Since last Friday I’ve been battling a terrible cold, and have not been able to get much sleep. Out of frustration I gave up, and decided to just watch movies on Hulu instead. Last nite I came across The Flaming Lips: The Fearless Freaks, which is obviously a documentary about the band The Flaming Lips.

Although I’ve never collected or listened to a lot of The Flaming Lips music, I’ve always been very interested in and inspired by the band. I remember being turned onto the band by my older sister, who is responsible for turning me onto a lot of the now legendary bands which shaped rock music from the late 80′s through the early 90′s.

I think it was 1994, and my sister was all about this new song hitting the independent radio airwaves-I believe back then there was this really cool station in Nashville called Thunder 94, which played some of the most fantastic underground indie/grunge rock-the song was She Don’t Use Jelly.

She came to me and told me all about it, “You have to hear this song!” She put it on a mix cassette tape, and we would listen to it in the car on the way to school.

Shortly after, I went out and bought the CD, Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. I listened to it, tried to like it, didn’t get it, and ultimately traded it to my sister for The Smashing Pumpkins record Pisces Iscariot. A few years later, when my sister went off to college, I went digging through the CDs she left behind. I was so excited when I found that she had left Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. I listened to the CD from start to finnish, and this time I understood the appeal. I loved the guitar tones, the timbre of the lead vocal, the riffs, and the instrumentation.

Like a lot of bands, though, for some very strange reason I didn’t continue to follow The Flaming Lips, or buy any more of their records. Throughout the years there have been a lot of bands I’ve really enjoyed, but never bought their records. Best I can tell, this all had something to do with my obsession with The Smashing Pumpkins-I was too busy studying their records to pay much attention to anything else.

The Flaming Lips have always held some kind of special inspiration for me, and throughout the years, as the band periodically popped up on my radar-one of the Batman movie soundtracks; when they hit critical mass around 2002 with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots-it’s always stirred an excitement in me that I can’t quite put my finger on.

And watching The Fearless Freaks last nite helped me understand a little bit more about what the excitement and inspiration that comes from The Flaming Lips is. It reminded me of a time in my life when I was first realizing how important music was to me, and it reminded me of specific memories for which the band’s music served as the soundtrack.

The Fearless Freaks served as an intimate window into the lives of The Flaming Lips, and made me realize that through all these years this band has been astonishingly forward-thinking, lead by risk takers who are pure artists, and visionaries-always remaining true to a specific set of ideas.

I’ve always been inspired by The Flaming Lips, but watching The Fearless Freaks I saw that I’m now inspired by the band on another level-an entrepreneurial level-as they more or less have been doing for around 20 years, what I’m attempting to accomplish now. Building something that is remarkable.

www.fearlessfreaks.com