The Flaming Lips will travel to three continents this summer, on this, the 2011 “In Our Bodies/Out of Our Heads” tour, and the spectacle they create is only increasing in worldwide importance-- to such an extent that their blatantly positive message of hope and faith in humanity may be deserving of, at the very least, an NEA grant by year's end. They are on the move constantly, and, besides the two trailers worth of stage equipment, their merchandising table features volume two of Mrs. Coyne's tour photos ("All We Have is Now Vol. 2"), a set of ten "Reasons for Living" postcards, autographed lithographs, and a host of t-shirts, including a hand-drawn "Be Kind to Animals" decal, on a royal, bright blue. The first leg of the Lips tour ran from Detroit in mid-May to Washington state by way of one night in Barcelona, flying again around the globe to end with one gig in Dublin, Ireland. They resumed one week later, in notoriously dank and welcoming Santa Rosa and Los Angeles, one night in Vegas, and a week off in Oklahoma. They are a caravan unto themselves, and were the unofficial kickoff to the Dave Matthews Caravan weekend in Atlantic City, performing one night early. The June 23rd Flaming Lips show at the House of Blues in Atlantic City was the only east coast stop until the end of July, when Boston, north Jersey, and Wantagh, New York shows are across consecutive nights.
Unlike many touring rock bands, the Flaming Lips have increased their standing concert repertoire, to include two full albums, as well as complete sets of their own edgy and new material; like other 'jam' bands, the Lips likely have moments of both effective and ineffective energy across different venues. In California earlier this month, they orchestrated a live performance of their own 1999 masterwork The Soft Bulletin; they premiered the live cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon one year ago this month, at Bonnaroo, and would again the following night at the DMB Caravan. It was the Lips' edgy new material that was the focus of the Thursday night House of Blues show—with hints at the following night’s spectacular recreation of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The dancers onstage wore Dorothy costumes; a Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow were present. Joined by a winged female vocalist, the Lips performed “Any Colour You Like” from Pink Floyd, and the slender singer wore ruby red slippers.
Absent was the majestic “Race for the Prize” introduction, as Wayne’s inflatable-ball-rolling stunts that initiate the party are essential, and take place during a rising instrumental jam that—and I’ve heard it before, live—sounded like the Soft Bulletin’s unreleased track “The Capitan.” Whatever it was, the thunderous bass lost every aural war to Steven Drozd’s immediate musical madness, across his synth, pedals, guitar, and vocals. The sound in the balcony seemed a big mess in a small, concrete space: the desired effect, from the band whose amplification systems are encased in custom steel cages, and covered in fluorescent duct tape. Those wheels have been rolling on and off the trailer all summer, to Europe and back twice so far—alongside confetti cannons, 20-foot mirror balls, fog machines, lasers, strobe s, video equipment including the drummer’s triggering devices, and unspeakably cool lighting effects that didn’t even leave the truck for the House of Blues show. Not that they were missed, but that venue logistics including size, limit and make unique every Lips show, beyond musical notes and cues. Mad props here to the Lips’ crew, for hauling what they do, where they do—and, for having incredible sense to hit the right buttons at the right time. Triggering strobe lights appropriately, let alone firing confetti cannons on target and in time, takes skill and practice, and thus some of the Lips’ crew have been along on their gigs truly since the earliest days of the band, and I have come to understand something of the generous spirit that may come in abiding in another’s creative vision. Why and how to fire a confetti cannon, or the good reasons to hoist as many twenty-foot mirror balls into a performance space as possible in an afternoon for a show that night, takes deep understanding of What’s Going On, and the audience experience that’s being sought. The buildup and anticipation of the show is characteristic of the band; each member is always onstage before their dramatic through-the-video-curtain entrance, checking their gear and tuning their instruments. If frontman Wayne Coyne had it his way, we the audience would be there to see the mirror balls rise, the lasers installed, the video curtain put into place and powered up. To fill that time of preparation and anticipation pre-show, the Lips showed off a brief test video: garbled speech and a vintage test pattern, with a right channel/left channel flashing to rally the audience. It's worth noting that the Lips may have dropped the synthetic trumpet-playing-taps peace segment from their setlist, a long-running act of social activism that took place during every show. That was part of the show last July in Massachusetts-- as was having the crowd sing Happy Birthday, to everyone and anyone.
This show was peppered with some fine singalong hits, including "She Don't Use Jelly," “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and a nothing-but-mellow “Yoshimi,” which left everyone in the room swaying with hope. But there were some can’t-go-wrong Sabbath-inflected riffs that drew my attention: was it “Free Radicals,” or some variation on a stomping on-off, punk beat? Whatever it was, Michael Ivins has a laminated copy in his three-ring binder, unashamedly seated and reading the tabs—and I am forever grateful. While the thrashing drums carry on, the bass is important to all else, an aural cog to the many gears that is Steven Drozd’s sound. Beyond featuring an interesting atonal iPhone app in an instrumental, Drozd’s abilities in searingly-high falsetto are becoming his weird and good trademark: he will only talk to the crowd like Mickey Mouse, and there is some live material from Embryonic in which his floating upper range notes are new and workable contrast to Wayne’s less-than-extreme register. But what of Drozd’s new fascination with warbling his voice by using two fingers to shake his adam’s apple? Every time he wanted to, he did this, and it was bizarre, though effective—made weirder by the fact that he played both keyboards and guitar on most every song, as well as crawl onto the floor during one especially juicy psychedelic moment to make adjustments to his effects pedals. There's a lotta gearheads out there these days-- a lotta homespun button pushers and synthy weirdos making a show out of spinning their own wheels ad nauseum, but Drozd is far apart from these. In watching his movements in his realm-- with two large racks of amps at his back, and Wayne to his right-- he seemed exceptionally good at anticipating the changes between keys, guitar, and when and when not to sing into the microphone. And if they didn't have such a huge traveling song list, one might conclude Drozd is overly-rehearsed, spot-on, a session musician to his own work. But his work on multiple instruments is his talent and good ear alone, jazzing it up with his careful decisions on the fly, a psychedelic bandleader to Wayne's ringmaster role. Throughout “Yoshimi,” Drozd focused on using not piano, but a portamento-based keyboard voice to add sliding-down drama to the power ballad; other riffs gave rise to his chord-based movement across his synth. Backed by a second guitarist on most songs, Drozd used his axe thoughtfully, sparingly, sometimes thrashing about to grunge chords, sometimes picking country riffs across the changes.
Every show is unique, and the House of Blues show that began a long musical weekend in Atlantic City had in it one personal highlight: Wayne appeared to work so hard, so carefully, and so truthfully, across each electric guitar note in “What is the Light?,” that when I saw him appear—an apparition at 2 AM, at the Showboat bar, still wearing the fur muff he had on since before the show began—I complemented him on his good, hard, happy and fun work, and another job well done. I explained that I had been in the front row of the balcony with my father, and that I was especially glad to have shared that song with him. He laughed and smiled, gave me another handshake, and thanked me for bringing him. I was glad we were there, to have seen the Flaming Lips together, and to have found Wayne Coyne grinning at the bar at 2 AM, as widely as he had during the show, when he was raising his arms and calling for more applause. No one who is that joyous and ebullient with life may be out of their head, it seems; no lover of art and music may be called such as well.
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