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And Finally Artist News
Arcade Fire and Flaming Lips battle it out
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 6 March 2009
In this new age of Twitter, it has become far easier for artists to insult each other instantly and in front of all their fans. There are people out there still using old fashioned methods like magazine interviews and blogs, though. Sa-a-ad. Two such bands are The Flaming Lips and Arcade Fire, who have entered a war of words ignited by the former’s frontman Wayne Coyne in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
Coyne told the magazine: “I’m a fan of [Arcade Fire] 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'”.
Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler responded via his blog by saying: “Wow,I can’t believe I am actually writing to defend my band’s ‘real’ personality. … The only time we have ever shared a stage with the Flaming Lips was our last show on the Funeral tour at a festival in Las Vegas (over three years ago) … I was really nervous to meet [Coyne] and I felt a little weird that we were playing after them. We traded a little hello, but he was a hard guy to get a read on. … I can’t imagine a reason why we would have been pompous towards The Flaming Lips, a band we have always loved, on that particular night, all those years ago. Unless I was way more jet-lagged then I remember”.
