Episode 520
with Daisy Hernández and Wayne Coyne
Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello celebrate the spirit of live performances; writer Daisy Hernández unpacks her latest book The Kissing Bug, a reportage-meets-memoir which outlines the impact of Chagas disease on Latinx communities; Wayne Coyne, frontman of The Flaming Lips, explains how to play a Covid-safe concert using space bubbles; and we hear a performance of their hit song "Do You Realize??" from inside a bubble.
Daisy Hernández
Award-winning Author
Daisy Hernández is the author of The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation's Neglect of a Deadly Disease, which won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and was selected as an inaugural title for the National Book Foundation’s Science + Literature Program. She also wrote the award-winning memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed, and co-edited the anthology Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism. A former managing editor at ColorLines magazine, she has reported for National Geographic, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Slate, and her writing has aired on NPR's All Things Considered. Daisy is now an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at Miami University in Ohio. Website • Twitter
Wayne Coyne
Musician and Frontman
Wayne Coyne is a musician and artist best known as the frontman of psychedelic rock band The Flaming Lips. Performing together for nearly forty years, the group has won three Grammy Awards and released sixteen studio albums including, most recently, American Head (2020). Known for their spectacular and immersive live performances, the band holds the Guinness World Record for the most live shows in different cities in 24 hours. They were named one of Q magazine's "50 Bands to See Before You Die." Coyne has also exhibited experimental artworks, and he directed the indie sci-fi film Christmas on Mars. Listen • Website
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Luke Burbank: Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello: Hey, Luke. How's it going?
Luke Burbank: It's going well. I know you're traveling a lot this summer, but here in Portland, where I am, it has finally gotten warm. And now it's too warm. It went from.
Elena Passarello: Already?
Luke Burbank: Yeah. This really went from 0 to 90 out here, but we're getting through it. You ready to do a little "station location identification examination"?
Elena Passarello: Let's do it.
Luke Burbank: All right. This is where I'm going to describe a place in the country where Live Wire is on the radio. Elena, you have to try to guess where I'm talking about. This is the birthplace of Steve Martin, the comedian, actor and art collector. You could say.
Elena Passarello: I read his memoir Somewhere in California.
Luke Burbank: He definitely performed, I believe at like a.
Elena Passarello: Knott's Berry Farm.
Luke Burbank: Theme Park in California. But this is east of there. This is also where Dr. Pepper was invented. The drink, not the person.
Elena Passarello: Waco, Texas?
[bell rings]
Luke Burbank: Waco, Texas is exactly right.
Elena Passarello: Steve Martin's from Waco, Texas?
Luke Burbank: This is what the Live Wire producers are telling me, and they're usually right about these things. That's where we're on the radio in Waco on KWBU radio, the birthplace of Steve Martin and Dr. Pepper. Who knew? All right, Elaina, should we get going?
Elena Passarello: Let's do it.
Luke Burbank: All right, take it away.
Elena Passarello: [Music plays] From PRX It's Live Wire! This week, writer Daisy Hernández:
Daisy Hernández: She may not have been as interested in me being an obedient child as much as she wanted me to be a Colombian child, like she wanted me to have, like, certain aspects of her culture.
Elena Passarello: Rock star Wayne Coyne:
Wayne Coyne: You know, the job that I have really is one of the weirdest jobs in the world where it kind of is based on you doing what you like.
Elena Passarello: Plus music from his band, The Flaming Lips. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello. And now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank!
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. [Music ends.] Thanks to everyone tuning in all over the country, including down there in Waco, Texas. We have a great show in store for you this week. Of course, we asked a Live Wire listeners a question. We asked, What's the most memorable live performance you have ever seen? We're going to talk to Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips about this incredible concert they put on where everybody was in these vinyl space bubbles. So we're going to hear the listener responses coming up in a minute. First, though, it's time for the best news we heard all week.
Luke Burbank: This is our little reminder, the top of the show, that there is actually some good news happening out there in the world on occasion. Elena what is the best news that you heard this week?
Elena Passarello: All right. Superhuman news coming out of Canada.
Luke Burbank: Okay..
Elena Passarello: North Saanich, British Columbia, to be specific, where a mom named Cait Oakley lives with her partner and her kids. She had two kids. She recently welcomed four month old Willow to the brood. And she lives in some kind of property that is big enough to have chickens. And the chickens have a garden goose named Frankie. Francie is a beloved member of Cait's posse. And a couple of days ago, Frankie was in danger. This whole harrowing story was covered by Kate's doorbell cam.
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: And so this video that she put on TikTok that was taken by her doorbell, cam is going around. She was inside the house breastfeeding Willow. And then she hears Frankie start making crazy guard goose noises. Really, really crazy noises. And then the doorbell cam picks up this huge bald eagle flying not just on to the property.
Luke Burbank: What?!
Elena Passarello: But onto the front porch of Kate's house and pulling Frankie the goose out into the driveway and about to lift off with this goose in its talons.
Luke Burbank: What?! I thought, you're just going to say it was like an Amazon delivery or something.
