Wish You Were There With... The Flaming Lips

Yesterday in Columbus before The Flaming Lips started playing, during set-up, Wayne Coyne came out on stage a few times to rouse the crowd a bit with handfuls of confetti and the popping off of a couple streamer cannons and I said to myself: Within ten years this guy will be smashing watermelons on stage ala Gallagher via the Bob Ross/Jeff Lynne 1978 afro. But, once they started in with the vocoder and the lights and the balloons and the dancing Santas and the addictive pop melodies and Wayne himself descending gently from the hazy sky in a crystal clear bubble -- dancing, tumbling -- across the hands in the good seats it was virtually impossible to be any kind of cynical.

The best part about a Flaming Lips show is this incredible uplifting sense of positivity that engulfs your entire body. It brings you back to your childhood when you couldn't be bothered with such horrifying concepts as time or war or even your own mortality -- only giggles and swiping at bouncy balloons and dancing giddily around. That to me is religion and probably the closest I’ll ever come to attending an organized religious event again. There were times when I felt like Wayne was some sort of fanatic preacher at his strobe-light blinking pulpit. His messages of love and kindness and appreciation for others made me smile from ear-to-ear for an hour-and-a-half. I think his words were especially poignant to me because in the last year I have had two friends and my godmother pass away. When the skies finally opened up during “Do You Realize?” I was feeling so good that I actually started crying. I must have looked so comical with that big goofy grin on my face and tears streaming down my cheeks, but I didn't care how I looked or whether or not you even think the Lips are cool anymore. Anyway, not to get too melodramatic, but it was just such a blissful (some might even say spiritual) experience, I had to gush for a while.

I missed openers The Magic Numbers because I thought the doors were an hour later than they actually were. That was a bummer. I talked to a few people who went in knowing nothing about them and said they were blown away. I don’t doubt it. Buy their record, it’s the Mamas & the Papas 2006, and it’s fucking brilliant.

Sonic Youth also played an early set which was a solid mixture of new and old. It was cool to see Pavement’s Mark Ibold sitting in on bass. Highlights for me were “Incinerate”, “Turquoise Boy” and “Pink Steam” – which I love because it is such a cool piece musically that you forget there aren’t any vocals until over five minutes into the song. I can now check off another band on my list of “must sees before I or they die”.

I’m so happy today I feel sort of silly about it.