Here's Senior Editor Eric Snider's review of Saturday's Flaming Lips show:
Flaming Lips deliver music, spectacle, message — and lots of confetti
By Eric Snider
Photo by Phil Bardi; click on the picture to see others.
When a team of archaeological diggers in the year 3521 unearths Jannus Landing, you can be assured they’ll find confetti. It will be there courtesy of a rock concert held on April 14, 2007, when a band from Oklahoma City called The Flaming Lips let loose dozens of cannon-blasts of the stuff.
The Lips extravaganza — the group’s first Bay area appearance in 13 years, and the first that could qualify as a true event — goes down as one special night in the history of a venue that’s been largely known for no-frills productions. Frontman Wayne Coyne and his pranksters rolled out a smoking megaphone, roadies in superhero costumes, a half-dozen side-stage Santa Clauses (countered on the other side by dancing space girls), an ozone layer of dry-ice smoke, lasers and a large video screen flashing hallucinatory images (and real-time close-ups of Coyne’s face caught by a minicam).
All of this would’ve been of little consequence, however, if The Flaming Lips failed to deliver the musical goods. I’m glad to report that the trio (aided by a hired-gun drummer) ably re-created the densely layered sonic dreamscapes of their albums and goosed it with heightened energy and an improvisatory looseness that never once made the show seem scripted.
This article appears in Apr 11-17, 2007.