The full-effect of The Flaming Lips‘ live experience is not designed to thrive in small club presentations.  If the group ever actually did manage to cram themselves onto a small stage, along with all of the various contraptions and structures involved in their overblown stage show, the local fire marshals would probably lose their damn minds anyway.  Their productions do well on an outdoor stage, which lands them in various spots on the festival circuit, both in the US as well as overseas.  If you’ve seen any footage or images from their performances, you’ve likely been as sucked in as I have.  I’ve heard the stories and have seen day-glo, cinematic, confetti-filled photographs strewn across sites like Flickr for years, but had never been able to witness the madness first hand, until just recently.  This time, the Washington stop took place at Redmond‘s Marymoor Park, just outside of Seattle.

Marymoor is a 640 acre “active use” State park that holds occasional concerts during the summer months.  We pulled into the grass parking lot and walked towards the fenced-off area where the concert stage was located.  I went to the little toll-booth-style, wooden Will-Call hut to find out if my photo pass request went through.  It hadn’t.  My homie Sean Prince entered the show and I simply tossed my camera bag over the janky metal gate and into his hands on the inside.  At the entrance were cops standing with event staff, alongside the sort of cafeteria tables that amateur wrestlers slam each other through on the regular.  There was a half-ass bag search and then a cop, who had noticed my girlfriend’s subway sandwich in her tote, asked, “Ham and Cheese?“  He was wrong, and he chuckled as if to say, “Hey, I’m the fun cop and I’m hep to what you kids are diggin’ on.“  Meanwhile, I was thinking about how easy it would have been to sneak in a kilo or a shotgun.  They didn’t expect anything too crazy to happen at this place and it was a stark contrast from the recent PHISH lot that I had been on a couple of weeks prior.  The environment had a cheesy, family-oriented 4th of July picnic vibe to it.  People sat on blankets in the grass and purchased drinks from an espresso bar in the venue.  The opening act was already performing as we walked through the gates. Read the rest of this entry →