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Psychedelic rockers the Flaming Lips invade the House of Blues

By Chris March

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Aug. 31, 2006

The Lips: Steven Drozd, Wayne Coyne and Michael Ivins.

The Flaming Lips are holed up in their Oklahoma City "compound" building a life-size UFO from scratch when bassist Michael Ivins phones in to chat about the group's upcoming gig at the House of Blues on Sept. 6.

"We'll have this big spaceship that will land [on stage], we'll get out of it and it will turn into our lightshow," Ivins tells AC Weekly, referring to their alien craft which may or may not land in AC when they come to town. "We're going to try and figure out how to make it so that we can tour with it. It's one of those things where we don't know until we do it."

Experimenting with such wildly off-kilter ideas is nothing new for Ivins, singer/showman Wayne Coyne, and multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd. Through the years, as the Flaming Lips, they've tested ideas such as headphone concerts and boombox orchestras before sharpening their show into the spectacular performance it has become.

"Me and my wife try to live our lives in a way of 'Hey, here's this idea and here's this idea' and just use all of them," says Ivins. "Even with the food we eat, we eat all of it.

"As far as with [our] music," he adds, "I think we look at it more as 'Sure, there's all these different cultures -- ways of looking at things, ways of living -- but we're all human beings,' and I think there's some basic things that are the same for everyone that are just universal."

And he knows what he's talking about. When Ivins, 43, was little, his father was in the military, so he was raised in places like Japan and Hawaii before settling in Oklahoma where he met Coyne at a party and formed the Flaming Lips. And what is more "universal" than guesting in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise, which he did last year.

"That was a veritable dream come true," says Ivins, a self-proclaimed "huge fan of science fiction," on his acting debut. "I've been watching Star Trek since I was a kid."

Once the Lips finish constructing their own starship, they will load their bus and hit the road for their first proper tour of the States behind their latest release, At War With The Mystics (Warner Bros.), released earlier this year.

"I think we've been to Atlantic City once before," says Ivins. "We played some weird tiny club."

But you probably will not find them pulling slots or sitting around poker tables when they trek through AC. "I don't think any of us have the gambling bug or anything, but if you got 20 bucks, it's kind of entertaining for a little while," says Ivins.

When they take the stage at the House of Blues, however, the Lips will likely be more than "kind of entertaining." Pink bunnies hopping around with guitars, gangs of dancing Santa Clauses, singing hand puppets, torrential showers of confetti, megaphones and psychedelic light shows are the sort of extravagancies fans have come to expect from a "typical" Flaming Lips show. This whimsical display of performance bolstered by sense-refining pop songs has made the band's traveling circus take off as one of the most talked-about bonanzas in live music today.

And take off the Lips have. Though they've been a band since 1983, this year has been especially memorable for the group. In April, they released Mystics, their 11th and largest commercial success yet, which peaked at no. 11 on the Billboard 200. The new lushly orchestrated tunes wield the group's most idiosyncratic and delectable pop yet with powerful singles like "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" and "The W.A.N.D." in tow.

They spent most of the summer sharing festival stages with the likes of Bob Dylan, the Who and Gnarls Barkley. "It has been fun really, having the opportunity to play a lot of these cool shows [most recently Lollapalooza]," says Ivins, looking back on the year.

After the excitement of 2006, what could possibly be left for the Lips to conquer? In addition to a live album, which is in the works, the band's big screen debut, Christmas On Mars, is finally nearing completion after five years of work. "It's finished as far as filming goes," says Ivins of the band's low budget sci-fi starring all of the Lips.

"We still have the soundtrack to write and some editing and things like that, but probably around SXSW [the Texas music festival held in March] we will have something we can present to the world.

"I'm sure we're going to be working on 10,000 other things at the same time," he adds. "Even last night we were standing around hemming and hawing at this UFO with desperation. And desperation seems to be the mother of invention."

Even if they fail to get their spaceship off the ground in time, the Flaming Lips will come to Atlantic City to deliver a memorable show of oddball rock 'n' roll, no matter which universe or culture you come from.

The Flaming Lips at the House of Blues, Wednesday, Sept. 6, with openers Oh No! Oh My! and Lake Trout. Show time is 9pm, doors open at 8pm. Tickets are $39.50-$46.50. Call 236-BLUE for more info.