Aliens, astronauts, superheroes, Santa Clauses, and balloons. Lots of balloons. The Flaming Lips’ Lolla set was even more fun than the Webster Hall show we caught a few months back. Wayne did his always-impressive bubble-boy entrace (Ta Da!), and launched into “Race For The Prize” after showering the audience with confetti. Here’s some vid, for which YouTube was kind enough to fuck up the audio/video sync.
It’s raining now, but that won’t stop us from heading to surprise guest Patti Smith at Kidzapalooza. Yesterday the Blisters played there; Jeff Tweedy’s son Spencer is their drummer. They covered Skynyrd. Corin from Sleater-Kinney was digging it.
Lots of great stuff today (Hold Steady!). Check out AT&T Blueroom to stream the fest live and Project DU who’s aggregating all the Lolla posts from the music bloggers we hit the town with last night.
Here’s what the Lips played:
Race For the Prize
Free Radicals
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 2
Vein of Stars
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
The W.A.N.D.
My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion
She Don’t Use Jelly
Do You Realize?
During “YYY” Wayne insisted the audience “sing as loud as you can ’cause we gotta stop Israel from fucking bombing Lebanon.” Not sure that’s a viable solution Wayne. But I would like to see Condi in a giant bubble.
You Might Also Like
 The Flaming Lips – “Now I Understand” (Feat. Erykah Badu,… |  Preview Flaming Lips’ Bon Iver Collab |  Bon Iver, Neon Indian Set For Flaming Lips Collaborative LP |  Sugar, Lips LPs Coming Live To Noise Pop 2012 |
 |
 |
The only time I see YouTube sync problems is with concert footage. Why is that? All of my band’s live footage gets fucked up too and that’s all we have on the internet.
Damn, give us a break.
Fuck Wayne. The guy lives inside a bubble. Let’s see how he’d feel if ketyusha rockets were raining down on his neighborhood. Guess the Flaming Lips won’t be touring here (Israel) anytime soon. Well, at least I got to see the Silver Jews last month!
Wayne doing his best Mel Gibson impression?
Memo to rock bands and actors:
You are entertainers, not great political minds. You can have as many opinions as you like, but you come off as arrogant and foolish (not deep and caring) when you say publicly that you know what should be done about a given situation…because, truthfully, we all trust our grocery clerk to know more about politics than a famous actor or singer who doesn’t live in the real world. So Wayne/Mel, do us all a favor and keep your word-holes wired shut except for the entertaining, mmkay?
Alot of people and countries, including myself, want to see Israel stop bombing Lebanon at this point, not just Wayne. If the guy wants to state his opinion, it doesn’t bother me a bit.
Besides, the Lips are one of the best live bands on this planet!
Tell me Joseph, how about Hizbbullah ceasing launching rockets and missiles into Israel?
Harry, I would like nothing more for Hizbullah to stop launching rockets into Israel. I hope that you are safe in your neighborhood and I am simply tired of seeing innocent lives, Israeli or Lebanese being wasted. I know that there is no easy solution to this mess. I think that is all Wayne met as well. Wayne also made comments in Cleveland a few nights back regarding suicide bombers and war and how senseless it all seems to him.
Mel, on the other hand is a complete jackass.
Fair enough Joseph. Peace be unto you.
Wayne is weirdly opinionated these days. At War With the Mystics is actually kind of condescending. I like The Lips a lot more when Wayne is just singing about life in general, not namechecking Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani for no reason.
she don’t use jelly…
oh man, that set was so crazy. they were my favorite of the weekend.
RRRrr! My rage at finding out that I missed seeing both Patti Smith and Corin Tucker up close knows no bounds.
Harry you are gay as hell, only reason you dont like wayne is because his dick is bigger than all the members dicks of Silver Jews combined. Good thing he doesnt come to your town, you wouldnt appreciate good music anyways.
Wow, Coolem, what a witty response. Resort to homophobia. Why don’t you just come out and call me a dirty kike?
Anyone here actually at the show??? Middle East comments aside (which did disturb me a bit), that was the most incredible visual show I’ve ever seen but was extremely disappointed with their song selection… couldn’t they have played at least one non-hit? Or something from before Soft Bulletin besides “She Don’t Use Jelly”???
She Dont’ Use Jelly wasn’t on Soft Bulletin.
(No, but it was released before it, which is what Faz said.)
I would love to see the Lips do some material from OH MY GAWD!!! Do they ever?
They have been playing the exact same setlist for 4 years. Except they added the WAND and Bohemian rhapsody this year. So no.
Bender, I think it is amazingly simplistic–not to mention wholly illogical–to state that those who are entertainers should never speak about their political beliefs. Why can one not be a “political brain” and also an entertainer? Ben Stein and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum but he’s certainly a political brain–and a big one, too.
I’m not sure why you feel the need to artificially separate art and politics but without that (often potent) mixture we sure as hell wouldn’t have a lot of great music. I can think of at least ten great songs off the top of my head that are deeply political–Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” being the one I was humming this morning.
zyrtec