Elena Passarello: It looked like an Amazon delivery in reverse. But instead of a package, it was a goose. And instead of an Amazon delivery driver, it was a gigantic bald freakin eagle.
Luke Burbank: Oh my gosh.
Elena Passarello: And so the the eagle is trying to lift this squawking goose up into the sky and then outcome's Cait Oakley. She's in her all togethers and she's still breastfeeding her baby. Baby in one arm and the other arm flying around. The eagle drops the goose, the goose runs away, and then she just runs back inside. And she posted it to TikTok with the caption Mama Bear protects sweet Francie even while breastfeeding. [Laughs]
Luke Burbank: My goodness. The baby was not having a latching problem but was very engaged in the feeding process. That's amazing.
Elena Passarello: The baby was like, whoa. But you know, a lot of people have been sort of embracing this as just like this great symbol of like how strong and amazing motherhood is and how important breastfeeding is. Cait herself has been telling places like the Today Show that breastfeeding is a full time job. So, you know, you got to do it all the time, even when your beloved goose is in danger. And she also says, I've chased off birds of prey many times before, but just not with a baby attached to me. [Laughs]
Luke Burbank: That is incredible. I also have a bird story that I saw this week. This one comes from here in Portland, Oregon, where I am right now. It involves a husband and wife named Ozguar and Asli Yilmaz. Apologies for my probably questionable pronunciation. They're originally from Turkey, but they've been living in Iowa for a while and then they had moved out to Portland for a job and they don't have any kids, but they do have four parrots that they love. They're like very, I saw pictures of them. They would take these parrots out for walks in Portland. They'd put them in like a clear backpack with like air vents in them so that the parrots could see Portland without actually flying off or being exposed to danger. And so they're out on the porch of their condo at some point, and they have the parrots in a kind of cage out there on the porch. And these crows start noticing that the parrots are on the porch and they're flying down. Now, the parents are protected. They're in this cage. But at some point, Asli decides, okay, I'm going to take them inside. And as she's transferring them from the cage on the porch to this other little device to get them inside, one of the crows swoops down. And Joy, the parrot gets really spooked and just takes off just flies off into the sky. They worry never to be seen again. So Asli and Ozguar, they immediately email everyone in their building. Hey, we're missing a parrot. Here's a photo of Joy. They print up those, like, lost parrot fliers, which they're tacking up all over Portland. But about a mile away, a woman living in a different condominium here in Portland noticed that her cat was acting up. And it was because sitting on her porch was this parrot who turned out to be Joy. She did not know how to deal with birds or with parrots, so she called her downstairs neighbor, who's in the Audubon Society. And she only knew about this because that downstairs neighbor regularly sends emails to the apartment building trying to raise money for the Audubon Society.
Elena Passarello: Hey hey!
Luke Burbank: So they get Audubon Society neighbor in there and she's Googling, what do you feed a parrot? So they cut up some apples and some broccoli and they put the apples and broccoli out on the porch for Joy. The parrot, so Joy is, eaten the apples. So they send out an email to their entire apartment building saying, We found this parrot. Has anybody lost a parrot? Nobody in the building had lost Joy. Then somebody else who lives in the building, they're on a walk like two days later in Portland, and they walk by one of the fliers for a missing parrot and they basically, like, come back to their apartment building called the Audubon Society lady, who's now sent Joy out to her mother in law's house out in Beaverton, where there's more room for the parrot to hang out. Anyway, over the course of about 20 different emails, phone calls, right hands talking to left hands in various condominium buildings in Portland, triangulating information. Joy, the parrot was finally returned to her family in the lobby of the condo building with like 20 people there. All the different people who were involved in this weird relay of information.
Elena Passarello: Aww..
Luke Burbank: Involving Joy were all. And what's really cute is this bird is so affectionate. There are multiple photos in the Oregonian of this bird kissing people sitting on people's heads. I did not realize how affectionate these birds could be. It was really adorable.
Elena Passarello: They're very social, especially when they want a cracker. [Laughs] Sorry.
Luke Burbank: When reached for quote Joy said "Joy want a cracker". So anyway, that's the best news that I saw this week.
Advertisment This episode of Livewire is supported by aspiration, helping offset. Climate change by planting a tree with every swipe of the aspiration debit card. To date, aspiration has funded the planting of 75 million trees. Aspiration Bcom. Aspiration Financial LLC.
Luke Burbank: All right. Let's get our first guest on over to the show. Daisy Hernandez is the author of the award winning memoir, A Cup of Water Under My Bed. Her latest book is The Kissing Bug a true story of a family and insect and a nation's neglect of a deadly disease. And it explains in really meticulous detail something called Chagas disease, which largely affects Latin people around the world, including Daisy's own aunt. Let's take a listen to this. It's our conversation we recorded with Daisy last August. Daisy Hernandez, welcome to Live Wire.
Daisy Hernández: Thank you for having me.
Luke Burbank: Can we just sort of start at the beginning here of this story, I guess you could call it? What is the so-called kissing bug disease?
