Flaming Lips Release Their Version Of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon

The Flaming Lips have finally released their own, perfectly Flaming Lips-style version of Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side Of The Moon. The album, which features collaborations with Henry Rollins and Peaches, is available now exclusively on iTunes, then gets a full digital release on December 29.

The Flaming Lips will also play the entire 1973, Pink Floyd album at their annual New Year’s Eve ‘Freak Out’ show in their hometown of Oklahoma City. The concert will feature the world’s largest balloon drop, the world’s largest mirror ball and a set by Stardeath and the White Dwarfs. Then once the clock strikes midnight and 2010 officially arrives – the Lips will play their re-invented version of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, start to finish.

The Dark Side of the Moon project follows the band’s earlier 2009 release, Embryonic. And for the record, the official title of the concept album is The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon

Speaking with NPR, lead vocalist Wayne Coyne commented on how the idea came to be for a Flaming Lips-style cover of the Pink Floyd classic. It all started with a conversation with representatives from the iTunes Music Store.

“And I flippantly — not as a joke, but just as a way to push the conversation onward — I said, ‘Maybe we should just do a cover version of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon,’ ” Coyne says. “And thinking they would say, ‘Yea, well, maybe not,’ and we would think of something else. But it didn’t.”

The Flaming Lips / Dark Side Of The Moon

• 01 “Speak To Me / Breathe” (featuring Henry Rollins and Peaches)
• 02 On The Run” (featuring Henry Rollins)
• 03 Time / Breathe Reprise
• 04 The Great Gig In The Sky (featuring Peaches and Henry Rollins)
• 05 Money (featuring Henry Rollins)
• 06 Us And Them (featuring Henry Rollins)
• 07 Any Colour You Like
• 08 Brain Damage (featuring Henry Rollins)
• 09 Eclipse (featuring Henry Rollins)