That said, after 16 years, there are inevitably a number of recordings that have either never seen the light of day, or were lost sight of rather too quickly. This happened most around the period of In A Priest Driven Ambulance and Hit To Death In The Future Head, when the band was very much into exploring new ways of making records - in terms of arrangements, tools, and approach. The consequence of such a process is that, inevitably, some of the ideas just won't fit quite right with the others.

With all of the tape trading that goes on with the live work of the Flaming Lips, there are also a few tapes floating around which document some of these 'lost' sessions. One that's not uncommon is 'the Mushroom Tapes' - these are the four-track demos for Ambulance. Aside from some (possibly revealing) early versions of the songs on the actual record, there are several that have never seen an official release:
Cold Day In Hell;
Jesus Is Floatin';
God's A Wheeler Dealer;
Jam;
Agonizing;
There Is A Time;
Interesting listening all - it's fairly easy to see why they never made it, but some of them are still rather good.

After that are the Alien Studios demos for Hit To Death - these feature very formative versions of Halloween, Hit Me, and Hold Your Head. Not exactly new, but fairly interesting in seeing the progression towards what Wayne (perhaps rather harshly) has been know to call, "A sprawling mess of a record." There are also some fragments that didn't make it onto the record. The main item of interest being a bizzare pop surge (apparently) dubbed 'Zero To A Million'. There's also a very odd remix of Magician vs The Headache, and a fully realised version of Jets (Cupids Kiss vs The Psyche of Death). It's perhaps worth noting that, somewhere, there exist a set of songs which were never developed at all. The band laid down the basics for a handful of curious pop songs, which were subsequently abandoned somewhere along the long road of making Hit To Death. Oh, and somewhere in the midst if all this, there appears a piano version of Five Stop Mother Superior Rain.

To bring us to speed on original compositions, in 1996 there was a soundtrack for a Spike Jonze short - the track is entitled "How Did They Get There". Following that there are a number of songs set aside from the sessions for the Soft Bulletin (some recorded during the making of Zaireeka). These are likely to see the light of day over the next year or so, and there's some beauties in there:
The Captain is an epic tale of woe, set on a seafaring vessel of some description. Brass, strings and bizarre rhythm tracks batter the senses as Wayne laments the fatal indecision of the human being in question.
1000ft Hands incorporates part of Realizing The Speed of life, from the Boombox Experiments, as a midsection. The theme of the song is pondering the unknowable - conflicting thoughts used to seek the answers to the mysteries of love and life.
Satellite Of You is a grandiose love ballad - big strings, a harmonica and crashing cymbals. And allegories that try to convey exactly how important that loved one is.
All great songs, and no wonder that they had a hard time working out what to put on the record. There's talk of an EP involving these, and maybe some of the brand new tracks they've done in radio sessions - Above The Daily Hum; It Remained Unrealizable; We Can't Predict The Future; The Switch That Turns Off The Universe.

So, happy hunting....