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.
