The Fearless Freaks at the Fair

I had the pleasure of attending The Flaming Lips show at the MN State Fair last evening. My friends and I battled our way through torrential downpours (and a round of Fudge Puppies) to witness this rock spectacle at the Grandstand. As always, they did not disappoint. From huge confetti cannons and streamer pistols, to Wayne's venture out into the crowd inside his "Space Bubble", the show was full of non-stop entertainment. And the songs eminating from the speakers weren't too shabby either. Here's the setlist:


The Race for the Prize
Free Radicals
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1
Yoshimi Pt. 2
Vein of Stars
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
The W.A.N.D.
My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion
She Don't Use Jelly
Do you Realize?
Encore - War Pigs

Here's today's review from the Strib:

Rain doesn't extinguish Flaming opening

Review: The Flaming Lips put on a hot show even as the weather doused the State Fair grandstand.

Chris Riemenschneider, Star Tribune

It was no coincidence that the first song played at the Minnesota State Fair's opening grandstand concert Thursday night was Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot," with the opening line, "Everybody's talking about the stormy weather."

As if the show didn't promise to be wild enough, what with Oklahoma's radical Flaming Lips as headliners, Mother Nature kicked up a wallop of a storm just before show time. The opening band, the Magic Numbers, had to blow off its set because its gear got soaked, although the Lips brought the group out for a couple of songs later. Otherwise, the show went on as planned before nearly 8,000 poncho-clad fans.

"You came!" was Sonic Youth singer-guitarist Thurston Moore's greeting to the crowd. "We were told you weren't going to show up."

A band that sometimes doesn't play full force, Moore's team put on a powerful, if abbreviated, set. After "Teenage Riot," the New York art-punks launched into two songs on their new CD, "Rather Ripped," and mostly stuck to the album from there, with only one more oldie, "Eric's Trip."

The weather made things especially difficult for the Flaming Lips, whose elaborate stage show (video screen, confetti shooters, etc.) had to be hastily assembled after Sonic Youth. Lips frontman Wayne Coyne apologized for not going on until about 10:20 p.m., but the wait certainly paid off with an eye-candy freak show complete with psychedelic movies, costume-wearing dancers and streamer guns whose leftovers probably still will be hanging around for Rascal Flatts' big grandstand show Saturday.

"This show looked like it wasn't going to happen two or three different times," he said, praising "the union guys who made it work."

For his part, Coyne worked it, rolling out over the crowd in his inflated Space Bubble before the opening tune, "Race for the Prize," and emphatically urging the crowd to sing during "Free Radicals" and "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots."Nature or the universe conspired against us," he said about the weather, "but [expletive] them."

Well put.