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Lips spread love, friendship, and wonder across Texas during powerful spring tour
Words and Pictures by The Observer
Love Dragon summoned at first ever Sol Summit
There is a moment during every Flaming Lips show when the first-timer realizes they have crossed into something that’s difficult to explain with ordinary language.
It happens in different ways. Sometimes it is the stunned expression of disbelief. Sometimes it is laughter that escapes involuntarily. Sometimes it is a person simply standing still, trying to process the impossible collision of noise, color, emotion, absurdity, tenderness, and communal joy unfolding around them.
If you know where to look, you can always find that moment somewhere in the crowd.
And when you do, you are reminded in real time of the power that art still holds over people. Not as distraction. Not as nostalgia. But as something alive. Something capable of reaching inside a person and briefly rearranging the way they feel about the world around them.
At the first-ever Sol Summit in downtown El Paso, that realization arrived before the band even played a single note.
Standing front and center against the rail were lifelong El Paso residents Lili Herrera and her 17-year-old son Alex, watching as the crew carefully assembled the strange universe that would soon erupt before them. Their excitement mirrored the energy that was building throughout the festival grounds. People gathered early not simply to attend a concert, but to experience something they already sensed would become unforgettable.
For Lili, the night carried the emotional weight of a decades-long wait. After years of loving the band from afar, this would finally be her first time seeing The Flaming Lips in person. More importantly, it was a chance to share that experience with her son — the kind of memory a parent hopes might stay with their child forever.
The atmosphere surrounding Sol Summit felt unusually sincere. Nothing about it seemed manufactured or overly polished. The festival grounds were arranged in a way that encouraged closeness rather than spectacle, intimacy rather than distance. Even before sunset, it felt less like a corporate music event and more like a temporary community assembled through mutual curiosity and openness.
Above the city, overcast clouds shielded the crowd from the harsh West Texas heat. The cooler air gave everyone permission to exist more freely inside themselves. Around the venue wandered glitter-covered dancers, aging punks, teenagers in homemade outfits, cosmic cowboys, goths, hippies, comic book fans, and people who perhaps spent much of their lives feeling out of place elsewhere.
Here, they fit perfectly.
The surrounding desert seemed to frame the festival like another planet entirely, and at the center of it all stood this gathering of the beautifully strange; people proudly wearing the outward expression of who they are without apology. Sol Summit quickly revealed itself not just as a music festival, but as a sanctuary for the weirdly beautiful and the beautifully weird alike.
Elsewhere across town, K-pop phenomenon BTS were filling the Sun Bowl at the University of Texas at El Paso while Comic-Con visitors moved throughout downtown in costumes and masks. Throughout the evening, stormtroopers and Mandalorians drifted casually past the crowds of psychedelic music fans. The entire city felt transformed into a temporary crossroads of modern fandom, music, art, and escapism.
Then the lights dimmed.
As The Flaming Lips walked onto the stage and opened with “The Stars Are So Big”, Alex stared in disbelief before quietly blurting out the only words that seemed capable of containing the moment:
“Oh my God!”
Every Flaming Lips fan understands that feeling. We have all been Alex at one point.
Following “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1 & 2”, Wayne Coyne paused to greet the audience with a mixture of sincerity and humor.
“We were able to deliver some acid to BTS”, Coyne joked from the stage. “Perhaps it will be the best show they’ve ever done.”
Coyne went on to note that the band’s last performance in El Paso took place all the way back in 1986. In the decades since, El Paso has transformed into one of Texas’ most vibrant creative communities; a border city whose artistic identity continues to expand in ways often overlooked by the rest of the country.
With Sol Summit launching its inaugural year, the festival already felt like another important piece of that cultural growth.
“I hope the Sol Summit festival can last for a hundred years”, Coyne told the audience. “But you have to scream to let everyone know you want The Flaming Lips to come back.”
And scream they did.
From that point forward, the performance locked into a kind of rare collective momentum. Whether it was the unusually warm crowd, the overwhelming number of first-time attendees, or simply the chemistry of the night itself, the show seemed to gather emotional force with every song.
The sound mix was especially powerful, allowing songs like “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” and “The Golden Path” to bloom with stunning clarity and depth. Every layer of melody and distortion felt enormous beneath the open sky.
Then the mood shifted.
On Tour In The Year 2026: show #3: Sunday, May 3
Sol Summit: El Paso TexasThe Stars Are So Big
Yoshimi Pt 1 & 2
Turn It On
Pompeii am Götterdämmerung
A Spoonful Weights A Ton
The Golden Path
Every Drop of Rain
Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
Fight Test
She Don’t Use Jelly
Do You Realize??ENCORE:
War Pigs (Black Sabbath cover)
Race For The Prize
The audience grew noticeably quieter for only the second-ever performance of “Every Teardrop Cried”, which on the set list now appears as “Every Drop of Rain”. Before beginning the song, Coyne dedicated the song to crew member Autumn, who had recently experienced a devastating family tragedy.
For a few minutes, the festival transformed from celebration into collective reflection; thousands of people standing together in shared empathy beneath dim lights and drifting clouds.
