I'm beating Al to this post, woohoo!
Last night Simon and I saw the lips at Kentish Town Forum, supported by Brtish Sea Power and a special guest.
We arrived later than planned, the crappy buses never seem to go to the station when you want them to! We eventually got there at 7.45, had we missed the special guest?
British Sea Power's stage was all set up, and after a few minutes a projection started up on the screen (after many amusing shadow puppets). Took me a few minutes to work out it was the classic 'A matter of life and death', which played for about 10 minutes before BSP came out for a short but sharp set. They played Fear of Drowning, Remember Me, Spirit of St Louie (which simon claims sounds likes the men behaving badly theme tune!) and some new ones.
After the climactic finale, The Flaming Lips stuff was set up, with Wayne Coyle coming on every now and then to shine a torch in our eyes! But then- no, surely it can't be- little Timmy Wheeler from Ash came out (looking very slick!) with a cellist and performed Shining Light, Goldfinger and Teenage kicks on acoustic guitar. Top stuff!

And then the Flaming Lips. They had three huge glitterballs behind them, about 20 people on stage dressed in animal costumes, plus a santa- Wayne told us it's always christmas for the Flaming Lips, which led on to a request that we all believe in him- why not, he was a real person once.
Opening with 'Race for the Prize', They just controlled the whole venue- Flaming Lips gigs are more akin to a huge get together with friends than a concert. Classics 'She don't use Jelly', 'waiting for a superman' and new stuff 'Do you realise?!' and 'Yoshimi' were all amazing, though i didn't know every song. We also sang happy birthday to a couple of people in the crowd.
Simply an amazing night, and a very high watermark for gigs to come.

[Edited on 22-1-2003 by Matt Paradise]

quaility

wish i went!!

But James, you despise BSP so much

*sidelong jealous glances* you make me sick, with your jammy flaming lips/british sea power/tim wheeler-seeing, and then rubbing our cute wee noses in it. you're not nice.
love and jigsaw puzzles
xx

Matt didn't point out the only downer of the night...our tickets were seated...and there was no strawberry shake left at Burger King. But it was stilly pretty good, and the view from upstairs is better than from the floor anyway.

u only got those tix cos TC and greg couldn't make it hehe :p stargirl....if u wanna see some bands, let me know.....can see if can get u tix!!

*mojo*

[Edited on 22-1-2003 by mojo]

Quote:

Originally posted by Simon Dyson But James, you despise BSP so much

i could have put up with them for the other acts!!!
(you can always day dream, etc!! )

It was indeed a mind-blowingly fantastic night. Balloons kept bouncing off my head, which is a very surreal sensation when concussed, and every one of my senses was exhausted by the end of the night, but once again the Lips established themselves as the greatest live band of all time. In order to see just how much they should be cherished, everyone watch Top Of The Pops this week just to see how beautifully out of context they will be, dressed as rabbits and singing a life-affirming anthem called 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots pt. 1'. In the charts, at least, it doesn't get much better than that.

They didn't play 'Feeling Yourself Disintegrate', so I wasn't reduced to tears this time, but the memory of 'Do You Realize?' makes me want to cry just by thinking about it.

The one downer of the night - when you know you might have to leave before the encore to catch a tube, and you're eagerly waiting for The Flaming Lips to come onstage and explode into 'Race For The Prize', what's the absolute worst thing in the world that could happen at that moment? That's right, whining fuckmuppet Tim Wheeler wanders on with his acoustic guitar and proceeds to play 'Shining Light', the absolute worst song ever recorded by anyone, with the one exception being 'Pure Morning' by Placebo.

Hmm, gareth and i seem to remember you dancing to pure morning in the first year...
And have you forgotten the sixth rule of Indie Club? "Thou shalt not sully the name of little Timmy Wheeler".

Shining Light and Pure Morning are both great songs. I now conclude that The Wombs ears do not function correctly, perhaps something to do with the concussion.

James, wasn't your biggest problem with BSP the fact that they didn't just stand their looking bored like Oasis? If so you would hate the Flaming Lips even more! But then you would probably like the dancing naked girls.

>Shining Light and Pure Morning are both great songs.

That's so ridiculous, it hardly needs to be argued with. They are the epitome of lazy, whiny indie nothingness. But particularly Pure Morning - I've never seen a band get so terrible so quickly. Worst. Lyrics. Ever.

So were you at the Lips or not?

simon, the only band i've seen who are more static than oasis are the dandy warhols.....

Quote:

Originally posted by jazzy simon, the only band i've seen who are more static than oasis are the dandy warhols.....

What's your point? I never said all bands should be one extreme or the other. I dislike Oasis because they write crap music (IMO). My point was that James had a big problem with the fact that BSP actually moved onstage.

Quote:

Originally posted by Simon Dyson James, wasn't your biggest problem with BSP the fact that they didn't just stand their looking bored like Oasis? If so you would hate the Flaming Lips even more! But then you would probably like the dancing naked girls.

no i thought there was nothing more to them than thier stage show!!
naked dancing girls would win my vote anytime tho

But you definately made it quite clear that you had issues with them having a stage show. hmm...here we go again.