"And the life you had, you lose somehow." - The Mobius Band.

Thoughts on Fearless Freaks, the recently released Flaming Lips documentary we watched this evening:

1. Stephen Drozd makes musical manna with amazing ease. His harrowing bout with drug addiction is covered starkly in the film, not belabored but certainly squarely confronted. Said struggle was also frankly discussed in a Junkmedia interview that now we can't track down. Well, we can track down the interview with Drozd, but it isn't the one we thought it was perhaps it was a different pub. Oh well.

2. We got hooked on the Lips about 10 years later than we should have. We can remember Zozman giddily cuing up "Kim's Watermelon Gun" on a tape deck in South Wayne back when Clouds Taste Metallic came out. We guess we just weren't ready then. The song is not featured in the movie.

3. The film focuses more heavily on Wayne Coyne than others. No surprise, but it seems like many of the players who came and went along the way were given short shrift, some only mentioned in the credits at the end.

4. Oklahoma City seems an oddly familiar place. We guess suburbia has a universal sort of culture. We like how Wayne lives within blocks of many members of his nuclear family in what seems like a fairly modest home. The flashiest thing he has is a green truck that is shiny and has an enclosed cab.

5. Coyne seems very handy, building sets for his own movie, carrying around ladders to clean his Mom's gutters. Very down to Earth.

6. We bet all the kids in his neighborhood love that Coyne lives there.

7. The DVD has very few extras. Obligatory commentary, but no videos, no extra live footage at the end. It's sort of disappointing, 'cause the movie will definitely get you psyched to check that sort of thing out, and then doesn't provide any resources.

8. Finally, we didn't realize that one dood Jonathan Donahue left the Lips for Mercury Rev, and ultimately was part of Harmony Rockets, whose Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void is enormously under-appreciated. It sort of explains a lot of parallels the bands have, such as the use of Fridmann, etc. Or if not explains them, at least provides meaningful context for them.

Anyway, none of that really does the film justice. But you should make a point to see it. We rented it from Netflix, and there is probably little reason you can't do that yourself.

That is all.