With A Little Help From My Fwends

     History tells us when The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, in 1967, it blew everyone away. Jimi Hendrix covered the title track live the next night. The Fab Four had answered Pet Sounds. The critics, who claimed that The Beatles were done, were silenced. However, in the 21st Century, there has been some hipster revisionism asserting that Sgt. Pepper is not only The Beatles worst album, but a horrible album in general. Regardless of where the truth lies on that spectrum, Sgt. Pepper is an iconic album that would seem to defy a wholesale reinterpretation by another band. Luckily, someone forgot to tell The Flaming Lips and their intrepid band of "fwends".
     Obviously, The Beatles have been covered thousands of times. The Smithereens have  recorded whole album covers. Cheap Trick performed Sgt. Pepper, in its' entirety, in Las Vegas for a run of shows. Robin Zander's uniform is even in the Rock Hall as proof. This week, the Flaming Lips had the audacity to re-imagine Sgt. Pepper as an offhand charity project with the help of a variety of guest artists; including Miley Cyrus, Moby, My Morning Jacket, Tegan and Sara, Dr. Dog, J Mascis and Foxygen. It probably comes as a surprise to loyal Sound Mind readers that I'm even writing a post about this album. I've been on the record as not being a fan of Wayne Coyne's antics over the past couple years. I'd had it with gummy vaginas, zip drives in human skulls, Wayne's naked junk in videos, 24 hour long songs and album covers like Dark Side of the Moon. One could cynically argue that it's just another in a string of gimmicks design to garner publicity for the Flaming Lips. Until recently, I would have been one of those cynics. This change of heart is the actual point of my post. but first the music.
     What I like about With A Little Help From My Fwends is the way they respect Sgt. Pepper, but give it the Lips treatment. They preserve the sequencing and basic song structure, while using modern recording technology that was not available in 1967. For the most part, I could have done without the "fwends". I feel this would have been a better album had the Flaming Lips done it themselves. The one exception would be Miley Cyrus. Granted, she was given the best material in "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and "A Day in the Life", but she did a fantastic job. Her performance on LSD was uncanny and she also did the McCartney part on "A Day in the Life". Oddly, my favorite songs from Sgt. Pepper are my least favorite on Fwends and vice versa. For instance I love the title track on Sgt. Pepper, but tolerate the Ringo vehicle "With a Little Help from My Friends". The Lips version of the title track is really weak, but they show their sense of humor by auto-tuning Wayne on "Friends". I was also disappointed with "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite", which was speak-sung by Maynard Keenan of Tool and Puscifer. This track is only saved after the line about Henry the Horse doing the waltz, when they perform a brilliant instrumental section. I'm a bit conflicted about "Fixing a Hole", which is performed by Steven Drozd and Wayne Coyne's project, Electric Wurms. I prefer the energy of The Beatles version, but I like the quiet, floating in space take on Fwends. My least favorite Sgt. Pepper song is the melodramatic "She's Leaving Home", but I love this version which features Phantogram. This track seems to benefit from being sung by a female artist and her delivery is fantastic. Likewise, "Within You, Without You". "When I'm Sixty-Four" is unforgivably boring and ill-conceived. Despite the warts, Fwends is an interesting take on The Beatles' iconic album and is well worth a listen. It also makes you want to go back and listen to Sgt. Pepper again with fresh ears.
     Ok, here's the part where I may lose some of you. I wrote a post over a year ago about Wayne Coyne and how the Flaming Lips album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots changed my life. Toward the end of the post, I lamented the direction Wayne seemed to be heading in artistically. I had reached a breaking point when he began hanging out with Ke$ha and pressing records with their combined blood mixed in them. Then came Miley Cyrus. I'll admit, I never watched Hannah Montana nor have I heard any of her music, but I have a knee jerk reaction to not like her based on nothing, except what I hear from talking heads. I came to this realization from listening to Episode 98 of the Roderick on the Line podcast. John Roderick told the story of getting free tickets for a Miley Cyrus concert and his experience at the show. All he knew about Miley Cyrus was he didn't like her. All of his middle-aged male friends refused to go with him because they had this same knee jerk reaction. John admitted during the podcast that he intended to live chat during the show and make fun of it on social media. He abandoned that plan once he arrived at the show. It was a visual spectacle. The atmosphere was positive and empowering. Miley was in complete control. She fed off the crowd of entirely 20 year old young women and they fed off her. I listened to this podcast about the same time Wayne was getting a lot of blowback from his fans about performing and recording with Miley Cyrus. At this point, it occurred to me, "Who am I to tell Wayne Coyne, or anyone else who to collaborate with or how to live their life". I have my hands full with my own life. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to start buying gummy vaginas or not have an opinion about him firing Kliph from the band. It does mean that I'm going to try to be more open-minded, which is the point of this post. One more thing though Wayne; please stop using "fwends" instead of friends. It's dumb. Peace.