Daisy Hernández: The kissing bug disease or Chagas disease is a parasitic illness that's transmitted by these insects, colloquially named kissing bugs in English. And it's a neglected disease that can be pretty deadly. One in three people who are infected can go on to develop pretty severe cardiac complications because of this parasite. About 6 million people have it in the Americas. Mostly that's South America, Central America and Mexico. And in the U.S., we have about 300,000 people who have this disease. And it's zoonotic disease, of course, that jumps from wildlife to us and disproportionately in the United States and affects LatinX immigrants like my auntie, who I write about in the book.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, this story is very personal to you because this is something that your your aunt had to live with, the kind of long term effects of having Chagas disease. What did that look like in her life and what did it look like for you in terms of how your family talked about it? Like, did you know as a kid that this is what was afflicting your tiá?
Daisy Hernández: Yeah, I did know that. I knew the word. I knew that there was a certain level of discomfort in our family, a sort of fear of stigma, because it was seen as being rare. And, you know, we didn't know anyone else who had Chagas disease. And this was back in the 1980s. So it was also unfortunately happening in the context of the AIDS crisis at that time. And I think my auntie, as an immigrant to the U.S. was also very sensitive to being an outsider. She was she was also very much a kind of striver immigrant who she wanted to establish herself in the U.S. She wanted to become a teacher and pursue that kind of dream. So she was really sensitive. She basically spent her whole life never speaking about her illness to any of her coworkers or people outside of our family. So there was a lot of mystery around it. Part of the reason I wanted to work on the book was because I realized how little I knew. Even though she was in and out of hospitals over the years. In her case, the parasite did not attack the heart. It attacked the gastrointestinal system, which is what happens for some people. And she finally lost her life to this disease. It doesn't have a cure. Once you're in that chronic stage, which unfortunately most people are, don't get a diagnosis in those first two months where medication could be helpful. It's a disease that disproportionately affects poor people from Latin America.
Luke Burbank: You write in this book about how complicated your relationship was with your aunt. How much of that do you think, if any of it is attributable to her illness?
Daisy Hernández: That's an interesting question. So I write in the book that we were always in conflict over something, and when I was young, it was her, her wanting me to be a good girl. And I guess I was a little feminist at the age of five and had opinions and was happy to tell her my opinions. And then later in my life, when I came out as queer, as bisexual, she really struggled with that and could not accept that. Where it connects with this disease is that she very deeply cared what other people thought of her and how other people saw her. And as she was very determined, as I said, to have the kind of middle class lifestyle that she did not have growing up. And she comes from she came from a family of very modest means in Colombia. So she was very much despite her disease. And in some ways, I think sometimes because of her disease, like intent on overcoming and having this good life. Also writing about it helped me to appreciate that she may not have been as interested in me being an obedient child as much as she wanted me to be a Colombian child, like she wanted me to have like certain aspects of her culture where girls are raised to be much more submissive and polite. And that did not include room for an outspoken, slightly obnoxious niece, queer niece. [Laughs]
Luke Burbank: It didn't help that your sister was like the sort of picture of.
Elena Passarello: Golden child.
Luke Burbank: Perfection in your aunt's eyes, right?
Daisy Hernández: Yes. In my perspective, my sister was the golden child. Absolutely. And I think that's also a common dynamic in families, right, where one sibling becomes a bit of the black sheep and the other one becomes the golden sheep.
Luke Burbank: Right.
Daisy Hernández: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: This is live wire from PRX. We are listening back to a conversation we had with the writer and journalist Daisy Hernandez. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we will be back with much more.
Luke Burbank: Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are listening to a conversation we had with writer Daisy Hernandez about her book The Kissing Bug, recorded last August. Let's pick back up with that conversation. Let's talk about this actual bug. I mean, kissing bug is a deeply misleading way to describe this thing that can pass on the parasite. Where are these bugs found? What are what are they actually doing when they're sort of infecting people?
Daisy Hernández: Yes. And I'm glad you mentioned the name as being much sweeter than the insect deserves. And to be fair, these insects have been in the United States for quite a long time. And in the Southwest and in Texas, people actually have nicknamed them bloodsuckers, which is probably more accurate as a nickname for these insects. You know, they target mammals. So it's not just us humans. It's also dogs. Dogs throughout Texas have been found to carry Chagas disease. It's also possums, you know, all sorts of small mammals that these insects can get a hold of. And they are vampiric or vampire like in the sense that they don't like the daylight, they don't like the sun. So they are spending the daytime hiding out. And in the U.S., that often times looks like hiding out in a nest for rodents or for anything like that. And they're definitely found in South America, Central America and Mexico and more rural areas. And so they will hide in the crevices of people's homes and come out at night. They will also hide under the bed as well. I mean, they're very resilient insects.
Luke Burbank: Yeah.
Daisy Hernández: And unlike other insects that we think about in terms of transmitting disease, these insects are not doing it with the bite. They are biting you, but the parasites actually being deposited in their fecal material.
Luke Burbank: As if this needed to be a more upsetting transmission. That was a very vivid part of the book for me, was describing essentially how this is transmitted. I mean, it's about as gross as you can imagine.
