I just saw the Flaming Lips and Looper play in Albuquerque, NM at the
Sunshine theater (small venue, high ceilings). Both bands played on the
front ten feet of the stage with a video screen behind them. Both bands
showed films they'd made themselves. Looper's video was Hi-8 clips from
their road trip around America. The Flaming Lips clips were homemade
videos to their songs, notably "Superman" starring a little kid in a
superman cape at a playground who stumbles on Wayne of the Flaming Lips
dressed like a modern renaissance poet whose face is covered in blood.
Wayne brought the blood onstage and used it to great effect during the
encore. He had a wee video camera right in front of his mikestand while
he sang, so his face was broadcast over the big screen. The doesn't
play live because he wants to cut out the live sound of the drums and
just leave you with the heavy processed sounds. So we saw footage of him
playing along. Some said it was live footage and he was in the other
room, but I don't believe it.
The best part about the concert was that we all traded in our ID's at
the door for a radio walkman, on which the whole show was broadcast on
pirate radio (98.1 FM). So while the room boomed and reverberated with
low-end sound, as per usual at a show, we had all the beautiful high-end
of looper's loops and the Lips vocals in our headphones, which we were
free to turn up as loud as we wanted, and we did. When we took the
headpones off the concert sounded like shit in comparison, and it felt
like it was happening way up on stage away from you. With the
headphones on it was like the concert was happening in your head and
before your eyes, like you're more a part of it.
I bet if they play in your town, you could sit out front of the venue on
the sidewalk with a boom box tuned to the pirate station and tape the
whole thing and get stoned and not get caught.
