Flaming Lips Set Up Pop-Up Shop in L.A.

At around 2PM on Thursday, there was already a line waiting to get seats at Hollywood's Montalbán Vine St. Theater for the Flaming Lips' not-so-secret, secret MySpace show later that evening. This week marked the release of the Oklahoma psych-rockers 12th studio album, 'Embryonic,' which features appearances by MGMT and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. On the second floor, already open to the public, was the band's first ever pop-up store, which was nothing spectacular in terms of design and make shift by all means, except the fact that Lips frontman Wayne Coyne was running around the place getting ready for the autograph session that would follow the concert.

"Those are always great," he told Spinner.com pointing to the numbered limited edition picture LPs, with gorgeous artwork on them. "Plastic things don't really work as well online."

Other things filling up the place included every CD the Lips ever released, vinyls, grocery-friendly totes, reprinted T-shirts from the early '90s, a laser light keychain bearing the message "Danger!!! Don't shoot your eye out!" and lithographs of Coyne's artwork. The concept of the pop-up store, common in the art and fashion worlds, is still pretty new when it comes to marketing in the music business. This summer, Jack White set up New York and Los Angeles stores of his Nashville-based Third Man Records, housing albums and merchandise from his work with the White Stripes, the Dead Weather and the Raconteurs.

"People have been doing these pop-up stores," Coyne told Spinner.com about the concept. "I think we thought, 'That sounds cool. Let's let everybody get this stuff without having to go online. We can give it to them for a good price. And no shipping and handling.' A wad of Hamiltons would've sufficed for the excursion, as most things in the Lips' pop-up -- including the posters, reprinted t-shirts and CDs -- only cost $10, with LPs leaning on the more expensive side at $20. "Hey, we are in a recession here," one volunteer in the pop-up pointed out.

"We were going to do this all at Amoeba's, but they thought it'd destroy the whole store. They thought it'd be too many people, too big of a crowd," Coyne said noting his love for the Hollywood mega-music store.

But the most noteworthy part of the Flaming Lips pop-up store was the curtained corner with the NC-17 signs all over it, premiering the band's new video for 'Watching the Planets,' in which Coyne gets fully naked and sucked into what he calls a "fur-vag-ball." Fur seems to be a recurring theme with the Flaming Lips these days, most notably on the new 'Embryonic' album cover. It's also all over Coyne's favorite Lips merchandise at the moment: the fur-encrusted deluxe two-disc limited edition of 'Embryonic.'

"I don't know what all the fur means yet," Coyne chuckled like a mad hatter. "The fans will tell us!"