Daisy Hernández: It's not pleasant. Absolutely. It's not pleasant. Yeah. And a lot of people what happens is people, you know, when they're asleep, they don't necessarily know that the bites are happening. So they might rub their arm. Then introducing that fecal material with the parasite right into the wound or into the eye area or the mouth, it's a little bit different than what we usually think of when we think about bug bites, the bite itself being the transmission point.
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Daisy Hernandez. Her new book is The Kissing Bug. You, you grew up, I think you write with being sort of squeamish about these bugs because they were seen as dangerous and frankly, are just sort of gross. And then you end up in the book in a lab with a whole lot of these kissing bugs. How was that for you?
Daisy Hernández: That was terrifying. When I started working on this, I would actually, you know, I needed to read a quite a number of science articles, and I didn't realize that these scientists are not squeamish.
Elena Passarello: Mm hmm.
Daisy Hernández: And so they included photographs, sometimes very detailed photos of these insects. And there's many species of them, I should say so. So I would open up these PDFs and then try to manipulate the documents so that I could read the text but not look at the photos. So I would kind of like pull the PDF off screen.
Elena Passarello: Your self-censorship.
Luke Burbank: You weren't just sort of trying to dramatize that for the book. I mean, you really were very uncomfortable with this stuff initially.
Daisy Hernández: Very, very uncomfortable. Yet there's no dramatizing in the book. It really was terrible. And then I ended up in this lab, you know, and I tell my students, it's you really never know where nonfiction is going to take you, because, yes, I end up in this lab with these shelves full of jars of kissing bugs or bloodsuckers. And, you know, the the research assistant who's showing me these insects just pulls a jar off the shelf and it's like, oh, look, you know, puts it up in my face. And that was one of those moments where I took a step back, and I was really glad that I had my notebook with me in my pen because I held on very tightly for dear life. And so, yeah, it was really it was quite a shift.
Luke Burbank: What would you like to see changed in terms of of U.S. health policy? Like you said, most of the people dealing with this are often from Latin countries. How can we do a better job of helping to take care of these folks?
Daisy Hernández: I have big ambitions and then more practical little ambition. So my big ambition is I would love to see our entire health care system turned around so that it's not profit driven. And that was an important chapter for me to include in the book, you know, just the challenges that there are in terms of getting the pharmaceutical industry interested in creating treatments and pursuing treatments for diseases that affect poor people, or there's not going to be a profit for them. But then, you know, on the other hand, you know, before we revolution. Nationalize the entire health care industry. You know, more practical ambitions are like getting prenatal screening for Latina moms in the U.S.. California also, California has the highest number of people with this disease. And there's there is essentially very little public outreach and public education. Some of that is beginning to happen for medical schools. The CDC has awarded certain grants, and so there's more awareness now than there was seven years ago when I started this book. But it is still so little, you know. So I want a doctor and nurses in the emergency room who might see a Latina patient coming in with heart failure, who otherwise is very healthy and is in their forties, that they will think about Chagas disease and consider, Wait, should we be testing this person rather than classifying them as as just sort of of unknown cause?
Luke Burbank: We've been talking a little bit about the two parts of this book. There's the science journalism part of it, and then there's the memoir piece. And I'm just curious, in writing the memoir piece about your aunt who you had a complicated relationship with. What do you think she would have made of this book? I mean, she was sort of private about her battles with Chagas disease. But also, I would have to imagine she would be proud of the work you put into this. A very, very well-researched and well-written book.
Daisy Hernández: Yeah, I thought about that, and I think she would have mixed feelings. I think that exactly what you said, I think she would have been very proud of the work because she was always she did go on to become a teacher in the United States and she taught Spanish at the elementary school level and she got her master's degree in Spanish literature. So I think she would have been very proud of me doing this work. I think she would have been amazed at how much I learned about the disease. I think so much of it would have been new for her as well. But I don't know if she would have been happy about me being out as a queer person and probably about sharing about her own life. But it's so hard to know. I still kind of hold on to the idea that people change with time, and she may have begun to be more open, especially if I would have been able to have introduced her to other families that had this disease. So because she lived and died like, you know, in isolation, essentially with this disease.
Luke Burbank: Well, she comes off as a fascinating person and just an absolute survivor in this book. Daisy Hernandez, thank you so much for coming on, Live Wire.
Daisy Hernández: Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank: That was Daisy Hernandez right here on Live Wire. Her book, The Kissing Bug A True Story of a Family, An Insect and a Nation's Neglect of a deadly disease is available now. Do you ever wish that you were more in the know about upcoming live wire guests or advance ticket sales for our live shows? Well, you can be if you sign up for our weekly newsletter and get all of the inside live wire scoop delivered directly and conveniently to your inbox. Just click Keep in touch over at Live Wire Radio dot org and we will be sure to make sure you hear it all first. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstop from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Palm Springs and San Francisco. And as a member of the OneWorld Alliance, Alaska Airlines can connect you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at Alaska AirCon. This is Live Wire first. Each week we like to ask our listeners a question because we are talking to the great Wayne Coyne on the program this week and the Flaming Lips, his band, they put on some of the most incredible shows of all time. We asked our listeners, what's the most memorable live performance you've ever seen? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What do you see.