From all of us at The Observer, we send our love and condolences to Autumn, and gratitude for the unseen dedication and care that people like her bring to making these moments possible.
Yet, even in grief, The Flaming Lips somehow always find a way to return to a state of wonder.
Throughout much of the concert, a massive dragon head floated through the back of the crowd, carried over the smiling faces. After Coyne noticed it and praised its beauty from the stage, the glowing creature slowly made its way toward the center of the audience.
When the lights went out, the dragon head would glow as it moved over the crowd, drifting like some enormous mythical lantern above the thousands of faces looking upward together.
It became the unexpected symbol of the night.
Not threatening. Not fearsome.
But protective. Playful. Alive.
Then came “Do You Realize??”.
As Zac and Pete unfurled the inflatable rainbow for “Do You Realize??”, Lili took a moment to recognize what was about to happen.
“This is my favorite song”, she said softly. “I’m sorry, but I’m about to cry.”
And she was far from alone.
During the song, strangers wrapped arms around strangers. People smiled at one another. For a few fleeting minutes, the crowd seemed united by a quiet understanding that beneath all the noise and exhaustion of modern life, people are still desperately searching for connection.
The song’s message really landed in that moment. Not simply as nostalgia or optimism, but as a reminder that love remains an active choice; something people must continue reaching toward together, even when the world encourages isolation.
As the band exited the stage to chants of “¡Uno más!”, Lili wiped tears from her eyes and the crowd demanded one final return.
The encore arrived with thunderous force.
During “War Pigs”, Derek Brown rose from his seat, leaned into his guitar with eyes closed, pulling massive waves of sound from the instrument as though physically wrestling emotion out of it. The performance carried a rawness that felt almost spiritual.
And so the third Flaming Lips show of 2026 may ultimately be remembered as the dragon show – a night where a glowing creature drifted over a crowd of strangers searching for joy, grief, wonder, healing, and unity beneath the desert sky.
A night where art briefly dissolved the distance between people.
A night where thousands gathered in downtown El Paso not merely to watch a concert, but to feel less alone.
“It was everything I expected and more”, Lili said afterward, tears still filling her eyes.
Beside her, Alex still vibrating with amazement could only muster a few words.
“Best show ever”, he said. “Oh my God… the best show ever.”
Lips deliver scorching show in Houston at White Oak Music Hall
Inside the humid confines of Houston’s White Oak Music Hall on May 7, The Flaming Lips did far more than perform a concert. Over the course of nearly three transcendent hours, the band transformed the venue into a kaleidoscopic celebration of sound, emotion, and connection; a swirling collision of distortion, confetti, catharsis, and unrelenting joy that felt less like a traditional show and more like a communal experience shared between artist and audience alike.
By the end of the night, the energy inside White Oak had become almost tangible. Faces glowed beneath the venue lights as fans clung to every moment, reluctant for it to end. Audience members packed the rails, sang along from the balcony, and exchanged stunned smiles with strangers as the band delivered wave after wave of euphoric intensity. It was the kind of performance that leaves both crowd and performers amazed they experienced it together.
The Houston show carried unusual emotional weight before a single note was played. Originally scheduled for 2025, the performance had been abruptly canceled due to a family medical emergency within the band’s circle. For months, disappointment lingered among fans who had waited for the return to Houston of the Lips’ cosmic spectacle. The band clearly remembered that disappointment too.
They came back determined to make good on the promise. And they delivered an “Evening With The Flaming Lips” that felt intentionally oversized; two sprawling sets packed with bangers and deep cuts, emotional speeches, fan favorites, and moments of transcendence that transformed White Oak into something resembling a psychedelic revival.
The night’s intensity rose with “The Spark That Bled”, its opening notes immediately igniting the crowd. From there, the band surged through a first set that felt unusually aggressive and energized, even by Flaming Lips standards. “The Golden Path” pulsed through the venue with hypnotic groove, while “All We Have Is Now” briefly slowed the room into reflective stillness before the inevitable emotional release of “Do You Realize??” closed the set in communal singalong fashion.
By then, it already felt like a complete concert.
But the second set was where the night became legendary.
When the band returned to the stage and launched into “She Don’t Use Jelly”, the packed crowd exploded with renewed energy. Every lyric echoed back toward the stage as hundreds of voices merged together beneath smoke machines and flashing lights. The venue had become sweltering by this point, the kind of heat that makes the air feel thick enough to touch, but the audience continued pressing forward with the same determination as the band.
Then came one of the evening’s most emotional moments.
Following only the third-ever performance of “Every Drop of Rain”, Coyne stepped into the microphone not as a singer, but almost as a preacher speaking directly to the wounded parts of the crowd.
Through smoke and haze drifting across the stage, Coyne pleaded with the audience to care for those around them who may be suffering silently.
“If you encounter anyone trapped in pain”, he said, pausing carefully between thoughts, “please, it’s up to you to help”.
The room fell nearly silent.
Moments later, Coyne pivoted toward gratitude and freedom, speaking about the miracle of simply being alive long enough to stand together in a room filled with music.
