Beck and His Backing Band: The Flaming Lips

I saw Beck play in Mershon Auditorium on the Ohio State campus. This was in support of Sea Change.

His backing band was the Flaming Lips. Not bad.

Wayne Coyne split his time on stage between playing guitar and encouraging the audience to cheer.

Beck mentioned that the last time he had played Columbus, it was at Bernie's. I remember that show. Bernie's could fit 100 people and there was a line around the block. I didn't go.

The other two times I saw Beck was at Lollapalooza '95 and on his Midnight Vultures tour several years later.

The Mershon show was the best of the three.

The Flaming Lips at the Newport

The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin didn't make sense to me until I saw it performed live.

In a half-full Newport Music Hall, the Lips put on a show with Sebadoh and Robyn Hitchcock. You could also rent a set of FM headphones as part of an experiment along the lines of their Zaireeka project. I opted to listen the old-fashioned way.

For this tour, the band played without guitarist Ronald Jones as a three-piece. Steven Drozd jumped back and forth between drums, keyboards, guitars, and samplers. Wayne Coyne played way less guitar than other times I had seen him.

Also new was the projection screen behind the band. This is where the new album began to take shape and make sense to me. They projected scenes from cult classic films as well as their own warped home videos. The performance was really low tech and a precursor to the extravaganza yet to come.

The Flaming Lips and Xmas Lights

I once saw the Flaming Lips at Stache's. They played in front of what felt like forty billion white Christmas lights. I still have the t-shirt from that show. It featured an alien on the front and read "The Flaming Lips Believe" and on the back was a picture of Santa with the words "Okla City".

Bob Pollard's Drunk Again

Bob Pollard has been known to drink a lot while performing on stage with his band, Guided By Voices. I saw him last one song with another band, The Flaming Lips.

The band packed itself onto the tiny stage at Stache's and began to rip through "Motor Away" as Pollard joined them with a beer in hand. The problem was that Bob was singing but there were no vocals to be heard. Eventually, he figured out that the mic had been switched off.

As Mr. Pollard literally slumped to another side of the stage (a spot in which he'd stay the rest of the evening), Wayne Coyne asked if he had forgotten the words to the song.