A Flaming Lips show is really a giant party. Complete with balloons and streamers. After their 2004 appearance at the Big Day Out and photos from their overseas shows, expectations were high for the band’s stage show. And they were met from the very beginning.
As noise filled the air, a naked woman appeared on the semi-circle screen at the back of the stage. Shown from behind and saturated in bright orange, she began to dance around in bright blue space. As she turned around, a pulsing light emerged from between her legs. She lay down and the camera zoomed in until the pulsing circles of light filled the screen. One-by-one the band members appeared from a door in the screen, being birthed from the bright light.
As they began to play, the camera refocused on the woman’s eye and frontman Wayne Coyne appeared in a slowly-inflating gigantic hamster ball. With a burst of confetti and streamers, Coyne began to roll around above the crowd, joined by at least 20 giant balloons (surprisingly most of these survived the whole night).
Coyne re-joined his band on stage as they launched into Race for the Prize, and we were away. As if the crowd needed any encouragement to dance cat ladies began to do so on one side of the stage, mirrored by a group of gecko people on the other.
At this stage you might think the antics had peaked, but they continued to build throughout the night. Other highlights included Coyne singing from the shoulders of a man in a gorilla suit, even BIGGER balloons filled with confetti sent out to burst over the crowd, a giant butterfly in a crown, a dancing cartoon sun, smoke bombs, videos of everything from space to static, to close ups of Coyne's face and of course, more confetti (Coyne even used a mic stand at one stage which also doubled as a confetti cannon).
Somewhere underneath all this lurked a rock show. And what a rock show it was. The band were clearly enjoying being here (apologising it took five years for them to come back, relishing playing on a stage The Beatles also played and dedicating a song to Nick Cave) and this translated to fine form. The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, previously a song of anger at the Bush administration became a song of celebration for a changing world. Favourites such as Fight Test and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt 1 became sing-alongs, stripped back almost entirely to vocals and guitar, with only minimal keyboard additions. 1993’s breakthrough single She Don’t Use Jelly made an appearance, as did a few new songs. These were fuzzed out guitar jams, which wandered off into psychedelic territory at times.
And it all culminated in an encore of Do You Realise?, the perfect song for the end of the night. More and more explosions of confetti hit the air as the whole crowd sung along in a celebration of the moment. Sure the night was coming to an end, but what more could you ask for? After all, “it’s hard to make the good things last…”
