Because You Like Beer You Like… The Flaming Lips Live
Friday, March 12, 2010 I saw the Flaming Lips play Austin Music Hall.
It. Was. Phenomenal.
I saw them once before at ACL, but that doesn’t count.
Huge thanks to Jason for the ticket hookup. I procrastinated and missed the ticket sales date.
Physch-rock outfit Stardeath and the White Dwarfs, collaborators on the Dark Side of the Moon project, opened the show. They were great. I usually am annoyed with opening bands, but these guys made the stand-and-hold-your-place part of the show tolerable. Nice use of a theramin.
I guess I’m what you might call a “new Lips” fan. I got into them when Yoshimi came out. And in the three years before At War With the Mystics, I got into Soft Bulletin, Zaireeka, In a Priest Driven Ambulance, and Transmissions From the Satellite Heart. Also, I became a huge fan of the Fearless Freaks film. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed with Mystics. Not a fan of the Sponge Bob influence.
I loved Embryonic. Loved it. Loved. It.
It was weird and spacey and groovy and nostalgic and loud. And great.
And so was the show. My wife likes the Lips’ music, but not the concerts. She says they are “gimmicky.”
Whatever. I went with a friend.
The stage setup was pretty intense. I had heard they had a new “gimmick” for this tour. There was a large half moon disco ball rotating about 10 to 12 feet above our heads (we were maybe 30 feet from the stage), and everything was painted orange. All the dancers were dressed up as DJ Lance from Yo Gabba Gabba, and there were only two inflatables on stage (or the side of the stage due to the limited real estate on the Austin Music Hall stage).
There was a huge sunrise/sunset type projector background that enhanced the light show and played video of various nude girls dancing throughout the show.
The band entered the stage via a shining vagina on the background screen and Wayne immediately jumped in his big space ball and bounced around the audience. It’s old hat by this time, but still a lot of fun.
I don’t remember the set list, but here are the standouts:
- Acoustic sing along version of Yoshimi pt 1
- Waitin’ for a Superman which was dedicated to the late Mark Linkous
- The W.A.N.D.
- She Don’t Use Jelly
- See the Leaves
- Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung
- In the Morning of the Magicians
- Worm Mountain
- And of course, “Do You Realize?”
A little something for everyone.
I had hoped to see them perform “Watching the Planets” after seeing the incredible rendition they did live on Conan, but no, they didn’t. They had the lighted gong contraption out and ready to go, but it got little play. Bummer. I expected the song in the encore, but it didn’t come. After the first encore the crew left the stage set up for a few minutes, maybe expecting a second encore, but everybody was tired of standing and left. Maybe they saved “Watching the Planets” for the second encore. Bummer.
Wayne busted out a retrofitted acoustic guitar with a bubble encapsulating the sound whole for the “Yoshimi” sing along, and he confessed that for that occasion, it was the first time he had played an acoustic guitar live on stage. Really? Factual or not, it was great.
“Waitin’ for a Superman” was dedicated to the late Mark Linkous. It was great. Wayne gave a brief, impassioned anti suicide speech before the song, and performed it with a good amount of emotion. It was very sweet (sweet like a grandma would say, not an X-Games announcer).
The band closed out the show with “Do You Realize?” and everything seemed to shoot out confetti, streamers, balloons, lasers, and lights all at once. It was pretty great. There are pictures bellow.
Gimmicks. They were galore. Everyone in the audience received a laser pointer. It was like 1996 all over again. Lots of bald heads and tig bitties got the laser pointer treatment. At one point in the concert the big screen behind the band told us to point them at Wayne and when we did the lights went down and he suddenly produced a mirror shield and used it to redirect these thousands of lasers into multiple directions. It was a cool effect.
During another song, the lights went down and Wayne magically appeared back at the sound booth wearing gigantic hands with green lasers shooting out of the palms. Also very neat.
There was the huge space ball walk, tons of confetti and streamers, huge balloons bouncing around, and the microphone perspective camera.
In perspective, it was an excellent show. I could have stood for another 30 minutes of music, but when a band has a catalog dating back to the 80s, I imagine it’s hard to play a show and satisfy multiple generations of fans.
Wow. It was a great show. If you went, congrats. If no, boo on you. Go next time.
More photos… from an iPhone.
