On The Flaming Lips at SXSW, Reminding Me Why I Love Music

It’s 2am and I’ve been out and about since 9am so you’ll have to forgive the typos, lies, and what have you.

So let’s set up the situation here. The Flaming Lips not-so-secret show at the Fox and Hound, 11pm.

I get there at 9;30 to make sure I get in. There’s no line for badges, and a real long line for the wristbands. Seems like they really slowed the wristband access in through the whole night while badgeholders got in without a problem.

I sit through 3 songs of Pele who blew. Then the Czars, who were good but not meant for large parking lots. Then the Flaming Lips come out. I’m pretty close, maybe 10 rows back.

Wayne starts showing off a lot of his familiar toys – Hulk Hands, shooting fog machines, weird keyboards that make frog noises. The first thing he says to the crowd is that he’s going to shoot something at us, but for us to be careful because the tent is really low and it’s probably going to bounce down and hit someone. He shot it – a bunch of streamers – and as far as I could tell, no one was harmed. The low, small tent, however, is going to play a major role in the story.

Wayne then starts talking about how great SXSW and Austin has been for the career of the Flaming Lips. He said that he wanted everyone to have a great night and to sing along as loud as we could. The band then began Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” while hundreds of gigantic balloons were thrown into the crowd.

If you’ve been to a Flaming Lips show recently you’ve probably seen balloons like this fly around in the crowd – the only difference here was that it was happening in a pretty small tent, considering the amount of people. It had this insane pinball/ping pong effect that was just plain brilliant. The crowd was singing, dancing, going nuts. It was halfway through the song that I realized, this is why I love music. This is why I do this website, all of my passions, this is what keeps me going.

From there they played some classics like “Yoshimi” as well as several new songs from the upcoming record. They ended with “Love Yer Brain”, telling us that it was the first and probably last time they’ve ever played it live. It was great.

As everyone started to walk out, we were surprised to see the band come out for an encore. They mentioned that they forgot that they brought electro-clash musician Peaches with them to do a duet. They then blazed through a great cover of “War Pigs.”

During this encore, another crazy thing happened. Since the show took place in a fenced up parking lot, there were a lot of people sitting, watching from the outside. Something happened and all of these people started to rush the stage, breaking into the show. It was great.

The Flaming Lips have always been a favorite band, but I think they just shot up in my top three faves, right behinf Wilco. What a great American band. I don’t know if it’s all brilliant marketing, but Wayne seems like one of the most down to earth rock stars I’ve ever seen – someone who I would actually like to have a conversation with. (unlike most musicians where i dont have anything to say to them).

I left that show thinking that I could leave SXSW happier than I’d ever been. Would anything get better than that hour with the Flaming Lips? I don’t know. But that’s the thing about SXSW – there’s magic happening all the time.

My friends Billy and Dan were with me seeing a solo show from Chris of the Wrens (more on that later), and to them that was a high of the day. There’s so many perfect musical moments, both huge and personal. I really love this festival, and I hope that there was some people in the crowd that found out about the show by reading this blog. That would really make it all worth it, knowing that you shared this with me.

Here’s a crappy photo I took with my camera phone, I might have a better one I’ll post tomorrow.

Check out Chip’s Day 1 recap.