Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne. JEREMY CHARLES/for the Tulsa World
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne. JEREMY CHARLES/for the Tulsa World
Concert
The Flaming Lips
When: Doors open 7 p.m., showtime 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Brady Theater, 105 W. Brady Ave.
Tickets: All ages. All tickets are general admission. $39, plus fees. 866-977-6849, tulsaworld.com/brady, Reasors, Buy For Less, Cain's Box Office, Ida Red, Starship Records
NOTE: Tuesday night concert-goers can bring tickets stubs to the Wednesday night show and get in for $5. By Jennifer Chancellor
World Scene Writer
For night one of a two-night showcase of Oklahoma City psychedelic rockers the Flaming Lips, the line outside Tulsa's historic and intimate Brady Theater started early.
Fans dressed in bold colors and tie dye, tube socks and headbands, skirts that jingled and tees emblazoned with Flaming Lips propaganda. Uberfans, or Fearless Freaks, were eager for a night of mind-expanding peace and love.
It was a first for couple Coby and Kristy Emory, both 26. This is the pair's third wedding anniversary and inaugural Lips show. "We've listened to the Flaming Lips since we were six. This is huge for us," Kristy Emory said. "I just want to swim in confetti. That's my dream."
Her dream came true. Before the Lips set even started, frontman Wayne Coyne walked out on stage to greet fans, popping several confetti cannons while doing so. The crowd erupted in frantic cheers. Later, huge cannons doused fans in a minutes-long eruption of theater-filling, wafting, multicolor confetti. Giant technicolor balloons bounced from the floor to the balcony and back again.
The Lips welcomed an intimate, smallish but overwhelmingly energetic crowd on Tuesday, saying, "The Flaming Lips have never played two nights in Tulsa, ever," said Coyne. His band performed songs that included the official rock song of Oklahoma, "Do You Realize??," along with "Worm Mountain," "She Don't Use Jelly," "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song," "Vein of Stars," "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1," the darkly psychedelic and overtly heavy "See the Leaves,"
and "Is David Bowie Dying?," "Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung," "The Ego's Last Stand," "What is the Light?/The Observer" and more.
At the beginning of the night, nude psychedelic women on a jumbo screen lead the audience in cheers as Coyne embarked in his plastic bubble, womblike, as band mates Steven Drozd, Kliph Scurlock, Derek Brown and Michael Ivins made it to the stage.
The Flaming Lips classic, "She Don't Use Jelly" brought the Brady crowd to a manic pitch, pogo-jumping, singing along and screaming as a group of dancers dressed as Dorothy gyrated on stage with the band.
Their made-for-arena sized show made the entire experience perhaps more bombastic, if that's possible. All that gear, all those instruments, all those people, all those electronics all crammed into a near-impossible amount of space on the historic stage was breathtakingly surreal, especially during the crowd singalong to "Yoshimi."
Coyne even mastered his oversized laser-filled hands, blasting them into an larger-than-life glitter ball, a cartoonishly large grin tattooed across his face.
"We love you, we love you, we love you, we love you!" Coyne yelled to his fans before launching into his encore, "Do You Realize??"
Before the show, by 4 p.m. Tuesday evening, friends Dakota Thompson, 20 and Tory Waltman, 19, were almost first in line. This isn't Thompson's first show, but it was Waltman's.
"I'm ready to embrace being weird and different," Thompson said. "I wan to push Wayne as he comes out in his bubble," he said of Coyne's grand entrances over his crowds while perched in an oversized, hampster-like ball. "Tonight's the night."
Once he entered the venue, he pushed himself close to the front of the stage, ready for "go." His dream came true, too, as Coyne rolled over his raised hands. Fans screamed in excitement.
"Why am I
really here?" asked Waltman. "Wayne's hair. I'm serious. Write that down." Coyne's trademark, Einstein-esque, salt-and-pepper mane is an attraction all its own, she said.
Thompson agreed, saying "It's so awesome, I'm coming back to see it again tomorrow!"
One-man show New Fumes opened the concert with a sonic blastula that soon evolved into a ear-tingling cascade of whining guitar, effects pedals, samples, loops, distorted vocals and keyboards. It was as spine-tingling as it was a pop-friendly, retro-80s-futuristic, inchoate set, loosely tethered by mind-meld to his rapt audience.
Lips keyboardist and multiple-instrumentalist Drozd even perched at the corner of his stage, taking pictures of New Fumes as he performed.
Drozd eventually moved back to the wings, nodding his head in rhythm with the eccentric beats. Lips frontman Coyne soon joined Drozd, grinning widely, mouth agape, enjoying New Fumes' short opening set.
