The Flaming Lips Poolside @ The Palms Hotel And Casino, Las Vegas, NV, 9/16/07

I could not possibly think of a better way to cap my weekend. From an email I sent this morning:

saw scott booker checking in @ the front desk and knew I was in the right place. Hit the pool and saw a small stage. Fast forward to the gig: they changed it up a bit: they BEGAN the set with “do you realize”, said they were used to always leaving the stage after that song, left the stage at which time captain america came out, did the ear-cupping thing and made us all scream for an encore for ten seconds at which time they came back out and played another hour-and-a-half or more, finally closing with “race for the prize” …

otherwise your textbook lips show but small, by a beautiful pool, of course loud as hell. loved it. i hadn’t heard any of the at war material live other than at the bowl, so really enjoyed that. and they pulled out an oldie – “mountain side” from priest driven ambulance which was spontaneously dubbed, in wayne’s words, “mountain wind because this is the fuggin’ windiest day I’ve ever seen in Las Vegas.” wayne did the thing with the bugle again. no hamster ball but there was really no room for it with all of the wade pools. might have been the most intimate full-band show I’ve seen in years – possibly since Zona Rosa 1999 which, incidentally, is a venue on the current tour.

they were playing fantastically awesome T.Rex as people entered. they also dedicated “vein of stars” to the one and only Marc Bolen who’d died 30 years ago to the day. loved the stravinsky firebird suite closing cadenza by which they walked onto the stage, and I heard steven work the same chord progression into some incidental music mid-set (likely a bed for one of the anti-war sentiments).

at one point, some guy (marine?) had enough of the anti-war bugle action and managed to walk right the hell onto the stage – which basically anybody could’ve done – and started screaming amidst all the confusion @ coyne, no bullshit, who listened patiently until the dude was escorted off by THE FLASH. Wayne proffered that it was apparently too loud in the guy’s hotel room, but take heart: the show was nearly over. we were told to decide amongst ourselves if we wanted to collectively lie and say everybody jumped into the pool and went apeshit, which nearly came to fruition more than once. best of all, it was incredibly easy to get right up to the front of the stage while they were rocking out and shooting confetti over my head (confetti was billowing straight the hell out onto flamingo road and very likely all over the gold coast across the street). Big wind and a perfect night.