God Bless The Flaming Lips

I saw The Flaming Lips for the second time in one week last night with Jackson at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. I could see them every night and not get tired of the show.

If Willy Wonka was a band leader instead of a fictional chocolate maker, he’d be Wayne Coyle. Wayne understands that music is theater and he puts on a show, much of it the same night to night, but there are always those moments in a Flaming Lips show.

Last night, they gave out little laser key chains to the crowd before the show. They had some fun about half way through the set with a user generated laser light show (fast forward to 1:45 in the video if you want to just see the cool effect).

Then in an unplanned moment, Wayne saw some lasers on one of the balloons still bouncing around the crowd and asked everyone to shine a laser on it. This is the scene that unfolded:

They played basically the same set we saw at Austin City Limits last sunday plus some great encores. My favorite was this version of You Have To Be Joking off the Hit To Death record from the eary 90s which they closed the show with (and I’ll close this post with too). The intro is about 1:15mins if you want to skip it, but Wayne does explain what makes the Lips audience so special in the intro.

#My Music#NYC