For months back in 1998, I saw them sitting there in unwanted clumps at the Tower Clearance Outlet, i.e., the shit end of Tower Records on 4th Street and Lafayette in Manhattan. Copies of the four-CD set "Zaireeka" by the Flaming Lips, discount priced at $15 per set. No one wanted them. I was only a mild fan of the band, so I scoffed at the idea of buying four separate CD’s that had to be played at the same time to achieve the full mix for each song. While I appreciated the experimental bent of the band, I couldn’t be bothered with the idea of tracking down three other people with boom boxes so we could get ripped on our choice of inebriant and dig their crazy sound.

Well, two years later, and Zaireeka is going for upwards of $60 on EBay. I’m now a huge fan of the band, coming to the show a bit late after being underwhelmed by their critically-acclaimed 1999 album The Soft Bulletin, but intrigued enough to track down their back catalogue. Also on EBay, I found someone who was offering a one-CD mix of all four CD’s, which didn’t seem to be impressing the bidders in general, who opted for the whole set or nothing at all. But this made sense to me, so I plunked down a reasonable price and got the disc in the mail a few weeks ago.

How did this person, I’ll call him Mr. X, record four CD’s onto one? I’ll let Mr. X explain via his email:

“Well, I used a program called Audio Catalyst to rip the tracks from CD, then used another program called Cool Edit 2000 (which is a Wav editor) to mix the tracks together, then used Audio Catalyst again to make 192kbit/44khz mp3's out of the mixed tracks, then burned right to CD.”

Got that? Upon listening, I recognized that "The Soft Bulletin" was a bit of a step down from "Zaireeka," which is even more experimental and rich in production, and that my fanhood would have begun there had I bought the four-CD set on the cheap at Tower. Not to knock "The Soft Bulletin"--like any good album these days, critics and fans get so nuts about it, compared to the rubble of what passes for current popular music, that it can’t possibly live up to the hype. Suffice to say, the next time the Flaming Lips put out an album, I’ll be buying it.

My favorite Flaming Lips album has to be "Transmissions from the Satellite Heart," their 1993 album that sprung the minor hit, “She Don’t Use Jelly.” The key to their success has been striking a fine balance between good pop sense and a more experimental, vaguely Prog Rock feel of playing with sounds simply for the sake of what might happen. The Flaming Lips make no bones about their love of 70’s rock bands, mainly Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and early Bowie. Their drum sound, especially on the pounding “Slow Nerve Action,” brings to mind John Bonham at his best. They clearly love the kitchen-sink production values of Pink Floyd: the sounds that sweep out of nowhere like a wind storm, the casual crash of a symbol, a snatch of meaningless conversation. Like Bowie, they understand the theatrics of a minor-key ballad, how to leave notes hanging that suggest pain and doubt. And, for better or worse, at times in their songs, especially on "Zaireeka," lead singer Wayne Coyne sounds an awful lot like Jon Anderson from Yes.

"Zaireeka" is out there, an audacious attempt at trumping their musical heroes in terms of creativity and wrong turns that still lead to the right places. Two of the tracks from this album (“Riding to Work in the Year 2025” and “Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair”) have recently appeared as b-sides to the “Waitin’ for a Superman” CD single, and a listen to this four-CD mix points out that the listener will not get the full effect with the single. For example, on “Riding to Work” the song breaks into a Beatlesque ballad (“Your Invisible Now”) that only on the four-CD mix has these muffled thuds, like distant explosions, echoing throughout the track. I’m gathering that the songs on the CD single are missing all the little ambient textures the band has thrown into the mix.

And these textures don’t always work. “How Will We Know? (Futuristic Crashendoes)” is a world-weary ballad that recalls Marvin Gaye at the peak of his talents with "What’s Going On." Unfortunately, as the song moves forward, it is overwhelmed intentionally with radio static and buzzing, which might have sounded innovative in the studio, but is a pain in the ass to the listener. Their misfires, though, are few and far between. I imagine I could point out the length of the tracks--“A Machine in India” goes on for over 10 minutes. But I never found myself getting bored with the longer tracks. If anything, I wanted to keep on listening to hear how the song would turn out. It’s also fair to point out that the Flaming Lips made the four CD’s in the first place so I could most likely fade out parts of the mix I didn’t like.

There’s also an odd effect at the start of each track. A disembodied voice, most likely Coyne, counts down the track by saying, “This is track number one, this is CD number one, number two, number three and number four.” The voice is slightly slowed down, drugged sounding. At first, I thought it was the guy who made the CD, but he told me in his email that this was part of each CD, and used for the purpose of synching each CD when four players handled the CD’s separately. It breaks into the album’s continuity, but also lends to a warped sense of other-worldliness the album possesses.

For those not familiar with the Flaming Lips, their lyrics tend to be fairly bizarre in the same way Bowie would simply play word games and associations--the words aren’t necessarily meaningless, but more often they serve to color the music’s mood than impart a direct message. One of my favorite songs of theirs, “Put the Waterbug in the Policeman’s Ear,” sounds like an unbearably moving and painful ballad. It’s vaguely about the singer’s brother going to the mall and forgetting how to get home.

My favorite song on "Zaireeka," is the closer, “The Big Ol’ Bug Is the New Baby Now.” This time, Wayne tells a linear story about his dogs, who normally love to tear up the stuffed animals Wayne brings home for them, inexplicably sparing a stuffed animal. Wayne recognizes the stuffed animal as being the dogs’ baby in some sense. The stuffed animal eventually gets torn to shreds, but Wayne notices the dogs have now spared a big plastic grasshopper they normally would have torn to pieces - thus the song title.

Sounds like horseshit? It is. Wayne talks the song, resurrecting the great trend of talking songs, along with Ben Folds and Bill Shatner in Fear of Pop’s “In Love” and the massive 1999 hit, “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen).” Wayne plays with the form by speeding up and slowing down his voice, but never losing that earnest Art Linkletter tone--a classic. The music is beautiful, a meandering ballad that blows out “Hey Jude” style into a big climax, which disintegrates into the harsh sound of dozens of dogs barking.

This is what to expect on "Zaireeka"--the unexpected, whether it’s the way “A Machine in India” never gets anywhere, but you don’t care because it sounds so beautiful, or how “The Train Runs Over the Camel but Is Derailed by the Gnat” starts off like a Zeppelin ballad and fades into a Casio-beat and church organ meditation that stops cold.

"The Soft Bulletin" didn’t blow me away when it came out. I wrote most of it down to critical overload, and I’ll stand by that. It’s still a good album--just be leery of anyone holding a bong or a pen who tells you it’s the best thing he’s ever heard, man. Now that I’m a fan, and after "Zaireeka," I can see that the band’s potential is immense, that they’re doing things no one else is doing and are not afraid to fail. Something tells me "Zaireeka" must have scared them a little, as "The Soft Bulletin" sounds like a bit of a creative retreat from the outer boundaries they had been exploring.

How to get this quad mix of "Zaireeka?" Well, do what I did--scout out EBay, and maybe Mr. X will appear again. Or get four friends and an equal number of boom boxes and have yourselves a listening party. Or follow the tech-head instructions above and mix the discs yourselves. If there’s one thing I respect about the Flaming Lips above all else, it’s that they understand the way you choose to listen to their music is entirely up to you, and the weirder the better.