“Don’t wait for the universe,” he told the audience. “You’re free, so be free.”
Without pause, the band drifted directly into “Be Free, A Way” from The Terror album, transforming the speech into something tangible and overwhelming. The performance felt haunting and strangely uplifting all at once — a reminder that beneath the balloons, lasers, confetti cannons, and absurd psychedelic theatrics, The Flaming Lips have always been a band deeply concerned with mortality, connection, fear, and hope.
On Tour In The Year 2026: show #4: Thursday, May 7.
White Oak Music Hall: Houston TexasThe Stars Are So Big
Yoshimi Pt. 1 & 2
Turn It On
Pompeii am Götterdämmerung
True Love Will Find You In The End
The Spark That Bled
The Golden Path
All We Have Is Now
Do You Realize??
SET BREAK
She Don’t Use Jelly
A Spoonful Weighs A Ton
Flowers of Neptune
Waitin’ For Superman
Every Drop Of Rain
Be Free, A Way
Vein Of Stars
Five Stop Mother Superior Rain
Fight Test
Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
ENCORE
War Pigs (Black Sabbath cover)
Race For The Prize
As the second set continued, the momentum became almost punishing in its relentlessness.
“Vein of Stars” unfolded in hypnotic waves. “Five Stop Mother Superior Rain” crashed through the venue with thunderous force. “Fight Test” drew another massive crowd response, before “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” sent the audience into one final burst of delirious movement.
By then, exhaustion had become part of the experience itself.
Some fans in the balcony appeared visibly lightheaded from the heat. Others collapsed laughing into their seats between songs while friends returned from the bar carrying water and ice. A few swayed precariously to the rhythm, perhaps realizing too late that the final beer of the night had been an ambitious decision.
Still, nobody left. Because this was not merely a concert people attended. It was one they survived together.
The Flaming Lips have built a decades-long reputation for turning live music into an emotional spectacle, but in Houston, something deeper seemed to emerge beneath the chaos. The show carried the feeling of a band aware of time passing, of fragility, illness, aging, and uncertainty, and responding by throwing absolutely everything they had into the night.
The confetti cannons fired. The lights burned bright through the haze. The songs stretched toward transcendence.
And by the end, both the audience and the band looked completely exhausted, which somehow felt like the highest compliment possible.
Milestones and memories flood Austin Psych Fest for the weird and beautiful
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that settles in after a Flaming Lips run through Texas. It is the kind earned beneath confetti storms and laser lights, somewhere between highway miles and spiritual revelation. By the time the crew rolled into Austin in the early morning hours of Friday, May 8, they had already crossed through the smoke and catharsis of Houston’s White Oak Music Hall only hours before.
Still, there they were again at sunrise — unloading gear, hauling cases, preparing yet another temporary universe for the faithful.
And faithful they were.
Roughly two dozen fans made the overnight pilgrimage from Houston to Austin, transforming the final stretch of this Texas run into something larger than a concert tour. It became a moving caravan of friendship, celebration, and collective escape – a traveling community following the strange gospel that The Flaming Lips have spent decades preaching.
On Tour In The Year 2026: show #5 Friday, May 8.
The Far Out Lounge: Austin Psych Fest: Austin TexasThe Stars Are So Big
Yoshimi Pt 1 & 2
Turn It On
Pompeii am Götterdämmerung
True Love Will Find You In The End
The Golden Path
Every Drop Of Rain
Five Stop Mother Superior Rain
She Don’t Use Jelly
Fight Test
Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
Do You Realize??ENCORE
War Pigs (Black Sabbath cover)
Race For The Prize
Before the band even touched the stage at Austin Psych Fest, the humanity surrounding the event had already revealed itself. Moments before showtime, crew manager Zac spotted a heat-stricken fan collapsing against the barricade. Without hesitation, he vaulted from the stage, lifting the man over the rail and carrying him toward medical personnel as the crowd cleared space around them.
For all the spectacle surrounding a Flaming Lips performance, moments like these often define the experience just as much as the music. Austin Psych Fest itself felt perfectly suited for such moments.
Held outdoors at the Far Out Lounge and Stage, the festival exists like a hidden sanctuary tucked away from the machinery of the city. Spring storms earlier in the week had cooled the Texas air, leaving the grounds damp and unusually gentle for May. Everywhere, wandering through the festival’s pathways and beneath the lights, were beautiful oddballs draped in sequins, with vintage decor, glitter, and tie-dye forming a kaleidoscope of people who looked less like strangers at a music festival and more like citizens of some temporary psychedelic republic.
The atmosphere felt welcoming in the purest sense of the word.
For one recent college graduate, the night carried even greater meaning. Of all the graduates in the Class of 2026, few likely celebrated quite like Tommy McKenzie. Freshly armed with a bachelor’s degree, McKenzie chose Austin Psych Fest as his commencement ceremony. The Flaming Lips crew had spent the previous night in Houston asking fans if anyone could provide a cap and gown for the Austin show. By showtime, the graduation attire had materialized, and McKenzie stood among the crowd smiling beneath his mortarboard as if the universe itself had approved his life decision.
