The Flaming Lips @ Clutch Cargos, Pontiac MI – 10/1/07

Nick Meador

As my third time seeing The Flaming Lips approached, I was most excited about the nature of the venue. The other two occasions had been at All Good Festival 2005 (in West Virginia) and Lollapalooza 2006 (in Chicago) – both huge expanses of outdoor area.

Clutch Cargos, on the other hand, is a teeny-tiny converted church in downtown Pontiac, Mich. With that said, it’s a very beautiful venue, even though they didn’t allow any cameras (these pictures and video clips were taken very sneakily). I just couldn’t imagine how the walls would contain the Lips’ stage carnival. And Wayne Coyne, the band’s lead singer, addressed this during the show. He said they had been to Clutch Cargos before, a long time ago, and someone asked if they would bring all their stuff into that small place. His reply was something like, “What kind of f***ing question is that?! Of course we will.”

And they brought all of it. About 15 three-foot-wide red balloons were thrust onto the audience as the band opened with their classic “Race For The Price,” from their 1999 classic The Soft Bulletin. Then came the streamer rockets, which got attached to the overhead lights eventually making the venue feel like a jungle with vines hanging everywhere. Don’t forget the 20-foot video screen behind the stage, or Coyne’s strobe light that hangs on his chest, or the green wavy laser projecting from behind them, or the repeating blasts of confetti into the crowd, or the few bigger five-foot balloons thrown into the audience.

In fact, the only elements not used were Coyne’s giant ball that he normally uses to walk onto the audience – replacing the “crowd surf” with a “crowd roll” – and the alien ship they installed above the stage at recent shows. In its place, they passed out hundreds of laser pointers to people, and Coyne asked that all the lasers be pointed at him during a certain song.

Other song highlights came from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, such as “Fight Test” and “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt 1.” Coyne said he finally realized the meaning of the second song after playing it live, and that it’s about a friend who will never give up on you and stays by your side no matter what.

They even played a song from Zaireeka, their highly experimental four-disc album from 1997. Before playing it, Coyne said, “I think that was when we finally went insane, and I hope we never recover our sanity.” And they never leave out “She Don’t Use Jelly,” their first mainstream hit from 1993’s Transmissions From The Satellite Heart.

Fans of Bulletin and Yoshimi might have been a tad disappointed with their overall set list. Most songs came from their 2006 album At War With The Mystics, like the equally constrictive “Free Radicals” and “The W.A.N.D.” It’s not that these new songs are bad – it’s just that their previous two albums had something more, as Hunter S. Thompson might put it. They touched that impossible place between sanity and insanity that few manage to reach, and fewer ever return from in one piece.

As usual, Coyne led the evening through frequent discussions with the audience. He showed the crowd his fake trumpet, which actually contained a recording of “Taps,” the song played at military funerals. His point was to demonstrate that there aren’t enough trumpet players in the military to play at all the funerals, so they have to fake it with these recordings.

He said that, with any luck, The Flaming Lips will be the only ones playing this song soon. Then the band – Steven Drozd (guitar/piano), Michael Ivins (bass) and their tour drummer – played along with it for a dramatic, emotional moment in the show. Coyne talked often about the main point of their show: people who see the Lips are excited and happy about life.

And he’s right! The fact that they can cheer people up, if only for a few hours, is a very special thing indeed. The Flaming Lips are one of the most important bands of this era, and it was an honor to see them in such an intimate environment. Now lets just hope that they get snagged for Lollapalooza 2008.