You might want to refer to him as Professor Coyne from now on, because the Flaming Lips frontman is getting back to the classroom basics this August. The now veteran musician will be teaching music to students at the University of Central Oklahoma, as part of a new music program set up for the college. At least he has the hair to fit the part of the nutty professor.

The Oklahoma university has set up a new Academy of Contemporary Music, which is focused on giving students an in-depth look at the music industry from seasoned professionals. The school is enlisting the help of industry giants like Greg Kurstin (Lily Allen’s producer) and Warner Bros. Records General Manager Tom Biery among a few others, who will be teaching classes in guitar, bass, drum, and vocal performance, as well as music production.

Scott Booker, who is head of the Flaming Lips’ artist management company, is the head behind the new academy. Working alongside the university and state officials, Booker was able to bring the new academy to Oklahoma, with the help and partnership of the U.K’s Academy of Contemporary Music, which was founded in 1995, according to PopMatters.

The new program will provide some of the best music industry education available at a collegiate level, and classes will take place off of, you guessed it, Flaming Lips Alley in Oklahoma City’s Bricktown district. The idea of Coyne in a classroom is not that ridiculous of an idea, but we’re pretty sure Win Butler probably won’t be signing up on Coyne’s class anytime soon.

Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne has waved the white flag in the battle of indie-egos. As we told you back in March, Coyne had dissed the Arcade Fire pretty badly in an interview with Rolling Stone, fueling Arcade Fire’s Win Butler to verbally strike back. Now, Coyne has apologized for his words in Rolling Stone, and said the statement he made was misunderstood.

According to an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Coyne said he never meant his rude remarks to be aimed at the members of the Arcade Fire themselves, but at the people running their stages at a couple of festivals. Coyne said he wishes the incident never happened, and that he feels really bad about it.

“I like enough of their music,” Coyne said in the interview. “The idea that I’m somehow against them… I’m not!”

We are waiting for Win to give the yay or nay on Coyne’s most recent remarks, but it should put most of this silly argument to rest. If not, the next logical step after Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly would be for Coyne to speak with TMZ, and we all know what would happen then.

This years Pitchfork Music Festival’s headliners have been confirmed for a few weeks, and now The Flaming Lips have been added onto the stellar roster of performers, and are set to close out the three-day Chicago festival in July. 

As we told you, Pitchfork is changing the festival up a bit this year. Fans will be able to participate in the “Write the Night: Set Lists by Request” contest, where people can cast their votes online after they have purchased a ticket for the event. Fans will be able to dictate which songs they will be hearing from their favorite Friday night performers, and even though The Flaming Lips are playing on Sunday, they too will be partaking in the fun.  

Think Win Butler will send in his request?

Dedicated to those songs that I can’t stop playing, humming, or thinking about; the 4+ minutes you fall head-over-heels in love with. Past instances have included The Groovie Ghoulies’ “I’m Doin’ Fine,” Electric Six’s “Improper Dancing,” and Tender Box’s “Spectacular Spider-Man Theme.”

I don’t buy music every week, so when I go shopping I often pick up more than one album at a time. This is great and stupid, because while the one-stop shopping is an economic use of my time, I end up unfairly comparing two unrelated, dissimilar albums. If I’d purchased The Velvet Underground’s first album on its own without the accompanying purchase of Van Halen II, I have a higher opinion of it today. When I bought the pair — for whatever reason — I couldn’t get into the trippy stylings of the Velvets because I was head over kicked heels for VH II. Since then I have grown and adapted from my initial impression, realizing it was unfair: Not only is Velvet decidedly overrated and more than a little dated, but the run of the final three songs of VH II (”D.O.A.,” “Women in Love” and “Beautiful Girls”) are better than anything Lou Reed could pretend to care about writing. Velvet Underground can’t touch VH II’s ass-less chaps.

This comparison trend of mine was tested again when I received the dual gift of the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible along with The Faces‘ A Nod Is As Good as a Wink… To a Blind Horse, and if I’d been placing bets, I would have put it all down on the boozy bar rock of Rod Stewart and Ron Wood. Chuck Berry covers, dirty riffs, sexism… Wink is like a Stones cover album and should have swept me off my feet. I promised myself I’d listen to both albums all the way through once before allowing myself the privilege (or the handicap) of repeated listens. Wink won the first listen of the pair (which was chosen at random — I try to do these things fair since I understand my own psychosis better anyone).

But then I moved on to Neon Bible, which started with “Black Mirror”, and I forgot all about rooster hair cuts.

“Black Mirror” — in fact much of Neon Bible — is a fantastic musical creation forged from the qualities I find annoying in bands I don’t usually enjoy. The overt sincerity of U2, the airy musicality of the Talking Heads, the sing-it-to-Saturn of Bruce Springsteen, the symphonic back-up of Coldplay. Maybe it’s a ratio thing: I can’t get past these annoying bits with these bands because their music seems to offer little else. If things were more evened out, maybe I could actually manage to get through Achtung Baby. But somehow when these qualities join together in this Arcade Fire configuration, it sounds like the kind of noise that could consume the world.

At the risk of outing myself as a hack, “Black Mirror” is a classic example of an album launcher. Some Track One’s start an album only to get out of the way, and others announce the album’s presence and tell everyone to get on board fast. “Black Mirror” possesses an unrelenting drive, feeling at once out of control — like a stagecoach headed by rocket elephants — yet fully aware of where it’s heading. It may be aiming for a cliff, but it knew that from the start. The Arcade Fire have a major Bowie thing happening with most of their work, and that would be a hindrance if they didn’t wear it so well. One review of “Black Mirror” compared it to a reworking of the “Suffragette City” riff, but that misses the point. The song may cosmetically sound a little like “Suffragette”, but the culmination of all those textures brings intensity, depth, darkness and hope along with them. If anything, it feels like “Heroes”. Bittersweet, heartsick and romantic.

