CIRCUS MEN TALI T Y Clockwise from top left: Coyne in his space bubble; onstage dance-beasts; the Lips at the Lips-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties, September 2009; balloon mindstate in Atlanta, August 2009
I am also introduced to, among other jury-rigged gizmos, the balloon inflator Coyne fashioned from a leaf blower and a plastic bottle spout (see sidebar). Coyne is a big fan of duct tape—he spends about $10,000 annually on it. “Duct tape and failure have shown us the way,” he says.
If Coyne is the crew’s foreman, Ivins sees himself as just another grunt. With his bald pate, groomed beard, and small, intense bespectacled eyes, he looks more like a tenured physics professor than a rock star, yet seemingly longs to be a roadie. (“One day there’s going to be a headline,” jokes Drozd. “MICHAEL IVINS QUITS FLAMING LIPS TO JOIN FLAMING LIPS ROAD CREW.”)
Tonight’s gig is one of a handful of summer dates the Lips are playing across the U.S., part promotional jaunt in anticipation of their 12th studio album, Embryonic, part victory lap celebrating the band’s unlikely success over the past decade. Combined, their last three albums have sold more than a million copies and their live show has become rock’s must-see equivalent of a three-ring circus. Coyne likes to credit the success largely to “dumb luck”—his attempt at humility is admirable, but it’s also bullshit. He’s built a modest empire (“We’ve made millions,” he admits, “but it’s not about that”) performing tasks other artists might consider beneath them.
“I know if I’m going to give it my energy and time, we’re going to climb the mountain,” he says, typically discursively. “We may get to the top of the mountain, discover it’s a fucking volcano, and fall in, but whatever it is we’re trying to do, we’re going to be able to do it.”
A few hours later, the amphitheater is nearly full, and the opening bands have finished their sets. Drozd, Ivins, Scurlock, and touring guitarist-percussionist Derek Brown plug in and tune their instruments in full view of the crowd. It’s a weird anti-spectacle: Watching the Lips tune up—not to mention hearing Coyne explain to the crowd that he’s going to come out into the audience in his famous plastic space bubble, so they need to be ready to hold him up—seems as though it’ll render their grand entrance anticlimactic.
But as Coyne puts it, “I’ve always viewed this as part of the show. You’re gonna see us set up our stuff, see exactly how this works. You are gonna know that this is not magic. And yet, when the music starts, it’s still gonna destroy you.”
Around 9: 30, the band retreats for a few seconds to the side of the stage. The lights go down and two groups of volunteer dancers culled from the audience are led, dressed in white Yeti costumes, to the front of the stage. While a silhouette of a lithe, nubile woman dances on the screen behind their equipment, Drozd, Ivins, and Scurlock climb atop some road cases behind the video rig and then, once the screen has focused on the woman’s crotch, enter one by one through a door in the screen, as if they’re emerging from a birth canal. Once they’ve taken their places onstage, the spotlight focuses on Coyne inside his bubble. Now dressed in a well-worn light gray suit, pink button-down, and unfastened maroon bow tie, Coyne steps into the audience and is met by spastic camera flashes. When he returns to the stage and wriggles from the bubble, the band launches into the aching, triumphant “Race for the Prize,” and the crew begins firing off confetti cannons and tossing dozens of large balloons into the crowd. A few rows in from the stage, a small, blond boy of about four, perched on his father’s shoulders, points at the balloons and squeals with delight.
CloCk wISe from left: roger kISby/getty ImageS; erez avISSar ( 2); robb d. CoheN/retNa
44 November 2009 / SPIN.Com: It’S a webSIte!
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