Krazy/Killer Band Name Of The Week: The Flaming Lips

One of the most eclectic and revered bands out there, Oklahoma City's The Flaming Lips​ have close to the perfect career: do what they want, when they want, and their fans will love 'em no matter what. Short of recording a duet with Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, they can do no wrong.  Writing songs about being a frog...

​... penning one of the most gorgeous ballads ever, then shoot the video with Japanese models and bunny mascots in Vegas...

​... or recording a track-by-track cover album of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with none other than Miley Cyrus...

Put it all together, and it's best left to frontman Wayne Coyne to talk about where the Lips' name came from:

​“Back in 1983 when we were approaching our first gig, we really didn’t know what we were gonna be called. It was still sort of the punk era back then, but we didn’t want to be called something too political like the Dead Kennedys. I’d read somewhere about a group called the Flaming Hands, which was a name I’d liked and that led to the Flaming Lips.

"But I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and tell me that they really know where the name comes from. Some folks have told me that I got the name from an old Fred Astaire musical that it supposedly shows up in. Others said we took it from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nope, it happened like I said it did. I even remember making a flyer for the show where I cut out a picture of a woman with her legs spread and put a mouth over her, uh, parts — so there was this idea of a throbbing orifice. It just proves that if a man is completely left to his own devices, he’ll always go straight for vaginas.”

“Oh, we had a bunch of ridiculous ideas. We had considered things like the Tijuana Toads; the Corporation; the Firm. Silly names like that.”

Riiiight, Wayne - Flaming Lips not silly, Tijuana Toads silly. Actually, maybe starting a Flaming Lips cover band is in order. Think we'll call ourselves the Tijuana Toads...