While The Flaming Lips' original intention was to perform their 2002 album, 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots', as a whole for the 20th anniversary, it seems fitting their belated performance is 21 years on from this exact day 30 January, 2004, that they played at Adelaide's Big Day Out.
With an opening blast from a trumpet by The Flaming Lips' frontman Wayne Coyne, as two giant pink robots are inflated on either side of him, obscuring most of the other band members, the evening commences with the opener from that album 'Fight Test', somewhat of a musical homage to Cat Stevens' 'Father And Son' (resulting in the latter receiving the lions share of royalties). Inflated and then deflated within this song and again later, these pink robots are key to a storyline running through the first four songs of the 'Yoshimi Battles...' album culminating in a performance of 'Pt. 1' of the title song during which the audience enthusiastically sing along to every word (aided by the lyrics individually projected in amongst the psychedelic imagery on the backdrop), before the instrumental abstraction of 'Pt. 2' is accompanied by explosions of confetti (some shaped like the pink robots), a laser light show, and giant balloons thrown into the audience.
Wayne is the definitive centre of attention, the mainstay of The Flaming lips since their beginning, even long-term member Steven Drozd is as nondescript as the rest of band, able players not quite in the eye of the storm amongst the whirlwind spectacle of the performance.
Following this salvo, Wayne takes a moment to ask "how's everybody doing?" and allows the audience to settle as he announces the itinerary as a first set of the 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots' album, an intermission, and then a second set taking from the back catalogue, promising to play through to the curfew.
The band resume with 'In The Morning Of The Magicians' beginning in a soft-rock style before alternating into psychedelia, a perfect soundtrack to this warm evening. Wayne introduces 'It's Summertime' as being about optimism and the sadness, and after the locked-in groove before the song ends, he prompts the audience and everyone to tell each other "I love you," as a rainbow inflates front of stage in preparation for the eagerly anticipated 'Do You Realize??'.
The set winds down with the final two songs of the album, which are all but obscured in remembrance, the inherent melancholy of Wayne's vocals intrinsic to arguably the Flaming Lips' greatest song.
Given half-hour to recompose themselves, the band and audience alike are suitably refreshed to give their all during a performance of the breakout hit 'She Don't Use Jelly', which opens the second set consisting predominantly of late '90s material predating the 'Yoshimi...' album.
A rare performance of early song 'Love Yer Brain' does not sound out of place alongside other country-influenced songs with pedal steel to the fore such as 'Flowers Of Neptune 6' (with Wayne dressed as a flower).
After the rousing and affirming 'The Spark That Bled' and the early Pink Floydisms of 'Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung', during which Wayne swings a lighting globe around above him like a fire performer; he's sincere when he tells us he is the luckiest person in the world.
He then muses on performing a song written in 1996 about 2025, never imagining back then he would still be doing music now. The song, 'Riding To Work In The Year 2025 (Your Invisible Now)', starts like a punk-rock symphony, the backdrop projecting a chaotic static.
Not all the props utilised during the show have been listed here, but latterly Wayne dresses in a Wonder Woman onesie for 'Waitin' For A Superman' and then bounces an inflatable pair of lips while flanked by the prop wranglers dressed as two inflatable eyeballs during 'The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song' before wearing the lips as the song plays out.
Wayne tells us "only The Flaming Lips would sing about 'Christmas At The Zoo'," preceding a thematically out-of-season joyful performance. There is something meta in the lyric "yelling as hard as they can," from the penultimate song 'A Spoonful Weighs A Ton' and the audience comply in these last two songs including 'Race For The Prize' with Wayne inside a plastic bubble and the performance comes to close with a chant of "love, love, love".
Wayne leaves the stage momentarily to return holding aloft balloon letters taped together to spell out 'F... Yeah Adelaide' before pitching them into the audience who break them up into souvenirs, as a final burst of the confetti cannons signal an end while a recording of 'What A Wonderful World' is played as an appropriate outro.
