INSTANT KARMA! THIS MONTH’S REVELATIONS FROM THE WORLD OF UNCUT FEATURING... Sylvain Sylvain | Graham Nash | Blondie | Nathan Salsburg
IT was The Flaming Lips’ craziest scheme to date, but somehow they triumphed once again. On January 22 and 23, with live music shut down almost everywhere, they played a pair of euphoric Covid-safe shows at The Criterion in their hometown of Oklahoma City to an audience safely ensconced inside 100 plastic space bubbles. After 10 months of lockdowns and social distancing, Wayne Coyne describes the mood inside the venue as “a joyous eruption of, ‘This is really happening!’ I could see people losing their minds a little bit, like, ‘Oh, we don’t have to worry about getting contaminated - as long as we’re in this bubble, we can scream, we can sweat, we can do whatever we want, because it’s not affecting our neighbour.’”
Each band member was also isolated within their own bubble, although Coyne briefly emerged, masked-up, to ride a glowing fibreglass unicorn and hold up a giant inflatable sign reading ‘Fuck You Covid-19’. “We didn’t feel like we had to be over-serious, [nor did we] act like it’s a party,” he says, of the shows’ unique atmosphere. “It seemed like it was just in the right zone of: we care about each other, we understand that there’s joy in the world, we understand that there’s pain in the world. And I think that’s probably the greatest atmosphere for music, when people are all concerned about the same thing.”
Months of careful planning between band, venue and local authorities ensured no protocols were breached, although the situation did present a number of interesting challenges. “On the first night there was a group of three guys that drank too much, and one of them actually vomited in the space bubble. But they got out and the venue helped them clear it up. If you’re at a regular show and someone behind you throws up, I think it’s worse.”