Elena Passarello: A lot of these are giving me major FOMO, but not this one. [Laughs]
Luke Burbank: Okay.
Elena Passarello: Phil says, I would say Tom Petty was the best live performance I've ever seen, but someone accidentally hit me in the head during the show. I suffered a concussion. And now my only memory of that night is him playing American Girl.
Luke Burbank: Wow. So this person lost their memory of every song during the concert, with the exception of I mean, American Girl is a good song, though. Yeah.
Elena Passarello: I mean, I'm trying to think of a Tom Petty song like a bad Tom Petty song. I can't honestly think of one right now, but if you're going to remember one, that's a good one to remember. Yeah. But let's get to the point. Let's roll another audience card.
Luke Burbank: Oh, my goodness. Okay. What's another memorable live performance one of our audience members saw?
Elena Passarello: I love this one from Ruby. Ruby says, Red Rocks Amphitheater, 1974, John Denver. She says, I was 14. It was backward. Parents just drop kids off at concerts and pick them up when there were no restrictions on bringing stuff to a concert. So we children were surrounded by adults drinking alcohol and smoking weed. Those were the days.
Luke Burbank: That 100% describes my childhood just going places with and there were no cell phones, so there was just absolutely no keeping tabs on anyone, which I quite enjoyed as a young person.
Elena Passarello: Mm-hmm
Luke Burbank: Who was kind of a little bit of a, you know, juvenile delinquent. But that would have been a cool show to be at. John Denver at Red Rocks. Like that's the most Colorado thing that could ever happen. Okay, one more memorable live performance. One of our listeners saw.
Elena Passarello: This one sounds pretty good from E.J., Bob Marley and the Wailers in July 1975 at the boarding house in San Francisco. They did two shows per night for a week, and I saw them all because I worked there.
Luke Burbank: Wow..
Elena Passarello: Pretty good.
Luke Burbank: I mean, that's. Listen. Obviously, Bob Marley and the Wailers. Amazing, amazing, you know, iconic musical group and Bob Marley in particular. But is that like how many shows would that be? What's the math on that?
Elena Passarello: At least ten.
Luke Burbank: In a row that I could probably do. Eight. Ten seem high.
Elena Passarello: Yeah. I mean, that would be a really interesting situation to actually get sick of like this once in a lifetime opportunity because it happened ten times in a lifetime of a week.
Luke Burbank: Right. Well, it sounds like it did not happen. This person did not get bored of Bob Marley and the Wailers. So a lot of cool experience. All right. So thank you to everyone who wrote in their responses to the greatest live show they ever saw. We have an audience question for next week's show, which we're going to reveal at the end of the program. So stick around for that. This is Wire. Our next guest is the lead singer and founder of one of my very favorite bands of all time, The Flaming Lips. Over their 30 plus years together, they've released 17 albums, won multiple Grammys, and put on live shows that are just there weird in the absolute best possible way, including one that I went to last year in Oklahoma City during really the height of the pandemic. They had the entire audience and also the band sealed inside inflatable vinyl bubbles to keep people safe from COVID. We're going to be talking about that show a lot coming up in a moment here. Anyway, I have been a fan for decades and I was so excited that we had the chance to talk to Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips last August. So take a listen to this. It's our conversation with Wayne. Wayne Coyne, welcome to Live Wire.
Elena Passarello: Yayyyyy, Woohoo!!
Wayne Coyne: All right.
Wayne Coyne: Oh, some applause. I love that.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Wayne Coyne: Applause always has an effect on you, doesn't it?
Elena Passarello: Yes.
Wayne Coyne: Well, thank you.
Luke Burbank: Even after a year and a half in quarantine and pandemic and all that, you're still like the applause of a live crowd. Still kind of energizes you.
Wayne Coyne: Well, I have to say, you know, even previous to the pandemic and the lockdown and the lack of audiences and all that, I, I was always reminded how appreciative it is to get someone's energy and yay and all that. And, you know, our little boy, Bloom, he had his his second birthday party. And I see that he's so used to applause and people saying, yay, that whenever he hears it, he's just in a great mood. And I don't know if he thinks it's for him or if he just thinks this is just a good moment. So I'm taking my cue from him that every time I hear it, I feel like, Oh, good, something that's something positive and good and energetic is happening. Yeah.
Wayne Coyne: I've noticed that on stage you have a move that you've been doing for years where you kind of like put both of your palms up and you kind of like you're sort of like energizing the crowd. It seems like you're always trying to get the audience as into this moment as you can get them.
Wayne Coyne: Well, you know, it's a it's a funny thing. This this, you know, as in I don't always think of it like I'm an entertainer, you know, but sometimes the audience, they want to be left off the hook that you can scream and go crazy. This isn't about being quiet and giving respect, you know, to the to the artist up there. That's wonderful, too. But I like I like them to know, like, hey, you can be as energetic and as loud and as crazy as you want, and it's not going to mess up the show, you know? So I'm always, you know, I want people to be as free and as crazy as they want. You know, we we put balloons into the audience and the balloons, you know, obviously come back and hit us in the face and all that. We don't care. And the and the confetti is flying everywhere. You know, I like the idea that it's it's a chaotic, joyful, out of control moment. And that could be the whole Flaming Lips show, if that's the way you want it.
