If that strikes you as a rather surprisingly hip choice, you'd be right. It has caused no small amount of unhappiness amongst some folks.
Consider, it actually took the governor making it an official order to get it to happen--the legislature decided to vote it down when it was up to them.
One Tulsa Today columnist in particular seems particularly steamed by the whole thing. Jim Downing (not to be confused with SNL writer Jim Downie, though both write some hilarious shit.) goes absolutely apeshit over it.
First he begs the Governor not to sign the order. After the Governor did sign it, Downing lets loose again. The results are predictable--the conconction has about 1/3 bitter unfamous performer (I'm more talented than they are), 1/3 old overly religious reactionary (song titles about drugs and fetuse, oh my!) and about 1/3 pure crank (fans of a band with a 48 year old frontman are "teenyboppers.")
Let's enjoy some great name calling. I haven't spotted any mention of the groups 6 Grammy nominations or 3 Grammy wins, but that doesn't mean that Jim Downing, in the interest of fair play did not mention them. They could be in there somewhere. I'm enjoying the nuttier parts. Downing should hope that The Flaming Lips are not the litigious kind.
Everything that follows are quotes about the Flaming Lips from Jim Downing:
" [Their name is] taken either from porn film or it is a pot-smoking reference"
"One member had his hand amputated due to an infection from shooting heroin." [later retracted, kind of], with "The drummer’s hand was not amputated. I left out the word ‘almost’. It was his arm that was abscessed. The cover story was that it was a spider bite; probably a Mexican Black Tar or a China White spider."
"The Hanson brothers will have a more lasting musical impact in the fullness of time. They have far more historical sense and musical ability and they are completely wholesome. "
"The Flaming lips may not be bad people, but they are shallow and thoughtless, and certainly not representative of most Oklahoma values. They don’t even play well."
"[Flaming] Lips makes dense sound collages; that’s easier than learning how to play. And it’s nothing new – it goes back to I Am The Walrus and Stockhausen." --emphasis mine. He just badmouthed the Beatles!
"I understand that the Lips have matured and are not as degenerate as we might think."
In case you were wondering who Jim Downing would have picked to be the artist that had the official Rock and Roll song of the State of Oklahoma--his top three choices are J.J. Cale (reasonable), Leon Russell (also reasonable, though he wasn't exactly a hitmaker in his solo career), and Hoyt Axton, whose finest moment can be seen here:
3 comments:
Goddamn kids and their rock 'n' roll music.
Hanson is not wholesome. I've partied with those girls and let me tell you, they know how to crush an ampule if you know what I mean.
This article is revelatory: whatever chance there ever was for me to move to Oklahoma has now forever been rent asunder.
And I partied with the Flaming Lips and it was pretty tame.
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