The Flaming Lips perform in bubbles for people watching in bubbles.

This is the Flaming Lips when they were fresh on the college indie scene in the early 1990’s.

This is what they are looking like a few decades and many awesome albums later…

The band has grown a rightfully earned reputation as one of the most magical and imaginative live acts around. A typical Flaming Lips show, if there is such a thing, can include a wide array of accessories like balloons, people in animal costumes, extravagant lightshows, and any number of surprises. And of course, an extensive catalog of thoughtful, indie rock masterpieces.

The Flaming Lips are, and always have been, under-rated. Not to their fans, of course, who have been in on the secret for decades.

Which is the secret of The Flaming Lips (aside from the obvious musical talent)… they have endured. They have survived. They have grown and continue to find ways to reach their fans… even in the middle of a pandemic.

At a recent show in the bands hometown of Oklahoma City, the Lips managed to pull off the impossible in January of 2021… they played a live show to a live audience.

All it took was a little over a 100 bubbles. And some silver balloons that spelled out ‘FUCK YOU COVID-19’ for good measure.

While it was a relatively short 13-song set, it was packed with favorites.

The setlist for the show was:
Race for the Prize
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1
Flowers of Neptune 6 (Live Debut)
True Love Will Find You in the End (Daniel Johnston Cover)
She Don’t Use Jelly
Will You Return/ When You Come Down
The Gash
All We Have is Now
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate
There Should Be Unicorns
Are You a Hypnotist?
Waitin’ for a Superman
Do You Realize??

This wasn’t the first time The Flaming Lips have found themselves performing safely from inside protective bubbles. The band pulled the same tactics on their recent Fallon and Colbert performances.

Frontman Wayne Coyne said he came up with the idea for a bubble concert the first day he went into lockdown. “I made a little cartoon. I drew myself. It was The Flaming Lips in 2019, and I’m the only one in a space bubble, and I’m on stage,” he recalled. “Then I drew The Flaming Lips in 2020. I’m in a space bubble, but so is everyone else. Of course, I would think of that, because isn’t this absurd?”

Check out some of the live show here:

And just because… here is one my personal favorite Flaming Lips tracks “Mountain Side” from when they were just banging out fuzzy indie rock in Oklahoma basements. This song is awesome if for no other reason than the lyric, “And I hold your electric toaster while
Standin’ in your bathtub of love…:

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