I Am Legend

Speaking like a quirky science professor to a lab full of students, or like the cool dad showing his teenage son and friends his old Pink Floyd records, Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne obliged the audience assembled at Cornell University's Barton Hall for his band's concert there on April 18th to take the show into their own hands and make it the "second most legendary concert ever" at the venue. The titleholder would of course be the show the Grateful Dead played there in May of 1977 -- an event quite unlikely to be trumped, considering, at the very least, its placement in the timeline of rock and roll, and, at most, that its memory has become so decorated with immortality and magnitude that its being one of the "greatest shows in history" has practically been established as fact. I was at first skeptical of Coyne's repeated coaxing that the crowd deify the show; can something really become legendary by intention? Or does the definition of legendary entail a certain prerequisite of spontaneity? Either way, very few events can be deemed such before, let's say, a decade after their occurrence, so we'll have to let this one marinate for a little while before we can make an accurate judgment. Suffice it to say, there were enough crazy effects, lights, balloons, laser pointers, psychotic video images, confetti, megaphones, bangs, booms, gizmos, gadgets, and, oh yeah, totally awesome music to make the show something memorable for everyone there.

I'm speaking as someone who has come to appreciate the Flaming Lips relatively late in their 20-plus year career, but the thing that occurred to me during the show is how seriously they take themselves as a musical act. That's not to say that the members take themselves seriously as individuals -- in fact, from what I can tell, anyone who takes his or herself too seriously in the music industry won't last very long (I'm looking at you, Scott Stapp). But plenty of artists take their musical output, and performances, quite seriously. For those who've carved out their homes amongst the dense lowland forests of psych-prog and art rock, as the Lips have, I suppose it's a common theme. It's a delicate approach; if handled improperly, you'll fall flat on your face. While it's entirely conceivable that many artists might've stepped up to the mic and said something like, "Hey everyone, tonight we're going to make this show LEGENDARY, wooo!", I don't think many would have meant it as literally as Mr. Coyne did. He meant what he said. Moreover, he truly believed that his band had what it would take to accomplish it. You might jump to classify such an attitude as arrogance; as irreverent hubris. However, I see it as a confidence earned with experience; swagger. He knows that in their performance, there is power: there are elements to move people, to perplex and to astound, and to create palpable memories and emotions that last longer than the show. Wayne Coyne and his bandmates take the Flaming Lips, a living, breathing force unto its own, very seriously.

Not from the show at Barton, but excellent quality:


And for all his showmanship, what with the laser pointers distributed to the audience, who were asked to point them all on Coyne at one point, the inexplicable pair of ten-foot creature costumes that ambled onto the sides of the stage at one point, his trademark plastic-ball crowdsurfing to open the show -- the man is quite human. I don't just mean so in the obvious sense of connecting on some personal level with the audience, which damn near any performer who isn't rigid as a telephone pole or part of some elaborate theatrics usually manages to do. Coyne is impulsive and fickle onstage, one minute fixated on some handheld balloon-blowing firearm, the next bashing on a cymbal. He's having a great time, but is always looking for ways to make it better. It gives the performance an improvisational feel. All of the elaborate props and effects are just a part of some massive grab-bag of birthday-party gimmicks, any of which might come exploding out on a whim. When they do, there's no real plan from there -- it's up to the Flaming Lips, their frenetic frontman, and the audience to decide what to do with them.

The crowd at Barton Hall received the approach quite warmly. If there was any doubt on the show's legendary-ness, it wasn't to be found amongst the throngs of cheering collegiates. All the props and goodies, they really ate that shit up. Not that you can really go wrong giving out hundreds of free laser pointers to an audience before a concert and encouraging their generous use. Still, it was aptly placed and felt natural. For those hard-to-pleasers less dazzled by flashy theatrics, there was no shortage of excellent music. The band played a set balanced with material from their latest Lips-proper album Embryonic, a few of the recognizable staples from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and "She Don't Use Jelly." Making an only half-subtle attempt to play to the audience, obscurer material was omitted; in fact the performance included no songs from 1999 breakthrough The Soft Bulletin. But what would you expect -- it's a concert on a college campus in the middle of Goddamned nowhere, you've got to connect to them.

If there was a low point of the show, it was the first encore (and luckily not the last). Understudies Stardeath and White Dwarf, who had opened the show, joined the Lips onstage and performed a cover of Dark Side of the Moon closing suite "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse". A couple months ago the two groups collaborated and put out a complete cover of the iconic album, so it made sense to play some of those songs (I was surprised, at first, that more weren't included; in hindsight, it probably makes sense for the reasons explained in the previous paragraph). I have not listened to any of this project yet. However, I have to say that I was confused, and disappointed, with the handling of these two songs at the concert. Where "Brain Damage" is supposed to be a bubbly, deluded comment on the surreality of life, it was here treated with meaningless, minimal organ chords; "Eclipse" is supposed to floor and overwhelm with a wall of unsubsiding imagery, while here its momentum was destroyed by the instrumental pause after each phrase. If my opinion on these matters is at all credible, I'd go so far as to say that Floyd was misinterpreted. But, as I explained to my friends after the show, who am I to be judging an interpretation of Dark Side of the Moon, much less from a guy who was around when it came out?



Whatever internal debate was raging within me about whether I actually wanted to go so far as to declare the Dark Side covers failures was quickly displaced and likely forgotten as soon as the Flaming Lips returned to the stage for their second encore. In what became a quite sobering and heartfelt moment, Coyne explained that the father of one of the roadies had recently passed away. At the funeral, the song about to be performed had been played -- and for fear of instilling unhappy memories in the youth, he once more implored the crowd to make the moment an uplifting and memorable one. The song was "Do You Realize??" and it turned out to be a thoroughly moving performance. The intent was honest and the emotion was wholly genuine. Coincidentally or otherwise, its juxtaposition with the first encore was interesting, and, simply, perfect: while Dark Side of the Moon ultimately concludes that human nature is inherently whimsical, cantankerous, and cruel, "Do You Realize??" declares the contrary. It represents a sort of at-the-end-of-the-day the-sun'll-come-out-tomorrow outlook on life and the human race, and expresses confidence that there's at least some shred of goodness to be found somewhere in every heart. The enormous screen behind the stage displayed the feed from the miniature camera mounted pointed inwards on the microphone throughout, and there were tears visible in the singer's eyes. And at the end of the riveting performance, amidst thundering cheers, flashing lights, and the snowstorm of confetti being jettisoned from the massive onstage cannons, Coyne smiled and waved and said "I know you do," ostensibly a response to the question posed in the song's title, and then was gone. Who knows what they'll say in ten years -- but that night, he was a legend.