Nearby stood Alexis Ledesma, a Puerto Rico native who had recently relocated to Austin. For Ledesma, live music is not a casual pastime but an essential rhythm of existence. He travels frequently for concerts, chasing experiences the way others chase careers or destinations.
Though deeply familiar with the band’s catalog — especially older songs like “Jesus Shooting Heroin” — this would be his first time witnessing The Flaming Lips live. By the end of the night, he looked almost stunned.
“I loved it!” he said afterward, grinning through the lingering haze of confetti and lights.
Yet perhaps no stories embodied the emotional weight of the evening more than those carried by Jonathan Strunk and Jerry Sparkman.
Sparkman was attending his 95th Flaming Lips show. Strunk was attending his 100th.
“It’s been amazing,” Sparkman said earlier in the evening. “It’s been a crazy trip.” Sparkman’s journey began in 2010 during the Embryonic era in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “I saw shit loads of shows on that tour”, he laughed.
When asked about favorite memories accumulated across nearly two decades of performances, Sparkman didn’t hesitate: “I really loved the OKC New Year’s shows. I miss that they don’t do those anymore.”
For longtime Lips followers, those Oklahoma City New Year’s Eve spectacles have become legendary marathon celebrations, where music, absurdity, and emotional vulnerability blurred together until sunrise.
Strunk’s path with the band reaches just as deep. He attended his first show at Chastain Park Amphitheater in Atlanta on August 26, 2009: “That was a great show”, he recalled. “They were coming out of At War with the Mystics and playing some Embryonic songs for the first time.”
Strunk now calls Greenville, North Carolina home, though he admits home is more accurately defined as “wherever my friends are.”
What first pulled him toward the band was the legendary “UFOs at the Zoo” concert film from Oklahoma City.
“What made me fall in love with seeing them live was not only the incredible effort they give to put on an amazing show unlike any other live band, but the amazing and beautiful humans I met at their shows.”
For Strunk, The Flaming Lips were never just music. They became community.
“They used to get us to dress up in whatever they had for that tour and come onstage to dance with them”, he said. “That was a lot of fun. They try to connect with their fans more than most bands.”
As he spoke, memories seemed to spill from him faster than they could be organized — surreal recollections stretching across years and cities. There was seeing “The Dark Side of the Moon” album performed at Hollywood Forever Cemetery beneath the stars. There was Bonnaroo, with “100,000 people behind us.” There were beach-house afterparties at Hangout Fest alongside Starrdeath and White Dwarf and Spaceface.
There was Edward Sharpe joining the band for a sunrise performance beneath a bell tower at Hollywood Forever Cemetery the morning after the main show.
And then there was perhaps the most Flaming Lips memory imaginable of all. “Colbchella on the USS Intrepid”, Strunk laughed. “On LSD. I kept forgetting I was on a boat in New York until I looked around and remembered I was on a boat in New York.”
Even his 100th show happened almost accidentally.
“My 100th wasn’t even planned,” he said. “My friend Tom Seabright won tickets from something the Lips were doing and asked me to tag along. I love Austin and I was in need of a break from life.” Originally, Austin would have been show number ninety-nine. Then Houston happened.
“Derek Brown threw in tickets for the double-set Houston show”, Strunk explained. “So that made Austin 100.”
For Sparkman, narrowing memories from 95 shows down to a single reflection was hard to do: “People always ask me ‘What was your favorite Lips show?‘… It’s so hard to say. I’ve seen them so many times, but one show that still stands out to me is The Belmont SXSW 2013. The Belmont is a super small venue in Austin, Texas. I think they only let like 500 people into the show. It was the first time the band had ever played “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” in its entirety. It was the only time I’ve seen The Lips play with none of the production – none of the balloons, none of the confetti, none of the crazy props. Don’t get me wrong, I love all that stuff so much. But there was something really magical about seeing them play without any of it. They just came out and played. I’ve never seen them do that before.”
“Man. It’s nuts, and hard to put into words. The Flaming Lips are so much more than a band to me. They’re an entire universe”, Sparkman said. “They’ve changed my life in so many ways, I would have never gotten into stage production if it wasn’t for The Flaming Lips. I would have never moved to Austin, TX. I moved to Austin in 2013 because I knew a bunch of weirdos I met at Lips shows there. I would have been a completely different person if it wasn’t for this band. Its kina fucked up to say, but its true. Going to Lips shows has been a big part of my life for years now. It’s my happy place. April 21st 2010 at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin was my first time seeing The Flaming Lips. Austin Psych Fest 2026 was my 95th Lips show. I still get so excited every show. I still get excited every time they drop dates.”
But amid all the joy and spectacle, the emotional center of the evening arrived during a tribute to the late Daniel Johnston. Austin still carries Johnston’s spirit in quiet ways. This was the city where he once handed out cassette tapes, where he drew cartoons, where he transformed pain and vulnerability into songs that continue to echo long after his passing.
As Wayne addressed the crowd, asking them to sing along to Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You in the End”, thousands of voices answered back in unison.