Wayne Coyne: Right. We're talking to Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips here on Live Wire. Speaking of live shows and getting chaotic, you are due to go out on tour this summer and this fall. How are you planning that when there's a lot of question marks around that kind of stuff?
Wayne Coyne: Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's the same quagmires that we have been in. You know, you always are tipped a little bit into being optimistic like this thing may be over another month. So we're planning on what's going to happen six months from now. And then the minute you do that, you're kind of like, Oh my God, what have we done? You know, are we making this thing worse? So I'm going to do my best. I'm still at the moment, I still feel like I'm going to perform as much as I can in the space bubble.
Wayne Coyne: Oh, okay.
Wayne Coyne: Now I think that the guys at the front of the stage are going to have these sort of plexiglass protectors and just still go about it. Like we can still be carrying this around and we can still be giving it to young people. And yeah, it's, it's still it's I think it's still scary.
Elena Passarello: I think I saw you in the bubble like 19 years ago and yeah. Iceberg. So it must be so funny that it's now this kind of functional public health, the fact that it was just this whimsical, you know, thing.
Wayne Coyne: Well, right. But I mean, part of it is still I don't know how functional is to everybody else. So it's very functional for The Flaming Lips. But I don't know if it's functional, you know, in general use but.
Luke Burbank: and can I, Wayne, can I just jump in for folks that aren't familiar I'll just try to describe this.
Elena Passarello: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Efficiently. So for a number of years you've had this big vinyl bubble that's inflatable that you've gotten inside of during shows is all pre-pandemic.
Wayne Coyne: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: And sometimes you walk around on the crowd, you do fun stuff.
Wayne Coyne: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: And then you did this concert series in Oklahoma City during the pandemic where the crowd, the people who came to the show, they were in bubbles as well.
Wayne Coyne: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: So that they were safe in this group environment. And so this is a thing that you've been doing for years and you sound like you're going to keep doing it until we know that the pandemic is really over.
Wayne Coyne: Well, right. I mean, I think in the same way that we talk about the mask, you know, it's just our way of sort of of of putting out there in the world that we're still protecting you from us. You know, I guess where the where the variant that we sort of feel like because we're traveling to your city, you know, I feel like if you're in a city with your friends and your family and stuff, you know, that's you're a little bit protected in a sense. But, you know, the Flaming Lips we're getting in airplanes where we're going to be in, you know, six different cities in a week. And it's, you know, if something bad is happening in Arizona and we're going to bring it to Los Angeles, you know, I mean, so there's a bigger responsibility, I feel like, you know, and just. Our way of saying we are able to do this and we we can do this and we're don't we're not saying that everybody should do this. And part of it is that we're slightly scared, too. You know, I've a young boy, he's just over two years old. And Steven has young kids and Nick has young kids and Derek has three young kids. And, you know, when we come home from this stuff, you know, are we bringing something back, you know, and could potentially harm them? You know, it just it just all of it's very scary.
Elena Passarello: One of the things that I love about it is that it's it's protective, but it's also theatrical. It's also a spectacle. It's also an event.
Wayne Coyne: Well, I yeah, I mean, I agree. I try to overlook that and think this isn't just it's not just a gimmick, you know? But I think it is. It's absolutely both. I mean, it looks like it would be fun. I think it looks funnier than it actually is. But. [Laughs]
Wayne Coyne: Well, I actually Wayne, I wanted to ask you about that, because we're going to hear a song from one of these space bubble concerts that you did in the spring. And and I'm going to I'm giving the listeners a heads up. What we're about to hear was actually recorded with you inside one of these bubbles, which I was in Oklahoma City. I was kind of hanging out with you. And I was really struck by actually the all of the kind of logistical implications of it, like, yeah, for you and the band and trying to hear each other and get it all kind of dialed in. There were times when there was so much condensation in your bubble that you were like wiping it down with your hand so you could see the crowd.
Wayne Coyne: Yeah, yeah yah.
Luke Burbank: Like it was work.
Wayne Coyne: Ahh no, not. Not work in that sense. I mean, you could be up there, you know, in sing in front of people. I think in those moments it was it was so much fun and so, so ecstatic. You know, I think of all the people in the world who would be slightly used to singing songs in a space bubble, I would be the only one. So, you know, it's even though like you're talking about the logistics of how how can you make it all work, you know, fixing all the mechanical things and all the the ways that you can hear and all that sort of stuff. By the time we got in front of an audience, I would have probably forgot that I'm in a space bubble and the way that it sounds and all that sort of stuff. I mean, you know, most concerts are kind of a mess, you know, when you're the performer anyway. And I have to say, you know, in a sense, even though we were in the space bubbles, none of that is all that much different. You know, you're always, you know, in your own little world, hoping that it connects to this bigger audience. For me, I don't know. You know, there is an element of sort of, you know, joyous chaos that every show that you ever do is is kind of like that.
