If Flaming Lips lead singer Wayne Coyne wasn’t a rock star, it’d be easy to see him as a preacher.
Mind you, he wouldn’t be filling pulpits in Oklahoma City (where the band hails from), but more likely he’d have kept the legacies of Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass and other counterculture legends alive and well.
Wayne Coyne believes in the transformational power of marijuana legalization. He believes that love is more powerful than hate. And he’ll leave your mind splayed all over the dance floor after the show.
Why the Lips chose to have their only concert in Oregon at the McDonald Theatre in little Eugene is debatable.
It would have sold out in Portland just the same. But, Eugene is perfect for The Flaming Lips.
The history that this town encompasses and the message that this band has preached for over the last two-and-half-decades seem to coincide all too well.
However, in reality the psychedelic, liberal motifs that both entities embody probably didn’t factor into that decision.
There are about 20,000 more people in their early 20s in Eugene right now, because of the influx of students, and the majority of those young people have heard of, or are aware of, the status of The Flaming Lips.
Unfortunately, this is a statistic that looks like an uncanny financial opportunity for marketing agents.
Regardless, the show was still among the best that Eugene has seen.
A Flaming Lips concert pushes you to believe that an acid-tripping population could stop environmental decline. It opens up a new world of concert experience that, unless you’ve previously experienced a Lips concert, is a visually stimulating, sensual adventure in interspace exploration.
Just imagine:
You’re embracing your best friend as Coyne’s singing “Do you realize … that everyone you know someday will die? / And instead of saying all of your goodbyes let them know / You realize that life goes fast / It’s hard to make the good things last…”
Sparklers are firing off, confetti is streaming all around and those good vibes that Eugene lives off of are free-flowing from the random person next to you to your friend, who you’re still clinging on to.
Perhaps, the most amazing thing about the band is how true they are to their lyrics. They truly have no egos.
After their Eugene gig, the band stuck around for the loyal few that knew that they would come back, to sign autographs and chat for a few minutes.
One fan after the concert said it best: “They were so chill. No egos. Wayne talked to everyone individually; not hurried at all, like he had all the time in the world.”
Even a fanatical fan, with some self-purported drumming abilities, was dealt with by Coyne with that same love and empathy that he sings of, telling the guy that he’d take a listen to his demo.
With bands like this, though, it’s easy to distort what’s real. They all have jobs, families, issues, weird passions and obsessions. They’re just people. Worried just as much about the frailty of this life and with the warding off of the next.
And, inadvertently, this too was displayed at the show.
When Coyne was attempting to exit his famous bubble, which he literally rolls over crowds with, the struggle between him, the polyurethane and the roadie attempting to assist him showed that no matter the liberal, altruistic, life-loving philosophy that they preach, there still exists an innate struggle that’s poignantly aware of impending demise.
Appreciating The Flaming Lips isn’t about that, though. It’s about knowing that this is all we have and sucking every last drop of psychedelic amazingness out of it.
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