“Don’t be sad, I know you can do it”, Wayne told the crowd softly.
Then he looked outward over the audience and added: “Wherever he is in the universe, he’s looking down on all of us tonight.” For a moment, Austin seemed suspended outside of time.
Not long afterwards, during the encore, Wayne reflected again – this time on the band’s history with Austin itself. Decades earlier, during one of their first appearances on Austin City Limits, The Flaming Lips had performed a cover of “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath. “Here we are, twenty years later”, Wayne said, “with wars and the insanity”.
Then came the reminder that has long existed beneath the band’s explosions of confetti and giant inflatable robots: “But we should always be a champion and supporter of peace.”
As confetti continued drifting downward like psychedelic snowfall, the final notes faded into the humid Austin night. And as Tommy walked off the stage he quietly turned the tassel on his graduation cap from one side to the other. A small gesture. A final confirmation. One more milestone carried home beneath the lights of Austin Psych Fest.
If Texas truly lives by its state motto of friendship, then nowhere was that spirit more visible than across this strange and beautiful week with The Flaming Lips – from downtown El Paso through Houston’s White Oak and finally into the glowing weirdness of the Far Out Lounge in Austin.
For many there, the music was only part of what they came to find. The rest was each other.
What A Night To Be, Outside …
It was the biggest stage in terms of size so far this year. The Flaming Lips performed before tens of thousands in the heart of Denver during the Outside Days Festival on Saturday, May 30.
The audience, estimated at around 35,000 according to festival officials, blended the Lips with bands like Japanese Breakfast, Dawes, Karina Rykman, Death Cab For Cutie, and My Morning Jacket.
And this year, great weather paired with brilliant, high-altitude sunshine made the Mile High City feel like summer has officially arrived.
There wasn’t time for the new stuff, it was a condensed festival set, but with the massive crowd the band looked like they had a blast.
We missed Blake, his eye would have captured so many wonderful moments. Like the beautiful, warm, smile from Derek. Or AJ completely shredding the Fender on “Turn it On”. Or maybe when the wind turned the Fuck Yeah balloons into a large sail and Wayne spent the entirety of “Fight Test” wrestling them before the night completely blew them away.
And as for the crew, well, it must feel truly badass to flaunt Thunder gear just a quarter mile from the home of the Denver Nuggets. Just sayin’… well played. This writer could hear and feel the grumbling from members of the audience. Great season guys, you’ll get ’em next year.
On Tour In The Year 2026: show #6: Saturday, May 30.
Outside Days, Denver ColoradoThe Stars Are So Big
Yoshimi Pt. 1 & 2
Turn It On
Pompeii am Götterdämmerung
Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
Fight Test
She Don’t Use Jelly
War Pigs (Black Sabbath cover)
Do You Realize??
A Spoonful Weighs A Ton
Now that the spring campaign has ended, the Lips can turn their eyes to the beacon of freedom in the world, Europe.
The summer tour starts in a few short weeks, and so many wonderful freaks are awaiting the band. So safe travels to everyone, we cannot wait to see and hug each of you and share a rail – and some love – at a Lips show.
Anyone attending a future show and would like to send in pictures or show notes or art and essays insprired by the music, send your work, along with any special handling instructions to: editorobserver1@gmail.com
from the archives: June
June, 1987
Oh My Gawd!!!
Studio Album
June 22, 1993
Transmissions from the Satellite Heart
Studio Album
June 1994
Due to High Expectations… The Flaming Lips Are Providing Needles for Your Balloons
EP
June 1999
Race For The Prize
Single
June 22, 1999
The Soft Bulletin (U.S. Release)
Studio Album
June 2011
Gummy Song Fetus
EP
June 26, 2012
The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends
Studio Album
June 26, 2020
“My Religion Is You”
Single
23 years ago
Live at Glastonbury Festival, England (June 28, 2003)
Race For The Prize
Fight Test
The Gash
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1
Do You Realize??
Waitin’ For A Superman
Breathe (Pink Floyd cover)
12 years ago
Live at The Fillmore in Detroit, MI (June 12, 2014)
Video: thesatellitehead
The Abandoned Hospital Ship
She Don’t Use Jelly
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1
In the Morning of the Magicians
Watching the Planets
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate
Race for the Prize
Look…The Sun Is Rising
The W.A.N.D.
Try to Explain
Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast
Silver Trembling Hands
A Spoonful Weighs a Ton
16 years ago
Live at Bonnaroo in Manchester, TN (June 11, 2010)
Introduction / The Fear
Worm Mountain
Silver Trembling Hands
She Don’t Use Jelly
Happy Birthday (Patty Hill cover)
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
I Can Be A Frog
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1
See The Leaves
Laser Hands
Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung
Taps (Daniel Butterfield cover)
The W.A.N.D.
Do You Realize??
Speak To Me / Breathe (Pink Floyd covers)
On The Run (Pink Floyd cover)
Time (Pink Floyd cover)
The Great Gig In The Sky (Pink Floyd cover)
Money (Pink Floyd cover)
Us And Them (Pink Floyd cover)
Any Colour You Like (Pink Floyd cover)
Brain Damage (Pink Floyd cover)
Eclipse (Pink Floyd cover)
Chaos, noise, and revelation: The story of Oh My Gawd!!!
