstage after the show, the leader of the Flaming Lips unzipped his yellow rain slicker and said, "It worked! I thought it went really well."

Coyne had reason to believe things could have gone the other way. The only thing missing on the stage just hours before were rows of bubbling beakers and sparking tesla coils. When Oklahoma acid-test sound technicians the Flaming Lips brought their "Boombox Experiment" to San Francisco's Bimbo's 365 Club on Saturday night as part of the Noise Pop '98 festival, nobody seemed sure what to expect.

But, given the unconventional look of the stage, experiment was as good a description as any.

In place of guitars, amps and drums, the stage was carefully arranged with 40 black restaurant chairs in eight rows, each one with a battered boombox resting on the red vinyl seat. Each boombox had a ziploc bag filled with seven tapes attached to it, while the back of the stage was cluttered with mixing boards and a pair of microphones. This would only be the second time the band had attempted this kind of boombox symphony in public and the show would feature the world premieres of two new boombox tracks, the likes of which the audience had certainly never heard before.

In fact, just to add to the experimental bent, Lips drummer Steven Drozd would later admit that even the group hadn't heard the songs "Heralding In a Better Ego" and "Altruism a.k.a. That's the Crotch Calling the Devil Black" prior to Friday afternoon, when they ran three boomboxes through the stereo in their van and did a dry-run.

The musical science experiment began with two tests. Coyne instructed the 40 volunteers to pull out the first test tape from their bags and load them into their boomboxes. As Coyne followed the sound from box to box by placing his microphone up to the speakers, each one announcing its number in Coyne's best game-show host baritone, a snafu developed. In the mad rush to take their seats, the boomboxers had unplugged some of the miles of wire snaking all over the stage.

Keeping it together in front of the sold-out, eager-looking crowd, Coyne ran the second test and prepared his impromptu orchestra for the strangest trip he'd ever taken them on in an already beyond-eccentric career.

Pat Lochelt, an 18-year-old Lips fan who had tried his own experiment at home with last year's Zaireeka four-CD set -- the Flaming Lips' attempt at capturing the multi-phonic sound of the experiments on CD -- said he had no idea what to expect. "They explain it a bit in the liner notes," said Lochelt, whose bleach blond and red stripped mop of hair looked like one Coyne may have sported years ago. "But who knows what it will sound like tonight?"

The only warning Coyne gave was, "I know this is a weird thing, but at least we're in a place where weird is normal."

The first song was one that appears in a different version on Zaireeka, "The Big Ol' Bug is the New Baby Now." On Coyne's count, all 40 boomboxers depressed play at once, creating a creepy circle of tape hiss for a few minutes, followed by a warped monologue about dogs destroying stuffed animals and chew toys.

With speakers scattered throughout the club, the sound of the experiment was truly wrap-around and massive. The boomboxes soon began to pump out the otherworldly sound of hundreds of voices moaning a thunderous choral note. The sound reminded me of the opening shot in "Star Wars," when you are introduced to the Imperial destroyer when it flies over in all its vast, dark glory. Except 100 times louder.

The sound vacillated from sheets of metallic rain and electric hail falling on a tin roof to a dog barking in the distance as the song faded out six minutes later. Coyne and Drozd had big grins on their faces.

"A Winter's Day Car Accident Melody" was even more abstract. While Drozd controlled the volume on his side, flapping his arms up and down like some slacker orchestra-conductor, Coyne worked his side of the stage, phasing the boxes up and down to create a ping-ponging scream of sirens and grinding metal sounds.

While Coyne's side burped out the baritone of what sounded like American car horns, Drozd's side squealed a slightly higher-pitched tone of a Japanese import. When both men threw their arms in the air near the song's end to indicate full jet-engine volume, the crowd responded as if they'd just witnessed a fireball-shooting guitar solo, or an upside-down drum run. When, in fact, all they'd witnessed was 40 grinning strangers twisting volume knobs on battered boomboxes and two men raising and lowering their arms out of time.

"Realizing the Speed of Life" began with bassist Michael Ivins cueing up a tape of an acoustic guitar and metronome beat, but soon blasted off into screaming foghorns, swirling strings and, finally, a piano-driven nursery rhyme, as Coyne and Drozd shut down the boomboxes one-by-one. The mesmerizing "Heralding a Better Ego," which featured the sounds of 100 trumpets blaring over a backbeat supplied by 40 drummers, was the most moving experiment of the night, brining to mind the trance-inducing sounds of the Masters of Jajouka being attacked by a million metallic bees.

The evening ended with the odd "Altruism," otherwise known as "That's The Crotch Calling the Devil Black." Over a loop of Meg Ryan's fake orgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally," Drozd and Coyne ratcheted up the hysteria level by sub-dividing their sides into two 10-person mini-symphonies and bringing the sounds up and down, in and out, at a furious pace in time with Ryan's panting. Looking like they were trying to fly sideways, both men peaked over their shoulders occasionally to make sure they were in synch, brining the entire room into a vicarious sound orgasm that left both musicians sweaty and smiling.

Decked out in his best lime green tuxedo, Nathan Pierce, 21, couldn't rave enough about the show. Jumping off the stage, where he had been lead chair in Drozd's section, Pierce leapt into the arms of friends and slapped high-fives. "How fucking great was that!" yelled Pierce. "To be a part of the Lips for a night and just be so fucking psyched to get up there and press play."

"It worked," said a bemused Coyne just after the show. "Except somebody had their radio on the whole time. Well, I tried to make it foolproof. I'll just have to fix that one for next time."

Despite some confused looks on the faces of a few exiting fans, even skeptics could admit, at the very least, they'd never quite seen anything like it. [Mon., March 2, 1998, 9 a.m. PST]