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Review: Beck with The Flaming Lips at the Universal Amphitheater 11.25.02 by pete nicely (Contains Spoilers!) "It must be someone's birthday," Wayne Coyne, lead singer of the Flaming Lips, says. It is difficult to imagine him less excited or confident about anything in the whole world. Here's a guy that's thrilled that at least one person in the over six thousand person audience in the Universal Amphitheater is celebrating a birthday. Onstage, Coyne is perpetually thrilled, celebrating sounds by conducting a perpetually thrilling show that melds live band with samples, tape loops, video, furry costumes, random people in furry costumes dancing holding flashlights, confetti and genius. "You may think this looks like a messed up parade, or a strange birthday of some sort," he tells the crowd after a few songs of the spectacle unfolding. Finding someone that is celebrating her twenty-first birthday in the pit, Coyne conducts the crowd in singing "Happy Birthday" to Sue in the key of G. The choreographed hysteria of The Flaming Lips opening for Beck may aspire to a childlike mayhem and euphoria, but it feels more like an ode to 1967's first global television satellite transmission. The Beatles played "All You Need is Love" with an array of costumed freaks and celebrities surrounding them. As Coyne and the rest of the Lips march through their impressive set list, "volunteers" in costumes bob incessantly and create the impression that a conga could start soon and you would be standing between a young Mickey Dolenz and one of the nameless members of the cast of "That 70's Show." After the The Flaming Lips play some gems (Fight Test, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Part One) from their latest album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, they have a secret weapon to launch on the unsuspecting crowd. Coyne explains to the crowd that the Lips aren't going anywhere tonight. It's not hard to believe that many in the late arriving LA crowd aren't aware of the insouciant appeal of this current Beck/Flaming Lips tour. The Lips are Beck's back-up band. "Just so you don't get confused later and wonder, 'Hey isn't that the same guy?'" Then for the second time in the night a video clip of a TV host introducing The Flaming Lips plays. The first time it was Conan O'Brien, but this time it's Jon Stewart on a grainy tape from his short-lived syndicated-late-night-talk-show. It's 1994 and Stewart tells the crowd that they are here to play their hit song "She Don't Use Jelly." The band launches into their hit and the crowd yields relieved recognition. How much better they must feel now that they can tell their friends that the band that opened for Beck and then backed him up did that "Jelly" song from the mid 90's, when it seemed cool things like that could actually be popular. The song is a remnant of the Lips guitar based origins with a swirling riff and a march beat that would lend itself to being a political anthem if the lyrics weren't an insane melding of gross re-interpretation. "He don't use tissue or his sleeve, he uses magazines." From there comes the last taped introduction. Tiffany Amber-Thiessen as 90210's Valerie Malone, 'Val' to most, introduces the hottest band in the world. Playing live at the Peach Pit After Dark. The Flaming Lips launch into "Do You Realize?," a song off the current album that sounds spacey and huge like the rest of the songs, but stands as the one song in the collection that anyone would enjoy, from your mom, to 'Val,' to the Teletubbies. A short intermission later Beck appears on stage in "Prince Albert Hall" mode, alone with acoustic guitars, harmonicas. "Guess I'm Doing Fine" sets the tone of Beck's new album, "Sea Change.² Like parts "One Foot in the Grave," "Mellow Gold," and "Mutations," the album is acoustic. Unlike those albums, the lyrics on this one are painfully specific to Beck's own recent experience, which seems occupied with breaking up emotionally and starting over. Three songs in, Beck covers the Lips' "Do You Realize?" changing the vibe of the song into a short acoustic number that sounds like early 70's John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band. Beck ends up on the floor telling the crowd that he's trying to learn how to play a sorta Indian Pipe Organ he bought from his friend. It seems like it's going to be a joke until he leans into "Nobody's Fault But My Own" from Mutations. The organ lays a skeleton of the song but Beck's voice expands raga-style to fill out the rest of the song's instrumentation. Then "The Golden Age" begins. Beck begins the song solo, and halfway through the curtain opens to reveal The Flaming Lips playing along with Greg Kurstin of Geggy Tah on keyboards. "Prince Albert Hall" becomes the "Rolling Thunder Review." When Coyne isn't playing lead guitar, screaming into a bullhorn or swinging a light above his head, he is pumping the crowd up with his fists in the air. The instrumentation is full, and as quirky as Beck's seemingly difficult to replicate studio work. Coyne and Beck work together like dueling mad scientists. When Beck dances, Coyne uses hand strobes to intensify the lighting. Beck dances the way people imagine they look when they cut loose at a party. He Mick Jaggers into a James Brown into Prince and is back, still looking like a member of the Byrds, playing a 60's sounding upbeat version of "Lost Cause." With peppy melancholy, the songs lyrics strike even closer to the reality of a break-up: There's too many people you used to know They see you coming they see you go. They know your secrets and you know theirs This town is crazy, but nobody cares. Then they all play "Loser" and everyone in the crowd sings along. In a world where a huge hit seems like a burden worse than failure to a serious musician, Beck wears "Loser" lightly, quickly dismissing it in the middle of the set with flare and little nostalgia. Looking at the stage, it is a small hall of mid-nineties "One-Hit Wonders." The wonder, though, is how anyone thought that Beck or The Flaming Hits only had one hit in them. Geggy Tah is pure-bred "One-Hit Wonder." Their song "Whoever You Are" fits that mold perfectly. A compulsively catchy and faceless song. But, Beck and The Flaming Lips burn their imprint into every song. From "Tropicalia" to "Where It's At" to "Paper Tiger," Beck steals the styles of his influences, breaks their heart, and puts them back together. |
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