By The Observer
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from a larger project exploring the history of Oh My Gawd!!! for the album’s 40-year anniversary in 2027. As this project moves forward, anyone with thoughts, insights, words, art, pictures or essays inspired by this album, should feel welcome to reach out.
Before the confetti cannons, before the giant inflatable robots and cosmic optimism, before Wayne Coyne became one of alternative rock’s most unlikely philosophers, there was Oh My Gawd!!!, a frantic, strange, gloriously-unpolished album that sounded like it had been broadcast from a collapsing carnival at the edge of the universe.
Released in 1987 by The Flaming Lips, the record arrived during a period when American underground music was mutating in every direction at once. Punk had splintered into noise rock, college rock, psychedelic revivalism, and experimental art-pop. Bands were searching for bigger meanings through louder amplifiers.
In the middle of Oklahoma City, far from the perceived cultural centers of New York or Los Angeles, The Flaming Lips were building something uniquely their own. And Oh My Gawd!!! may have been the first true glimpse of the band that audiences would someday fall in love with.
A Band Still Becoming Itself
At the time, The Flaming Lips were still raw, aggressive, and searching. The line-up featured Wayne Coyne alongside Richard English and Michael Ivins, with the group evolving rapidly from garage-rock outsiders into sonic adventurers.
The album followed the band’s debut, Hear It Is, but where that record hinted at psychedelic ambition, Oh My Gawd!!! pushed further into chaos. Songs seemed stitched together from equal parts punk fury, absurd humor, spiritual longing, and damaged tape machines.
The production was rough. Sometimes intentionally so. Vocals crackled through distortion. Guitars swarmed like electrical storms. Rhythms lurched unexpectedly. Yet beneath the noise was something emotional and deeply human.
The Flaming Lips were not trying to sound perfect.
They were trying to sound alive. Music Like a Fever Dream.
Listening to Oh My Gawd!!! today feels less like hearing a conventional rock album and more like wandering through a late-night transmission from another dimension. Tracks bounce wildly between screaming psychedelia and moments of startling vulnerability.
Songs like “Everything’s Explodin’” captured the manic energy of the era, while “One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning” showcased the band’s fascination with cosmic scale and existential wonder – themes that would later define classics like The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.
Even then, Coyne’s lyrics were reaching toward something bigger than irony or rebellion. Beneath the noise was yearning – for connection, transcendence, understanding.
That emotional undercurrent would become the soul of the band’s future work.
Oklahoma Psychedelia
Part of what made the album remarkable was where it came from.
Oklahoma City in the 1980s was not widely known as a hub for experimental psychedelic rock. The Flaming Lips existed almost in defiance of geography. They created massive, surreal sounds from a place many outsiders overlooked entirely.
That isolation may have helped shape the band’s identity. Without pressure to fit neatly into a scene, they built their own universe instead.
There are echoes of loneliness throughout Oh My Gawd!!! — long stretches of sonic emptiness suddenly interrupted by explosions of color and noise. The album feels handmade, restless, and unconcerned with commercial expectations.
It is the sound of artists discovering freedom through experimentation.
The Beginning of the Lips Mythology
While Oh My Gawd!!! was never a mainstream success, its importance has grown over time. Fans and critics often point to the album as a crucial turning point; the moment when The Flaming Lips began transforming from underground noise-rock oddities into something far more visionary.
The seeds of the band’s future spectacle are already there: the cosmic imagery, the emotional sincerity, the absurdist humor, the fascination with life, death, and human connection, the willingness to embrace beauty and chaos simultaneously.
Years later, when audiences would stand beneath rainbow lights and giant balloons during Flaming Lips concerts, those moments could be traced back to records like Oh My Gawd!!! – albums where experimentation mattered more than polish.
A Beautiful Mess That Endures
Today, Oh My Gawd!!! remains one of the most fascinating chapters in the Flaming Lips catalog. It is messy, abrasive, uneven, and occasionally bewildering.
It is also fearless.
The album captures a band unafraid to fail publicly in pursuit of something transcendent. In an era increasingly driven by perfection and algorithmic precision, there is something deeply inspiring about hearing musicians throw themselves completely into the unknown.
For longtime fans, the album is more than an early release. It is a document of transformation; the sound of a group beginning to realize they could turn noise into emotion, distortion into spirituality, and chaos into art.
Long before The Flaming Lips became ambassadors of psychedelic joy, Oh My Gawd!!! showed the first sparks of the strange and beautiful fire they would spend decades carrying forward.
Coyne’s body of artwork to go on display in 2027
There are endless amounts of Wayne’s art used either on stage, in music videos, feature length films, and in other applications spanning a remarkable 40-year career. Now fans and the general public are invited to join him in his artistic journey as the Oklahoma Contemporary Center will be hosting Happily One Freak: A Wayne Coyne Retrospective in 2027.