Wayne Coyne: Yeah. Well, let's take a listen to this. It's The Flaming Lips here on Live Wire.
Flaming Lips:One, two, three, four. [Music Plays] Here we go.
Do you realize / That you have the most beautiful face?/ Do you realize / We're floating in space / Do you realize / That happiness makes you cry / Do you realize / That everyone you know someday will die? /
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes / Let them know you realize that life goes fast / It's hard to make the good things last / You realize the sun doesn't go down / It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round /
Do you realize? / Ah-ah-ah / Do you realize / That everyone you know someday will die /
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes / Let them know you realize that life goes fast / It's hard to make the good things last / You realize the sun doesn't go down / It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round /
Do you realize / That you have the most beautiful face? / Do you realize?
Luke Burbank: The Flaming Lips right here at Live Wire. "Do You Realize" recorded inside inflatable vinyl space bubbles so as to keep them and the audience safe? I'm wondering, we're talking to Wayne Coyne. Did the lyrics of that song you've been performing that song for many years now, but considering the moment in time that we're in. You know, there's a line in that song. Do you realize everyone you know, someday will die? Like, is there a different feeling for you when you perform it in the midst of a pandemic?
Wayne Coyne: You know, for me, I would say by time we would get to that song in a space bubble concert, it really would be a lot more of a triumphant realization. You know, I think sometimes that song, do you realize is just a little bit of like, oh, yeah, you're right. We are. We are on a planet floating in an endless sea of space out here. And oh, yeah, and the sun does go around us and, you know, all these, all these things. I think for the space bubble shows, it was almost the opposite. By the time we sang, do you realize it was like, oh, my gosh, I forgot what horrible chaos and pain the world is in and I'm here escaping. And this this positive experience.
Elena Passarello: Isn't "Do you realize" the state rock song of Oklahoma, right?
Wayne Coyne: Well, it it was I mean, I. Think there's a bit of a complication there. Right.
Elena Passarello: What happened?
Wayne Coyne: Well, it's only because I'm so involved in the local politics. You know, there was a competition, I think it was in 2006 or 27, so a long time ago now where, you know, you could vote on these songs like there was a rock song, a folk song. And for Oklahoma, there's even a country song, you know. And we won the state rock song and we knew the legislature guy who put the bill up. He was a big Flaming Lips fan. He was the one that sort of introduced the bill to the to the Senate. We knew a lot of the senators, we knew a lot of the people involved. And we even knew the governor at the time. He was a big music fan. Wow. So, you know, I don't want to say that it was rigged in our favor, but I knew we had we had a lot of a lot of Flaming Lips fans, but we always knew that it was like a lot of things with politics. You know, it's temporarily here, but another administration may come in and say, we're not going to renew this or whatever. And we kind of knew that that that would happen when the next governor came in, which is fine by us.
Luke Burbank: Basically, the Flaming Lips are like the climate change of bands, and depending on who's in power, they may. Be taken seriously or may not win in our winner takes all system.
Elena Passarello: I am the governor of my own heart and it is still the state rock song Oklahoma in my heart. [Laughs]
Wayne Coyne: You guys, you guys combined all those things that I said into something that was that was really great.
Luke Burbank: You are listening to a conversation that we recorded with Wayne Coyne here on Live Wire. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we'll be back with more from Wayne in a moment.
Luke Burbank: Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are listening back to a conversation that we had with Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips. Let's get back to that. I was spending some time with you in Oklahoma City recently, Wayne, and I was struck by the like pace that you sort of keep up on a daily basis and just the amount of different creative endeavors that you're involved with. What is an average 24 hours like for you, and do you ever just like sit and relax? Or are you constantly writing notes to yourself and just sort of like creating?
Wayne Coyne: Yeah, I don't know. You know, I mean, I really do love what I get to do. But, you know, I would say, you know, we've been The Flaming Lips have been a group since 1983. So I was 22 years old. I've been in the Flaming Lips my entire life. I'm 60 years old now. So that's a long, long time to have absolute freedom. You know, the job that I have really is one of the weirdest jobs in the world where it kind of is based on you doing what you like. You know, you're choosing the music that you do. You're choosing the way you look. You're choosing where you're going to go. You're choosing who you collaborate with. So, you know, I'd take all that and run with it. I just think I'm just very lucky that the thing that I love to do is the situation that I'm in. I mean, even when I was growing up, it's, you know, our our house wasn't about music per se. You know, it was it was creative and it was crazy. And I had older brothers and they had a bunch of crazy friends and motorcycles and drugs, and we would box in the front yard and just beat. And so I think the part of, you know, being in a band and even if you want to call it rock and roll or all that, that part of it, I'm very at home with a lot of chaos and being creative within the midst of that.
Luke Burbank: I want to talk about your family a little bit, because the latest Flaming Lips album, American Head, I read somewhere that it's sort of based on this kind of imagined intersection of like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and one of your brothers had you kind of like explained what you were thinking with that.
