My wife and I happily blew off Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival for the second year in a row (we didn't miss a day for the first 8) with the stipulation we would enjoy Flaming Lips instead at the amazing and fabulous Fox Theatre in Oakland. This is a trade I would make every time. I think the Flaming Lips are the best and most important live act on the planet. Who else delivers such and intense balance of pure entertainment, high art, and rockin' great music?

Plus, they are just so damned COOL. They are their own roadies... you see Wayne Coyne and the boys on the stage moving stuff around and setting up their props. Smiling and saying hello. Wayne even gives us a little courtesy info-piece before the their show. ("We use an insane amount of strobes. If you feel like they are effecting you in a bad way... don't look at them!")

Their stage show has really evolved. We still get all of the confetti and bouncing balls... and mega-strobes... and a very improved video backdrop. The visual theme also included a lot of orange. All of the amps and the side-stage dancers were in orange. The video feature a beautiful dancing naked lady and the band actually emerged from her vagina. I don't make this shit up. We also had a lot of lasers (our show had Wayne shooting lasers out of his giant rubber hands at a mirror ball, the next night's audience all got little pen-lasers upon entry and did the same trick.)

We were up front on the right by the rail, with very decent waitress service. After emerging from the vagina, Wayne got in his giant bubble and "floated" over the audience. Then they really rocked it for the next 90 minutes, playing a lot of material from Embryonic which made me EXTREMELY happy. We got a couple of songs off Yoshimi and one off Mystics.... nothing off Soft Bulletin and only one older nugget: She Don't Use Jelly. The rest was Embryonic and again, you don't hear me bitchin'.

They just seem to get better at what they do on all levels. Their sound and musical performance was the best I've heard. Their stage antics are ramped up yet another level. But most importantly, I think they really rise to the meaning of ART (in my point of view) where they really make you think and re-think the world around you. They way the experience all comes together can be transformative to everyone involved (sort of like Dead shows of old) and it's all so positive. It just doesn't get any better than a Flaming Lips show.