Happily One Freak: A Wayne Coyne Retrospective is a installation of art on display inside the Eleanor Kirkpatrick Main Gallery at the Oklahoma Contemporary Center located at 11 NW 11th St. in Oklahoma City.
The Retrospective will run from February 11 – August 9, 2027.
Coyne’s artist statement explains in his own words that not only was his devotion to art deeply personal, but his passion transcends music and, as the decades have passed, his body of work stands alone.
I have always thought of my life as one long art project that. By some lucky accident, I learned how to sing. Happily One Freak is my opportunity to finally gather the paintings, drawings, sculptures, designs, and ideas that have been accumulating for decades into a single space. This is my first retrospective exhibition, which feels strange, as I never considered my work something to look back on. It was always something to pursue.
Many of these pieces grew up alongside The Flaming Lips, but this exhibition is not solely about the band. It is about being possessed by ideas that leave you no choice but to create. I often speak about how the gods of music and art entrust humans to bring things into the world. For reasons I do not entirely understand, my creations tend to look and sound as though they might fall apart, laugh at you, and give you a hug all at once.
The exhibition includes familiar works such as King’s Mouth, which is less an art object than a friendly creature you can crawl inside. It also features works that never had a stage, a tour, or a song attached to them.
Debuting this collection in my hometown of Oklahoma City feels exactly right. I grew up believing that being a freak was a survival skill. This exhibition celebrates that belief. It honors the joy of standing alone together, happily one freak, imagining better, brighter, stranger worlds, and inviting everyone inside.
—Wayne Coyne
More about this project can be found here.
Needles for your Balloons: How The Flaming Lips turned discord, expectation, and experimentation into a cult classic
Released in June 1994, Due to High Expectations… The Flaming Lips Are Providing Needles for Your Balloons occupies a strange and fascinating place in the discography of The Flaming Lips. Neither a proper studio album nor a throwaway collection of leftovers, the record captures the band in the middle of one of the most important transitions of their career; suspended somewhere between underground noise-rock cult heroes and the cosmic experimentalists they would later become.
The title itself feels like a Flaming Lips manifesto: absurd, funny, slightly confrontational, and deeply self-aware. According to the band, the release was assembled because fans expected new material after the success of 1992’s Hit to Death in the Future Head and 1993’s Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, but there would not be a new studio album in 1994. Instead of disappearing, the band responded with an intentionally odd collection of unreleased songs, live recordings, covers, experiments, and sonic detours.
At 44 minutes long, the so-called “EP” behaves more like a full album. It is messy in the best possible way – chaotic, adventurous, emotional, and unpredictable. The record acts almost like a scrapbook of the Lips’ mid-90s imagination, documenting a band that was constantly testing the boundaries of what alternative rock could sound like.
The opening track, Bad Days, would later become one of the band’s best-known songs from the era, eventually appearing in a different form on Clouds Taste Metallic and gaining wider exposure through the film Batman Forever. Here, however, it sounds rougher and more frantic; a perfect entry point into the album’s restless energy.
Elsewhere, the compilation veers wildly between moods. “Jets Part 2 (My Two Days as an Ambulance Driver)” drifts through dreamy psychedelic textures, while “Ice Drummer” and “Put the Waterbug in the Policeman’s Ear” showcase the band’s fascination with distorted tape experiments and surreal storytelling. The live recordings included on the second half of the release reveal another side of the Lips entirely: fragile, humorous, intimate, and deeply human.
One of the most revealing aspects of the album is how clearly it documents the group’s evolution. Earlier Flaming Lips records leaned heavily into noisy punk psychedelia, but Providing Needles for Your Balloons hints at the emotional vulnerability and sonic ambition that would later define masterpieces like The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The album’s strange transitions, ambient passages, and damaged beauty feel like prototypes for the expansive emotional landscapes the band would soon perfect.
The compilation also captures the collaborative chemistry between Wayne Coyne, Michael Ivins and Ronald Jones during a particularly fertile era. Ronald Jones’ guitar work especially stands out; swirling, unpredictable, and capable of moving from noise explosions to delicate melodic textures in seconds. Many longtime fans view this period as one of the most creatively fearless line-ups the band ever assembled.
Though it rarely receives the same attention as the band’s landmark albums, Due to High Expectations… The Flaming Lips Are Providing Needles for Your Balloons has endured as an essential cult favorite among dedicated listeners. Part of its appeal lies in its looseness. It feels less like a carefully constructed product and more like an open transmission from a band exploring ideas in real time. There is no pressure toward polish or commercial clarity. Instead, the album embraces experimentation, imperfection, humor, and emotional confusion; qualities that would become central to the Flaming Lips identity.
More than anything, the album serves as a bridge. It closes the chapter on the band’s early psychedelic-noise years while pointing toward the emotionally expansive future ahead. In hindsight, it sounds like a group realizing they could become almost anything they wanted, and beginning to test just how far that freedom could go.
