The Flaming Lips are an indefatigably psychedelic train that runs on big ideas and emits good vibrations. And never has Wayne Coyne & Co.'s inexhaustible commitment to feeling groovy been more clearly displayed than last week, when the Lips set the Guinness World Record —
certifiedand
everything— for
playing the most concerts in multiple cities in a 24-hour period. Starting at Handy Park in Memphis, ending at New Orleans' House of Blues and hitting a slew of Mississippi and Louisiana venues in between, The Flaming Lips played eight shows between 5 p.m. on June 27 and 6 p.m. on Jun 28, thus shattering the previous record — held by Jay-Z with a still-staggering seven shows.
Bully for the Lips, you say. Good on them. But what's the local angle? Well, on their second-to-last stop, the psychedelic road warriors performed three songs at LSU's Varsity Theatre in Baton Rouge and were joined onstage by Nashville's own Linear Downfall. LD joined the Lips for a rendition of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" — easily my favorite prog song of all time — along with the Lips tune “I’m Working at NASA on Acid” (originally a collab with Lightning Bolt) from the brand-new The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends (which also features Ke$ha). Coyne and Steven Drozd closed with a stripped-down version of "Race for the Prize," sans Downfall. There's a full recap of the Baton Rouge show at The Advocate, and the Lips' whole record-chasing excursion was live-streamed in conjunction with MTV's O Music Awards. See the "Schizoid" cover above. Congrats all around.
