Keith May
"Here Come the Lips"
Release Date: Summer 2000
1-Stars
2-Here Come the Lips
3-The Shutdown
4-All the Paper Money
5-Drift Around
6-Snakes
7-Clean as Me
8-Mrs. Spider
9-Crate
10-Walk Like a Soldier
11-I Spy
12-Rusty's (outro)
13-Stars (FMF Remix)
14-Underground (acoustic)
Wow. If you actually own this you are: (A) probably related to me, or (B) a friend. Only 50 of these babies were printed. I wanted to make a CD of the music I was coming up with, but really couldn't even comprehend the $$ it would take to have them manufactured. The CD covers and labels were all printed one-by-one on photo paper on a computer printer that seemed to have an unquenchable thirst for ink. The disks were all burned from my digital recorder song-by-song (at 2x speed). Making 50 of these was an exercise in frustration, but they did look sharp. The title comes from a co-worker when I told him I was going to play the new Flaming Lips CD again. When he said, "Here come the Lips", I loved it and wrote it down. I went home and wrote the title track about the electricity of that first kiss. Song-wise there are some great tunes on here. "Stars" is my first love song and I've begun to play it out again. "The Shutdown" was actually recorded in my wife's grandmother's kitchen when I was out on transfer (Thanks Mary!). "I Spy" is a song I still enjoy (great chorus). If you enjoy my slightly freaky side, "Mrs. Spider" and "Snakes", are fun. "Rusty's" is my bold attempt at jazz. In retrospect, I'm surprised that there are so many piano tunes on this CD. As this was my first CD, there were some lessons to be learned. Namely: appropriate song length. As a big Yes and Genesis fan growing up, I was not phased by long songs. So owners were probably surprised to find many tracks over five minutes in length ("Stars" clocks in at 6:35!). Would I change anything? As I sit here typing and listen to the disk, I have to say, "no". Nothing sounds too excessive to me, some songs have extended intros and passages, but there are no songs with five verses rambling about dragons and virgins. It sounds good and that is something I tend to forget about this disk.