Confirmed dates for 2026
March 28 – Teton Village, Wyoming: Rendezvous Music Festival
April 18 – Mexico City, Mexico: Velódromo Olímpico
May 3 – El Paso, Texas: Sol Summit
May 7 – Houston, Texas: White Oak Music Hall
May 8 – Austin, Texas: Austin Psych Fest
May 30 – Denver, Colorado: Outside Days festival
June 15 – Vienna, Austria: Gasometer
June 17 – Milan, Italy: Parco Della Musica
June 18 – Bologna, Italy: Bonsai Gardens
June 20 – Prague, Czechia: At the Letňany Airport (other notables include Nick Cave, Sting, Slowdive)
June 22 – Belgrade, Serbia: Luka Beograd
June 23 – Zagreb, Croatia: Inmuic Festival (other notables include Gorillaz, Idles, Jack White)
June 25 – Athens, Greece: Release Athens Festival – SOLD OUT
July 16 – Galway, Ireland: Galway International Arts Festival (with Mercury Rev) – SOLD OUT
July 18 – Margate, England: Dreamland (co-headline with The Beta Band)
July 19 – Nottingham, England: The Nottingham Splendour Festival
July 21 – Wolverhampton, England: Civic Hall
July 23 – Halifax, England: The Piece Hall (co-headline with The Beta Band)
July 25 – London, England: Somerset House Summer Series
July 26 – Suffolk, England: Latitude Festival (other notables include David Byrne, Lewis Capaldi)
July 27 – Glasgow, Scotland: Summer Nights at The Bandstand
July 29 – Cardiff, Wales: Depot
August 22-23 – Jakarta, Indonesia: LALALA Fest
September 25 – Louisville, Kentucky: Bourbon & Beyond Festival
2026 World Fan Project
What would the world be like without The Flaming Lips?
Have you ever thought “what would this world be like, how would the universe sound, or how would we connect with each other without The Flaming Lips?“
Although hard to ponder, we thought what if we posed this question to fans all over the world and documented their responses for The Observer’s first large world-wide fan project.
Whether you have written in before or not, participated in our fan interviews or not, everyone is welcome to offer their insight through words, art, essay, pictures or anything creative to fulfil a community perspective with this question:
What would the world be like without The Flaming Lips?
There is no hard deadline with this project, with an estimated publish date say… later this year in late summer or fall. We’ll put out a last call sometime around then, and then work to catalog and design the responses into one massive Observer publication.
The goal is to get fans thinking, to search themselves and express their thoughts and or gratitude into one large collection.
To submit, simply contact us at editorobserver1@gmail.com.
Please attach the name you would like to use, along with your submission and any special instructions you have for your content. Please only submit content that you own and is yours to publish.
WATCH:
Nathan Roberts on joining The Flaming Lips in 1989
Sky Cries Mary‘s Roderick Wolgamott on taking part in The Flaming Lips’ Seattle Boom Box Experiment
Editor’s Message
Welcome to Issue 18
After reading a number of articles about the band, with some focusing on particular members, I couldn’t help but notice that when some writers refer to certain members, they refer to them as the band’s “multi-instrumentalist” as if there is just one in The Flaming Lips. If anyone who actually pays any real attention to this group knows, that to be a member of this group you have to be a multi-instrumentalist. There is so many layers to this music, so much complexity to the songs themselves that when you watch this band live, everyone on stage knows how to play multiple instruments, sometimes they are playing them simultaneously.
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Thank you to Lili and Alex, Alexis and Jerry, Jonathan and Juan, Nick and Brian, Tom and Matt and anyone else who shared some great spring shows. It’s like Jerry said in his interview in Austin, each time the band drops dates we get excited. And the music is what fills our cups and our souls, but it’s the people you meet along the way and share the music with, that stays with you. We will always have the set lists, and the posters and the cell phone pictures to remember that each show was great, but the journey with the music, along with the people in our lives, that will always carry with us.
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Anyone wanting to send in words, art, pictures, essays, or images of tattoos inspired by the music, please feel welcome too. We at The Observer, with thousands of journalists working in bureaus around the world, are always looking for submissions for this newsletter.
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And now, as the band now sets its sights on Europe, we just want to wish everyone safe travels to and from the shows. Remember to care for one another and keep screaming…
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Please think about referring this newsletter to your friends, or drop the link into your groups or whatever. We all need breaks from social media, and this newsletter was designed for fans who maybe are not on social media. The mission of this newsletter is to celebrate the fans and the music of The Flaming Lips. This is a safe space for those wanting to share stories of their connections to the music and the band.
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Parting shot:
Founded January 1 2025
All are welcome here.
This newsletter was created by fans, for fans, and is in no way affiliated with The Flaming Lips or their management.
By signing up you will only receive this monthly newsletter and no other promotions or solicitations.
The Observer operates under the same ethics and principles of traditional journalism. All information, including quotes, facts and attributions are verified before publication. All visual components are independently sourced by the contributing artist(s) and The Observer adheres to all copyright instructions and labels.
The Observer may not consider any form of advertising or sponsorship. The mission is to celebrate the music, and the lives of those who cherish it. For anyone wanting to contribute words, pictures, art and essays, please feel free to reach out.
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Thank you for being you,
– Woody
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