Flaming Lips Raise Up the Mission Ballroom

Photos: Billy Thieme

From a conversation about a mechanical bird to the many explosions of confetti, Wayne Coyne led the latest version of The Flaming Lips through an ecstatic two-hour set last Monday night that kept the promise that COVID forced them to make just about two years’ earlier, and a packed Mission Ballroom loved every minute of it.

The Flaming Lips offered tunes from across a 40-year history.

Almost 30 years to the day from one of the first times The Flaming Lips played a show in Denver, the current version of the band joined Coyne on the huge stage and launched into “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion” from 2006’s At War With the Mystics. They immediately shot the level of excitement in the room straight up, and never let up until Coyne threw a 20-foot-tall inflatable chrome balloon letters exclaiming “FUCK YEAH DENVER” onto the crowd to be torn to pieces as they walked off the stage.

In between, the band – touring with six members now – played an impressive set full of tunes from all across those 40 years of Flaming Lips history, bringing back fond memories for longtime fans, and creating what will undoubtedly become indelible others for new fans.

This show was originally scheduled for a date in 2020, just about the time the world changed, and we all started the long, weird path through a protracted period with almost no live music. During that time, The Lips kept trying to make things happen, never giving up on trying to play live. Taking advantage of the huge, life-sized balloon that Coyne had been using for years to walk across the tops of the ecstatic bodies all over the world, they set up shows that offered individual balloons for fans – and groups of fans – all lined up in various venues. Coyne used the same life-sized balloon for much of Monday’s show, too – maybe for nostalgia?

Finally, the band was able to play “universal birthday parties” in front of their fans again, despite the fact that the virus is still a force trying to drive us apart. But their message of unity in beauty has never changed.

This band tried so hard through the lockdown months to continue spreading their message of love, peace, and punk rock, and never stopped making the music. This Monday night show was a night of relief from the separation we’d all been feeling.

Coyne kept calling for the crowd to step up and scream louder, as if we’d all been out of practice from so many months without. He reminded us many times about the fact that we’d all been deprived, and promised that he and the band would do everything they could to make this show “..the best show we’ve ever played.”

After the opening song, they launched into their biggest hit by far, and poured the beauty of “Do You Realize?” on us all, as if to satisfy the years of waiting. A few songs later, as Coyne encouraged the crowd, a huge, pink robot inflated mid-stage and once it stood easily over 20 feet tall and the band launched into “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt.1.” The audience then lost its giant mind.

It was beautiful to see Coyne and the band full of the same love, vision, and goodness.

Pouring through older songs like “Moth in the Incubator,” “Oh My Pregnant Head,” “Love Yer Brain,” and their first big hit “She Don’t Use Jelly” kept the older half of the audience enraptured, while the Lips sprinkled in some of the newer tunes to entice the younger ones. Hearing the classics from The Soft Bulletin like “Waitin’ for a Superman” and “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” made for a sometimes tearful nostalgia, and closing with “Race for the Prize” sealed the deal.

As a longtime fan, it was beautiful to see Coyne and the band full of the same love, vision, and goodness they brought to punk rock almost 40 years ago, and then some. Their positivity, hope, and downright love for all of us in that room – for all of us everywhere – was as palpable now as it was in those early days, and it felt even more right now than it did then – if that’s possible. Maybe we just needed it more now. I’m so glad I was there to see it happen, and to be reminded again of what’s really important: you, me, and the music.

Flaming Lips Playlist:

1. My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion
2. Do You Realize??
3. How??
4. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1
5. Moth in the Incubator
6. Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell
7. Oh, My Pregnant Head
8. Waitin’ for a Superman
9. Happy Birthday to You (cover)
10. Love Yer Brain
11. She Don’t Use Jelly
12. Flowers of Neptune 6
13. Dinosaurs on the Mountain
14. Feeling Yourself Disintegrate
    Encore:
15. Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear
16. Worm Mountain
17. All We Have Is Now
18. Race for the Prize

Playlist courtesy SetlistFM