Two things stick out in my mind when it comes to the Flaming Lips: The band playing a transvestite bar, and playing on "Beverly Hills 90210." I can't think of anyone crazy enough or ballsy enough to do those gigs besides maybe the Butthole Surfers, Ween or Tom Jones.

Rarely does a band go from being associated with acid-popping, glue-sniffing urchins to being hailed as one of the most important acts of the past 10 years. I mean, who in the hell would have even thought that this band would have one of their albums - The Soft Bulletin - mentioned as one of the best of the past year? A band that have written songs entitled "Talkin' 'Bout The Smiling Deathporn Immortatlity Blues (Everyone Wants To Live Forever)" and "March of the Rotten Vegetables" are considered a critical success? I just thought they were my own private indulgence, like a secret affinity for inhaling nitrous-oxide from whipped-cream cannisters. If 10 years ago, you would have told me that the Flaming Lips would be incorporating classical music into their repertoire, I would have called you a crack-addicted bonehead with a subdural-hematoma.

But lo-and-behold, I am professing my love for the Lips, based not only on my own predilection for the bizarre and outrageously creative, but because these guys have broken down their own barrier between improvisation and crack-addled musical arrangement.

The Lips formed in Oklahoma City in 1983. Rumor has it that Wayne Coyne stole a cache of instruments from a church hall and got his brother Mark and Michael Ivins to play with him. Another legend is that Ivins and Mark Coyne met when Coyne showed up at a party Ivins was throwing at his parents' house. Either way, the bunch made a four-song demo tape and started sending it out. Their legendary first gig did in fact take place in an Oklahoma City transvestite bar called the Blue Note, and by 1985, after numerous drummers floated in and out of the band, they settled on Richard English to pound the skins while Mark Coyne departed to get married.

In 1986, the Lips were signed to Restless Records and released Hear It Is, which was followed by 1987's Oh My Gawd!! They met the like-minded Butthole Surfers and were invited to be the openers for a tour. On that trip they met Jonathan Donahue of Mercury Rev, and he became the band's sound technician for 1988's Telepathic Surgery. After afew extrememly weird and improvisational efforts, English gave way to Nathan Roberts. Donahue took on the name "Dingus" and became a full-fleged member of the group while he worked on Mercury Rev's debut album Yerself Is Steam. In 1990, the Lips released In A Priest Driven Ambulance, a record filled with references to the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, and various riffs from divergent popular songs of the time. In the minds of many, it's the band's finest recording.

These early records are some of the strangest to leak out of the brains of human beings. The simple fact is that none of the records carry a shred of normalcy. They're excercises in excessive experimentation and distorted reality. Their cross-pollination of pop-music, psychedelia, abstract language, and free-association can make a listener feel as though he's on acid even though he's never touched the stuff. Imagine a tripping George Gershwin in a leisure suit and purple hair playing a viola, a piano, and peddle effects on an out-of-tune piano all at the same time, and you'd be pretty close to what the Lips sound like.

Reckless Records folded in 1990, and the Lips were picked up by Warner Brothers. They went into the studio and began to expand (yes, expand) their sound with Hit To Death In The Future Head. Released in 1992, the record was a mess of musical hedonism, but it also marked a turning point for the band. The Lips began to build musical arrangements with a direction.

Roberts left the band and in mid-1992, Steven Drodz and Ronald Jones joined on to cut Transmissions From The Satellite Heart, and by 1994, something very strange happened: The record produced a huge hit, "She Don't Use Jelly." The cut earned the band a slot on Lollapalooza's second stage, a number-one hit, heavy rotation on MTV, and the infamous spot on "Beverly Hills 90210" in which Ian Ziering's character thought the Lips "rawked."

Every time I think of the Flaming Lips and 1994, I think of the video for "Turn It On." In it, the band play three gorgeous women doing their laundry and dancing on washing machines while psychedelic strobe lights pulsate in the background. A transcendental moment, friends. I never looked at doing laundry the same way again. I also remember Wayne Coyne on MTV, sounding as if he'd been inhaling paint fumes from a sock and drinking turpentine all day, talking to Kurt Loder about how important the bubble machine is for a live show. My favorite lunatics, whom my "Summer of Love" mother thought were demented and bizzare, were getting critical recognition from the likes of Rolling Stone.

After three years of touring, the band went to Chicago and recorded, the straight forward Clouds Taste Metallic. After a year of touring to support the record, Jones was replaced by Steven Drozd and the Lips stopped touring as a conventional band. In a very risky move, Lips shows became excercises in audience participation. The band also began to expand their sound, again.

First, Coyne organized the "Parking Lot Experiment" in which some 40 cars took part. Coyne distributed pre-recorded music tapes to the folks in each car, and with their doors open and on cue, each driver began to play his tape. Brilliant. Next up was the recording of Zaireeka, four-CDs meant to played simultaneously on separate players. The album makes you experience vertigo, dementia, disorientation, and aural hallucination, and feel the strange calm that sets in when good mushrooms get their hooks in your mind. Now, after warping minds - their own and their audience's - they released The Soft Bulletin which is nothing short of a wonderfully orchestrated album. When I heard it, I could hardly believe that this was the same group of morons that sang about "Brainville" and "The Abandoned Hospital Ship." They developed a true integration of progressive rock and classical music and blended it with their own predilection for whacked-out blues and psychedelia. Coyne's lyrics also became more introspective and - gasp - serious! Not only that, the album was hailed as everything from the second coming to album of the year.

It's been almost 16 years since they played in the trani-bar. Now they're staring down the barrel of legitimacy without a sense of self-importance. When they are asked about their own impact on the music scene, Coyne, Ivins and Drozd brush aside any gushing praise. Instead, they just talk about how they decided to stop being cool and just be the geeks they truly are. They've listed progressive rock, the blues and classical music as their influences. They've toured with people more insane than themselves, used toilet bowls as instruments and done the Letterman show. They've gone from being dust-bowl psychedelics to critical sensations. Hell, everyone should be such geeks.

Check out our Flaming Lips finterview!

Read these Flaming Lips reviews: Transmissions From The Satellite Heart, Clouds Taste Metallic, In A Priest Driven Ambulance, Hit To Death In The Future Head, Zaireeka, The Soft Bulletin

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