Wayne Coyne: Right now, you know, you have to go back. It's a few years before Tom Petty died. You know, Tom Petty, now he's you know, he's part of the mythology of all music or whatever. It is more revered than ever. But previous to his death, you know, this documentary that that he made, it's probably been out for ten years or so now. But he did talk about when Tom Petty before they were Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, you know, they lived in I forget it, in Gainesville, in Florida.
Luke Burbank: And they were like mud crushers.
Wayne Coyne: And they made this drive. They were getting ready to to make the drive to Los Angeles, where their producer was going to, you know, start to work on their their first record, I suppose. And the producer, I forget his name, but he he had this idea that he would sort of cut them off at the pass, as they say, and meet them in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which I live in Oklahoma City. And Tulsa is about 120 miles to the northeast from here. We really go up there all the time, all the time, all the time. And at the time when Tom Petty would have been recording up in Tulsa, I know that my older brothers and their drug dealer motorcycle friends would have been back and forth from Tulsa doing crazy stuff really almost every day. And it wouldn't have surprised me at all if my older brother had run into Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. But my older brother, here's the dilemma. If I asked him if he thought he met Tom Petty, he would say yes, he he even if he didn't.
Luke Burbank: Right.
Wayne Coyne: Because you can't resist being part of this great American story. So Steven and I started to think about there are sometimes these lost recording sessions, you know, where something happened to the band and they never no one ever knew about them and they never got famous and never got discovered. But Steve and I kept imagining this other world where my older brothers and their friends met up with Tom and the band, and they all got horribly addicted to drugs, and they made this very sad, lo fi homesick record in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the more Steven and I would talk about this, the more we we started thinking we should make music like that, you know, not to pretend that we're Tom Petty and not to pretend that we're on drugs, but this type of music that's homesick and you're singing about your mother and your dogs or whatever it is that's just irresistible, you know, to think, oh, let's make that atmosphere and let's make that be part of the vibe of our songs.
Luke Burbank: I mean, this album, American Head and certainly a lot of your other stuff, it is this really interesting intersection of topics that are, in a way a bit mournful, but presented in a way that doesn't leave you feeling sad as the listener, which is a really interesting balance that you're able to strike.
Wayne Coyne: Well, I think we got very lucky in that the way that we were. Presenting the music. You know, we do lots of lots of ways that The Flaming Lips present themselves or whatever. But in this sense, we we wanted it to be sort of like storytelling. You know, and then and then the stories would be really about our life. But like always, you kind of mythologize it and you kind of make it a comic book or the Bible or whatever it is you want to you want to put it into a story, you know. And I think that started to really suit us, you know? I mean, for Stephen and I, we oftentimes do blend our life together, you know, things that happened to him and things that happen to to myself. We'll blend them in a song. So, you know, the first two lines are about Stephen, the second two lines are about me. And it's just a great blend of expressionistic stuff. And in that sense, you know, it's the more you are able to sing about your deepest, most personal things in music, it's almost like the more universal that becomes. It's like, you know, when you try to say something that everybody's going to understand, it's almost so vague. Nobody gets it. And when you try to say something that you know, nobody else will understand, only I feel this. It really is the thing in music that everybody feels.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, I have to say that I definitely feel that when I'm when I'm listening to the Flaming Lips stuff. Wayne Coyne, thank you so much for stopping by, Livewire.
Wayne Coyne: Yeah, well, thank you. It went great. Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank: That was Wayne Coyne right here on Livewire. The Flaming Lips latest album, American Head, is available now and they are going back out on tour in the U.S. beginning in September. So look for them coming to a city near you. It is truly a very unforgettable experience to see them live. All right. Before we get out of here, a little preview of next week's episode. We are going to be chatting with our friend, the great writer John Moualem. He writes for The New York Times magazine. He's got this book of essays out called Serious Face, which has been getting all kinds of praise, including randomly. Jamie Lee Curtis loves the book and loves to tweet about it. We're also going to be talking to a chef and owner of a new bar in Portland. Her name is Jenny. When she is opened, what we think is probably the first sports bar in America that exclusively plays women's sports on the television, it also has the greatest sports bar name of all time. It's called the Sports Bra or Catchphrases. We support women. It's right here in Portland, Oregon. And we're going to talk to Jenny. We're also going to hear some music from Laura Veres and we'll be looking to get your answer to our listener question. Elena, what are we asking the Live Wire listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello: We want you to describe your dream business.
Luke Burbank: Okay. I think that's in honor of Jenny Wynn going out and creating just this dream she'd have of a sports bar that was more inclusive and supportive of women's sports. She did it. So we want to hear what your dream businesses, you can submit your answers on Twitter or Facebook. We are at Live Wire Radio out there on the social media. All right. That's going to do it for this episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests, Daisy Hernández and Wayne Coyne. Live Wire is brought to in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michelle is our executive director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester and our marketing manager is Paige Thomas. A. Walker Spring composes our music and Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the James F and Mary Al Miller Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week we'd like to thank members Aparna Bala Subramanian of Beaverton, Oregon, and Stacey Owen of Portland, Oregon. For more information about the show or how you can listen to our podcast head on over the Live Wire Radio Dawg. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week. 38.
PRX.
