To feed my fascination, I bought a Christie's Auction catalog with a bunch of Basquiat paintings in it. I studied each painting in the catalogue carefully, and I then realized that they all sucked. I love 'em, but they suck. There's no apparent skill involved. Not much time spent on any of them. The subject matter is juvenile and just plain silly. These paintings sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Go figure.
But in spite of this realization, I still admire Basquiat. The painter's task, and the mark of a good artist, is not only to create an engaging image, but also to inspire. And what could be more inspiring than gazing at a world famous painting and being able to declare sans sarcasm, "I can do that!"
And that's pretty much the story of my Flaming Lips rockstar font. I recently hung around backstage at a Flaming Lips concert for hours, waiting for a chance to get an alphabet from the band's frontman, Wayne Coyne. Unfortunately, Wayne was busy doing soundchecks on 40 tape players for "The Boom-Box Experiment" show. Luckily, Flaming Lips drummer, Steven Drozd, was sitting in the dressing room, smoking cigarettes and listening to Rolling Stones on an extra boom box. I had found my man.
I showed Steven the
work of some of my other rockstars. Then I asked if he would do an
alphabet. "Okay, I can do that," he said. And hunched over on the couch, he
spewed forth this random assortment of characters in about two minutes.
Named for its appearance, this Crawfish Popsicle font has no pretense of
academia or technique. It reminds me of Basquiat — just pure
consciousness. It kind of looks like it was drawn by a crazy person. The
letters compliment and contrast each other so randomly that it's a style
which just can't be contrived. Steven's execution was completely arbitrary. You see life in these letters,
how they capture one spontaneous moment. There will never be another font
like it. No one can recreate this alphabet, not even Steven.
Crawfish Popsicle is "art of the moment" — a concept the Lips take to levels
of ingenuity with their live tour called "The Boom-Box Experiment."
Dependant on human "error," the performance calls for 40 volunteers from
the audience to each manipulate the audio on 40 separate boom boxes. Wayne
and Steven are the conductors, guiding the sound levels that you're
supposed to "play" on your boom box.
I sat on Wayne's side for one of their Minneapolis Experiments. Each boom
box had its own special set of tapes. "ONE, TWO, THREE" Wayne hollered and
everyone hit play. Then he and Steven signaled people to turn their boom
boxes up or down, sometimes slowly, sometimes frantically. During some
songs the individual boom boxes played harmonious sounds, other times the
audio collided. For example, during "The Loudest Blade of Grass," lawn mowers were
buzzing on Steven's side, and birds chirped from Wayne's people. "Realizing
the Speed of Life" swelled into a symphony of 40 crying babies that drove
the audience to cover their ears and cringe.
Like Steven's alphabet, no two Boom-Box Experiments will ever be perfect or
the same. But they're all guaranteed to be mind-bogglingly unique. For a
similar at-home listening experience, check out Zaireeka, a 4-CD set that
you are supposed to listen to in sync on 4 CD players.
