Flaming Lips vie for three Grammy awards

Gimme Lip
By MATT ELLIOTT World Scene Writer
2/11/2007

Flaming Lips vie for three Grammy awards

The Flaming Lips, the alternative band from Oklahoma City, has three nominations for this Sunday's Grammy awards, but don't try to catch a glimpse of the band as you watch the awards ceremony (7 p.m. Sunday on CBS, channel 6.)

Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd said the band won't be in Los Angeles for this year's ceremony.

Of course, the band already has one of those miniature, shiny gramophones in its trophy case, a rock instrumental award earned for the song "Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon."

This year the Lips are nominated for best rock instrumental performance for the band's song "The Wizard Turns On . . .," best alternative music album for the disc "At War With the Mystics," and for best engineered album.

Don't get Drozd wrong. He said the band is thrilled to be nominated.

"But honestly, it's really boring," said Drozd, a bit sheepishly. "We went in 2003 when we won the first time, and the pure excitement of that was going for the first time and winning. Something about it being in New York City made it just cooler. I don't know why.

"And then the next year it was in Los Angeles," he said. "And it was really boring. We sat there for hours and then we didn't win."

The Lips are an odd story in general, growing out of Oklahoma City's underground music scene in the early 1980s. They didn't get massive appeal until 1993, when their hit song, "She Don't Use Jelly," catapulted them from a macaroni-and-cheese touring act to quick stardom.

Signed to Warner Bros., the label stuck with them through the alternative music bust in the late 1990s, while the band released a string of complex concept albums -- stretching from 1999's "The Soft Bulletin" to last year's "At War With the Mystics."

"If it had been a different story with (Warner Bros.), our whole career would be different, because you know they could've dropped us in the mid-'90s when everyone was getting the ax," Drozd said.

These days, the band is recording material for the next Farrelly brothers' movie (the guys who directed Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz in "There's Something About Mary"), and recording stuff for "Spider Man 3," Drozd said.

Also, singer Wayne Coyne and the band's manager, Scott Booker, left Thursday for San Diego to talk with Des McAnuff about a musical based on the album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," Drozd said. McAnuff wrote and directed the Broadway version of the Who's "Tommy."

Coyne also is editing the band's mondo-bizzaro film, "Christmas on Mars," and a video of the band's September 2006 concert performance at Oklahoma City's Zoo Amphitheatre will be out soon, Drozd said.

The Lips will return to touring in April, he said.

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Matt Elliott 581-8366
matt.elliott@tulsaworld.com