The Flaming Lips – Live @ Summer Camp

May 28, 2008

After dancing on stage for Girl Talk and meeting Wayne Coyne backstage, I was extremely pumped for Flaming Lips and positioned myself third row front and center for the most anticipated show of the festival, The Flaming Lips. Having seen tons of pictures of the Lips live show and being a rather huge fan, I was prepared to have my mind blown and the band succeeded in putting on one of the most crazy, visually spectacular, musically overwhelming performance I’ve ever seen. The band opened in the best way possible with Wayne Coyne surfing the crowd inside his giant space bubble hamster ball as the music for “Race for the Prize” began to play. Two huge cannons shot tons of confetti into the crowd and there was probably around three dozen large balloons floating around as well. Did I mention that there was a number of volunteer dancers on stage dressed up in Iron Man and Pink Ninja costumes?

The crowd was amazing for this show. Everyone was jumping around, dancing, singing, smiling, having the best time of their life, and the feeling was mirrored by Wayne on stage who called Summer Camp one of America’s best festivals and said this was most perfect place he could imagine for the band to play. After the visual feast of “Race For The Prize” the band shot into another fantastic opening track, this time “Fight Test” which featured Wayne heaving around a fog machine and shooting it at other band members.

The third song was perhaps the most shocking part of the fest as the band played a energetic version of Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains The Same” (my personal fave from Zep) and encouraged the crowd to strip all of their clothes off and dance around. By the end of the song, there were probably six fully naked crowd members (all ladies) on stage. What other band could get away with that

“Free Radicals” came next, a song which I’ve never been a huge fan of, but I couldn’t deny how fun it was to shout out “In fact, you’re, FANATICAL!”. The real sing-a-long prowess of the band was explored during a poignant acoustic version of “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots” which was more similar to the “live on bbc” version than the actual recording (which was perfectly fine with me). We all joined in on the song in typical campfire fashion. It was a beautiful thing to witness.

The rest of the night continued in the “greatest hits” fashion for the band with favorites like “She Don’t Use Jelly” (which was awesome) “The W.A.N.D.”, and “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” (including a bit-too-extended intro) all being played. All the while the band continued to pump confetti into the crowd and display incredible visuals through the spherical video screen. The encore was “Do You Realize” which made for a completely transcendent and beautiful moment. After experiencing the live extravaganza that is the Flaming Lips, now I completely understand why they are known as one of the best live bands in the world. Let me just say that I won’t be forgetting this show anytime soon.

MP3 Race For The Prize
MP3 Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (Live On BBC)

There’s a lot more awesome pictures where these ones came from. Click here to check them all out.

Posted by Taylor in Festival, Live