The Flaming Lips have dedicated the past decade to crafting an uncompromising live performance—something their loyal fans adore—and now recent reviews complain their on-stage eye candy is growing sour with age. The band, critics say, need to spend less time on theatrical gimmicks.
As if in response to these barbs, The Flaming Lips chose the Nike Montalban Theatre, a venue much too tiny for their typical stage show, and proceeded to rock an overflow crowd with pure vitality and talent last Thursday night. I can't imagine a less shocking outcome; dog bites man.
Of course The Flaming Lips don't need hugecrowd-surfing balloons to be a captivating live band. They don't need laser pointers, dancing Santas, UFO light shows, smoke machines, or slutty aliens, either, though these have all made appearances at their concerts. During the first part of last Thursday's set, the Lips proved that all they need is a microphone.
And a Twitter account. Yep, the first segment of the evening was reserved for questions from the audience, sent as Tweets, to the band. At the front of the stage, The Lips' consummate frontman Wayne Coyne made some surprising revelations. First, that the band has recorded a track-for-track cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and plan to release it in the coming months. And second (and even more interesting to me), that the long-rumored stage adaptation of their classic album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots won’t be moving to Broadway anytime soon. According to Coyne, it would take the Lips two years of work to do the stage show properly, and the band is unwilling to spend that much time apart from fans.
In his answers, Coyne made it clear that his band’s only goal is to please its fans. From the extravagant live shows to the double- (and quad-) studio albums, The Flaming Lips have always been fan-centric. Embryonic, their latest album, seems designed to please th whole lot of them, from the old faithful still clamoring to hear something like "Everything's Explodin'" to the children who have grown up singing "Do You Realize" and "The Yeah Song."
The Lips demonstrated this diversity when they picked up their instruments for a short live set. Their new material included late night TV stalwart "Convinced of the Hex" and the ridiculous and fun "I Can Be A Frog" (which had the Montalban audience, some of them dressed in full costume, pretending to be frogs, wolves helicopters…). The set lacked the bombastic special effects of the routine shows, but their fans more than made up for it. The crowd, with their colorful questions and questionable costumes, proved as engaging and entertaining as we all know the band can be. And the music was great.
It's unlikely we'll ever see the Flaming Lips truly "unplugged," but after Thursday’s performance, I think it wouldn't be such a bad idea, if only for the fans.
Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog_post.aspx?id=21577&blogid=1592
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