On the rare occasion I don’t repeat “Black Mirror” and actually allow another song the daunting task of following up, I half expect to hear Radiohead’s “The National Anthem”. This would theoretically fit the mood, but where Kid A is an experiment in anti-music, “Black Mirror” is about music-music. It’s as pro-music as you can get. Kid A is clinical and shattered, Neon Bible is lush and voluptuous. Radiohead tends to write music to comment on music itself, but there’s no barrier separating you from the emotions and excitement of The Arcade Fire. Neon Bible gives a million of these kinds of emotional payoffs, but “Black Mirror” demonstrates them in the kind of way that tells you everything you’d ever want to know about the band, or hope to find.

Tension runs through the entire song, and it’s never released, only eased. The singing, instruments and song entirely build up to a cliff before “falling” into the chorus once again. Each verse is a remount back up that hill. The best example of this comes right in the middle. We build and build with the lyrics, and that familiar piano lick trickles in late enough to remind us it’s there and to keep us climbing. Then the lyric doesn’t lead directly into the chorus, but takes us to the “That curse is never broken” section, and it doesn’t get broken for many measures after. Win Butler suddenly breaks into a French version of the titular chorus, deftly giving the song a plateau but still no free-fall into the dark waters beneath. The backing vocals rise to the forefront after the full orchestra takes us through the chorus once again. “The kiss is never broken,” and neither is this rhythm. Butler talks to his mirror as everything seems to crescendo until we finally hit the water and gasp for air.

Individually as pieces, the music isn’t complicated at all. It’s a simple rhythm guitar lick, straight-forward drums, bass line, piano lick. That’s where the true power of the song originates: it’s not inventing new wheels to play with. It’s using all the wheels we already knew were available in a way we could only hope to achieve. The placement of these elements shows mastery. “Black Mirror” is one of those songs that is so good and so consuming and so powerful and so magnificent that you can’t imagine a single person in the free world who wouldn’t enjoy it. This is the curse of music loving — of course there’s someone out there who won’t like it, and even worse there are some who will simply dismiss it as, “Yeah… that’s alright.” I can understand not liking something completely, but when a song like this demands the kind of respect and attention it so obviously does, a mere dismissal like that would result in glove-to-face slaps in a more gentile era.

“Black Mirror” marks a year’s worth of Greatest Song at This Moment articles, and I’m thrilled beyond words that I can continue to enjoy this song without having to uphold my self-imposed moratorium on each artist I consume. If anyone wonders about the thesis of this project (i.e. “Trying to answer WHY these songs are so great at these moments”), I have no better answer concerning “Black Mirror” than I would for Van Halen II. The answer is: They’re the best.

Watch the “Black Mirror” video.

Sigh. This is what it’s come to? It’s one thing for Rolling Stone to drop a quote in an interview with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips dissing Win Butler and The Arcade Fire for being pompous (doesn’t seem that hard to believe, does it?). But for them to run a headline in their “Smoking Section” that blasts, “Exclusive: Wayne Coyne Tears Apart Arcade Fire!” is quite another. Now the music-world is abuzz with the two iconic front men exchanging verbal blows through the media.

We have our own opinions of both (see the headline), but that’s a whole other story, because yesterday Rolling Stone posted a quote from Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips accusing the Arcade Fire of being dicks in real life. In fact, the entire quote looks like this:

I’m a fan of them on one level, but on another level I get really tired of their pompousness. We’ve played some shows with them and they really treat people like shit. Whenever I’ve been around them, I’ve found that they not only treated their crew like shit, they treated the audience like shit. They treated everybody in their vicinity like shit. I thought, ‘Who do they think they are?’ I don’t know why people put up with it. I wouldn’t put up with it. I don’t care if it’s Arcade Fire or Brian Eno. If either of them walked into a room and treated people like shit I’d be like, ‘Fuck you, get outta here.’

People treat Arcade Fire like they’re the greatest thing ever and they get away with it. Those sort of opinions change my view of their music. They have good tunes, but they’re pricks, so fuck ‘em. Who does Arcade Fire think they are? I’ve been around groups. I’ve been around the Edge from U2 and he’s the fucking sweetest guy ever. I was around Justin Timberlake when he was young and he was just a normal, nice, kind person. Anyone can be polite and kind and people who have the privilege and money and attention should understand that. If they don’t, then fuck ‘em.

Again, we can only speculate, but considering we’ve rarely seen the Arcade Fire smile, it doesn’t seem impossible to believe that they are not the most friendly of people. Still, it is rather unbecoming of Coyne to openly bash another band in one of the larger music publications of the world.

But don’t fret effeminate Arcade Fire fans, your leading man is not taking Mr. Coyne’s statements laying down. Today, Win Butler struck back by blogging (gasp!) about the incident on the Arcade Fire website (click on “Win”). If words could hurt, just imagine the pain Wayne would be feeling after getting verbally smacked up like this:

Wow, I can’t believe I am actually writing to defend my bands “real” personality. I wish I could not respond to something like this, but the reality is is that people will be asking me questions about it for the next 5 years. I also fear that people will base their opinion of our band on the media quotes of a guy who doesn’t even know us.

Win

So there you have it. Two grown men who each made about one great record apiece fighting through the media. If Oasis, Blur and hip-hop have taught us anything, this will keep both in the spotlight despite the ratio of good music coming out of either. So we figured, why take the high road? Might as well stoop to each of their levels and just make fun of them both. Congrats Mr. Coyne and Mr. Butler, we’ll be looking forward to the inevitable big festival you guys play together and waiting with bated breath to see if you guys slap it out like real “indie” rockers. Now THAT would be news!