Honestly, it is impossible to describe a Flaming Lips concert with just mere words. If I was to say that three-quarters of the band entered the stage by means of being birthed through the magnesium-strength, neon-strobing, pulsating naughty bits of a dancing woman projected onto a big screen, and that singer Wayne Coyne emerged within a large plastic space ball and rolled out atop and across the crowd, it probably wouldn't mean anything to you unless you actually saw it.
A Flaming Lips just show isn't really like any other concert though; it's more a pre-packaged dose of aural and visual happiness stimulation. On one side of the stage jig a dozen or so ecstatically-chipper frog-costumed dancers, flanking the other a brace of white cape-clad sheep girls, with the band weaving their magic somewhere in between. All abound there were lights, movement and excitement as coloured balloons, confetti and streamer guns were launched over an already deliriously rapturous crowd - and all this before we'd even gotten to a chorus.
When they actually got down to the business of the songs it only added to the glee already emanating from the audience. We got early renditions of 'Race For the Prize' and 'The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song' - which is now being dedicated to the promise Barack Obama offers the world, as opposed to its initial critique of the obstinate and misused power and influence of George W Bush. New songs from the as-yet-unreleased Embryonic double album including 'Silver Trembling Hands' and 'Convinced of the Hex' seeped in among the old chestnuts, but you can't really describe the evening in parts or songs; more moods, which swung from joyous to pensive to just plain orgasmically engrossing and stimulating.
The band saved their blockbusting best for last, with farewells bade before a deliriously absorbed 'She Don't Use Jelly' and one more reprise of the wondrously reflective 'Do You Realize??'; but not before we were genuinely thanked and appreciated for our lack of cynicism, which allowed us to let such items as balloons and confetti allow the night to achieve its intended magic.
Andy Ryan
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