Like the Sex Pistols’ January ’78 tour of the Deep South, The Black Lips’ recent expedition to India was marked by a series of fairly seismic culture shocks. Bottle-throwing fans at a gig in Pune? Check. Livid show promoters in Chennai? Check. All in response to a bunch of full-frontal punk rock provocateurs from Atlanta. For those that still haven’t heard the story, the band was booked to play on India’s equivalent of American Idol, The “Campus Rock Idol” Tour, a big-ticket televised series with large corporate sponsors. Last Saturday, in Chennai, the band entertained the crowd with what stateside fans would consider a typically raucous Black Lips show, replete with intra-band lip locking, and Cole de-pantsing, mooning the crowd, and attempting to play his six-string with, well, his privates. Barely okay in America, definitely NOT okay in India, the band was subsequently chased out of the country and the sponsors pulled the plug, effectively canceling the rest of the tour and the television season.
Considering the wealth of information – some accurate, some not so much – that washed up on American shores after the event, it’s fortunate that VBS.tv cameras were there to document what transpired. Over the coming weeks, VBS will be running a series entitled “The Black Lips in India,” which faithfully documents the band’s turbulent experience before and after the Chennai gig, their escape to King Khan’s pad in Berlin, and beyond. The (100% NSFW!) trailer for the series – which captures every bit of Cole — is now available on VBS.tv.
In news that doesn’t involve manbits being used to play an instrument, The Lips are currently gearing up for a multi-month North American tour in support of their forthcoming third Vice release, 200 Million Thousand — available for pre-order via Amazon now , due February 24th. Full list of dates below the fold.
If you didn’t know they were wild, you weren’t paying attention. But wild enough to have their remaining gigs in India canceled? Wild enough to, essentially, be run out of the country by police? Now that’s impressive — even for The Black Lips. From NME :
The trouble stemmed from an incident during the band’s gig at Chennai ‘s Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao Concert Hall on Friday (January 23), when guitarist Cole Alexander reportedly stripped and jumped into the crowd.
According the Indian music blog Indiecision.com , Alexander then “proceeded to get back on stage and make out with the other band members”.
The band’s behaviour is said to have infuriated the tour promoters so much that they notified the Tamil Nadu Police , informing the band that the rest of the gigs had been pulled and that they would soon be arrested.
Wow, right? The band has an official letter to fans about the incident over at Vice . Um, this is awesome…
The Black Lips are back. After turning the music world on its ear with last year’s triumphantly bratty breakthrough, Good Bad Not Evil, the quartet is set to return on February 24th with its third Vice release, 200 Million Thousand. Prepare for vintage Lips: a snotty 14-track celebration of unadorned rock n roll and no-bullshit songwriting. First up? The startlingly jangley (for the Lips, at least) “Starting Over.”
MP3: Black Lips – Starting Over
In an e-card released to fans over the Holidays, the Lips announced a video contest for “Starting Over.” The ambitious hope was to have 200 Million Thousand(!) videos made for the song, and to name one supreme creation victorious. Now, the wait is over. Partnering with Vimeo.com, the contest officially launched yesterday and runs until February 15th. The winning director will receive – other than bragging rights, of course – a feature on the homepage of Vimeo.com, an extra special 7” of LP-standout “Short Fuse,” and a signed copy of 200 Million Thousand.
CONTEST: Vimeo.com Video Contest
In other news, the Lips have added another run of dates to their already-announced, March-long Myspace Music tour. Kicking off on April 15th in Costa Mesa, CA, the tour winds its way around the desert and up and down the West Coast into early May. 200 Million Thousand tour dates after the jump.
