2020 has basically stopped us from having the lives we had before the pandemic, and obviously, those of us in the music world is really missing concerts. We have thousands of music venues, road crews, and musicians suffering while we wait out the storm but alternative veterans the Flaming Lips are using an old trick from their live shows to still put on safe shows. Singer Wayne Coyne has spent a good chunk of the band’s legendary shows inside a human-size bouncing ‘hamster ball’ which has allowed him to roll on top of the crowd, creating this incredible interactive visual experience, and it’s just fun. Now the Lips have said ‘why not take everyone in the crowd and put them in their own bubbles?! Yes, a bubble concert is a thing, a very very 2020 thing now.
The mini-show was held in the band’s hometown Oaklahoma City at Criterion on Tuesday. The venue normally holds 4,000 people under normal circumstances but for this special test run, it held about 100 space bubbles with a crew in safety gear helping out. The entire four song performance was shot for a video following the band’s latest release ‘American Head’. You can see some Instagram pics of what this video shoot looked liked below.
https://twitter.com/dayziiieee/status/1316104502081138688
Just your everyday, run of the mill space bubble tutorial with the Flaming Lips crew. pic.twitter.com/jmTpq5nabk
— Nathan Poppe (@NathanPoppe) October 14, 2020
The band did an early version of this in June in a taped performance for ‘the Late Show’ on CBS in June. The first line of the song really makes you think of the race we are all hoping to win sometime sooner than later. The proverbial finish line will be crossed when we all live and enoy our lives safely again. Let’s get there and be mindful of each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUCzn_eMFF4
