Wayne Coyne Flames on

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The Flaming Lips frontman is excited to return to Atlantic City for two shows this weekend, one at the House of Blues and one at the Dave Matthews Band Caravan at Bader Field.

By Jeff Schwachter

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Jun. 22, 2011

The Flaming Lips

Oklahoma’s favorite son Wayne Coyne, a self-proclaimed freak and the leader of one of the most creative and exciting bands of the past 20 years — the Flaming Lips — is in town Thursday, June 23, at the House of Blues with his band to kick off the Dave Matthews Band Caravan weekend in Atlantic City.

The band Mariachi El Bronx will open for the Lips at the House of Blues (at Showboat) at 9pm. The following day, the start of the three-day Dave Matthews Band Caravan festival, with its 41 bands on three stages, the Flaming Lips are slated to perform at 6:45-8:05pm at the festival, being held at Bader Field.

The former airfield will also host Mariachi El Bronz earlier on Friday, June 24, for the band’s 4:14-5pm set. Coyne recently called in to speak with Atlantic City Weekly.

Aside from recently playing a cemetery in Los Angeles, and constantly playing with your band the Flaming Lips, you are also involved in a movie project?

Yeah, it’s a movie being shot in Oklahoma City, in Norman. It’s this self’produced thing written by this Heather woman, I forget her name. The person who is helping them organize some of the local casting and stuff, they were asking, ‘Hey, do you have everyone for your movie?’ And they said, ‘Oh, we’re looking for this and that.’ And there’s a part in it where they were like, ‘You ought to get Wayne for that! I know him.’ And so, I went down and met with them and stuff. It was pretty fun.

Do you think you will be in it?

I think my scene is scheduled [to shoot on June 27], so I keep checking to see if the whole thing is falling apart or what is going to happen. So, it seems like it’s going to happen. I mean I don’t know if I will get cut out of it but…

Will that be your first role on the silver screen?

I’ve done little things, but I don’t think I’ve ever made it in. I’ve always been curious as to how people make movies. We, of course, made our own movie, which we were in. But I think so. I think the shooting is a lot more than I would like. But I’m always hopeful that it turns out interesting.

How were the cemetery concerts the Flaming Lips did for two nights last week in Los Angeles?

We met with them a couple of months back and we had been talking about doing these shows since probably last November, and I met with them a couple of months back to go see what it’s all about. And in the beginning stages, it’s all about ideas and fun and wouldn’t this be cool. And then you get to that unfortunate stage where you’re like OK, now we actually have to do it. Doing all the work and organizing it all and hoping it all works out and the audience likes it — it’s all very stressful and a lot of work. We got there Sunday [June 12] and started to work really early Monday morning just setting it all up and making sure there was enough power. A lot of work, a lot of stress. But in the end, I think it all worked out. The feedback from the audience has been great so.

Yeah, and I read one review that said if you didn’t “enjoy yourself, you were probably dead.”

There you go.

So you’re pretty hands on with all of the tech stuff, like the sound?

Well, I think everybody should be. I think this idea that there are people who sing and play guitars and then there are people who do everything else; I think it just seems like a silly old-fashion notion. I think there’s an element of what we do that seems like what every other psychedelic punk-rock group does: you do your own thing. But doing your own thing means you do it, you don’t just sit there and hire a bunch of people to do it. So I’m always surprised when people notice that about us. I’m like: doesn’t everybody? We’ve done this for a long time; it would be hard for someone who is young and doesn’t have as much experience to do it. We’ve been organizing shows for a long time. But I wanted to do it, I really like creating it.

Right, it’s your vision.

Exactly.

This coming weekend you’ll be in Atlantic City, where you’ll be playing the first of four Dave Matthews Band Caravan festivals scheduled this summer around the country. Are you guys playing any of the other ones around the country?

We are, the one right outside of Chicago.

I saw you guys last July at the House of Blues at Showboat in Atlantic City — where you’ll be kicking off the whole DMBC weekend here in Atlantic City Thursday, June 23. There is a lot of visual, special effects stuff integrated into your show. Does all of it translate to the outdoor festivals as well?

Oh yeah! I think it’s mostly meant for that bigger stuff. We have a pretty gargantuan set up sometimes. In a place like the House of Blues, we use a more scaled down version of the set up. It’s really how it all came about. Little by little we were playing more of these bigger outdoor things where you’re playing outdoors to 10,000 people in a field and you gotta have stuff or else there’s nothing for them to see once its 11 at night. And we wanted that. Little by little we wanted to be like, ‘Well can we do a little bit more of a show?’ It’s a difficult thing because it’s a lot of stuff to bring into festivals, which usually has bands that are stripped down. Doing more stuff means you have to figure out how to set everything up in 30 minutes and say, ‘Hey look, here it is, bam.’ And hope it all works. And it usually does, I mean that’s where it’d be hard for someone who is really young to think: ‘I saw the Flaming Lips, I’m going to do what they did!’ It looks really easy. It’s that thing of setting up and getting it down and taking it one place to the next. It’s a lot of stuff to put up and take down.

CLICK HERE for a photo gallery of the Flaming Lips at the House of Blues last July.

So your taking stuff down and loading?

I’m there, but I’m not necessarily taking all the bolts out of the thing. That’s all part of the show, helping to set up. You can’t do a show unless you have your stuff and organizing it all so you can get one place to another. It’s stressful. I want the show to be as good as it possibly can be. The audience pays a lot of money and I want them to have a good time. This is our art, this is what we do, and this represents us. I want it to be as good as it can be. I don’t want to do all this work and then have something that’s out of our control go badly. There’s a lot we don’t have any say in that can make the concert experience not as fun. So, you want to do these shows with people who care as well. And I think the House of Blues place is great in that regard as well; it seems like the audience that is in there really likes the place.

How many trucks does the Flaming Lips bring around?

Well, the way we pack our trucks, our trucks are packed full of stuff, so we have two. But if you were a regular group carrying this amount of stuff, it’d probably be like five or six. A lot of regular groups don’t take their stuff apart. We take our stuff apart and pack the trucks. We’re just used to it because our stuff comes apart a lot, and because it goes to Europe and Asia. But we’re considering leaving some of it together and going to three trucks. But yeah, it’s kind of funny to think about, having these MIs that are carrying your [crazy set] stuff.

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