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The Flaming Lips Tickets – Flaming Lips Make Rare Appearance at Voodoo

Taking the stage before festival closer Lenny Kravitz, the Flaming Lips were the second-to-last act to perform at New Orleans’ Voodoo Music Experience in City Park during Halloween weekend. The self-professed “Oklahoma psychedelic alternative rock band” released its latest fever dream of an album, Embryonic, in mid-October, but its Voodoo Music Experience gig was one of the band’s few American dates since the album’s arrival. 
The Flaming Lips’ show in the Big Easy opened with a trippy video of a woman dancing around before lying down, at which point a bright light shone on a certain region of the female anatomy and the members of the band emerged onto the stage. While the rather strange introduction (but hey, it’s all relative when concerning the Flaming Lips) was fitting considering the band’s 12th album is titled Embryonic, one female fan took it to heart and stormed the stage naked later on in the show. Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne played along until she was ushered off the stage!
Also during the show, Coyne told the audience how relieved he was that the Bush administration was no longer in charge and vowed to play “Taps” until the war in Afghanistan is over, joking with Flaming Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd, “Looks like we may be playing this song forever, Steven.” After crowd-surfing in a giant plastic bubble, Coyne recalled the last time the Flaming Lips played at the Voodoo Music Experience (2006) and said to the audience, “It’s just so perfect to be alive right now, don’t you think?” The band capped off their performance with the aptly-optimistic tune “Do You Realize.”
Although the Flaming Lips didn’t break into the mainstream until the mid-1990s, the band formed in Oklahoma City in 1983 and unsurprisingly made its live debut at a local transvestite club. After releasing an eponymous debut album, the lineup shifted. More lineup changes occurred throughout the remainder of the ‘80s until the band’s frequent calls to Warner Bros. paid off, and the major label signed the Flaming Lips in 1991, by which point the band had churned out four albums.
When the Flaming Lips’ commercial debut Hit to Death in the Future Head surfaced in 1992, it failed to makes as big a splash as the band hoped. Sublime Transmissions from the Satellite Heart followed in 1993 and the single “She Don’t Use Jelly” became a sleeper hit, propelling the band into the Top 40. The follow-up to Transmissions, 1995’s Clouds Taste Metallic, spawned a string of hits but nonetheless didn’t achieve the commercial success of its predecessor.
After a few more albums that solidified the Flaming Lips’ status as a cult favorite, the band released Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots in 2002 to critical and popular acclaim (the album also contained perhaps the band’s biggest hit, “Do You Realize”). A tour with Beck and a documentary titled The Fearless Freaks followed, and then the band released At War with the Mystics in 2006. The album earned a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Album in 2007, and the Flaming Lips took home the Grammy for Best Engineered Alternative Album, Non-Classical that year, as well.
Although the Flaming Lips have played only scattered dates so far in support of the follow-up to Mystics titled Embryonic, the band is set to embark on a full-fledged tour in 2010. Check out StubHub.com for The Flaming Lips tickets to see Wayne Coyne & Co. live.