All of which unfairly causes a bunch of you to sneer and strike peacock-like poses. Not all of you, of course — plenty of you must have bought at least one of the last two Flaming Lips albums, after all — but there are enough of you tut-tutting and pooh-poohing for me to make one giant strawman, on whom I must now lay the righteous truth that is John’s old band MKUltra’s second album, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. It’s a series of scenes from a movie that doesn’t actually exist and which was never scripted or planned, though that didn’t stop Mr. Vanderslice from making up an elaborate backstory about the film, its purported reception at the Sundance festival, and its director’s tragic demise. Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is an after-the-fact for a fact that actually isn’t one. It is a God damned lie, is what I mean. And herein lies one of the joys of getting into John’s stuff: putting it all together is like sifting through the stories of a really good friend who happens to be an incurable liar. He used to claim Microsoft was messing with him for having written a song called “Bill Gates Must Die”; the claim got him an interview on TechTV, where he told his entirely false story with a totally straight face. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 [ next ]