We Saw the Flaming Lips at the Orange County Fair and It Made Us Realize Humanity Is Doomed

The date is August first, and the first thing I see when I wake up is a text message from a colleague containing a photograph of a dead body. The corpse is covered up with a white cloth and laying in the middle of a city street, and I am shocked on so many levels that my morning brain can't really fathom what it is I am viewing. Just one of the many concerns I immediately have is about the "2013 camera phone rights" that people inherently feel exist, the belief that it is okay to take pictures of anything, and how I'm probably the weird one for finding it unthinkable to react to a human being, dead, in the middle of the street, and by taking out my iPhone to snap a quick shot.

In the news I read about Cal Ripken Jr.'s mother being kidnapped a year ago at gunpoint and driven around for 24 hours until finally being returned home. I read an article by Michele Catalano describing government officials showing up at her house based on suspicious Googling. I read James Franco's take on Stand By Me or VICE and try not to dwell on the coincidence. Mostly, I engage anything I can to try not to think about the bizarre dreams from the previous night, in which my whole family perished in an automobile accident only to wind up in some weird afterlife where Asian gangsters and cocaine were the players of note. Or, I try not to think about the dream's source.

"Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?" Wayne Coyne, frontman of The Flaming Lips, asked in song just hours ago, as the Lips performed the previous night at the Orange County Fair. That night, surrounded by a large crowd that did not use their assigned seat as more than a coatrack for the entirety of the Lips' set, those lyrics felt like a revelation, much like they do the first time you hear "Do You Realize?" I saw a guy shedding tears a few seats over while he held his date and he wasn't the least bit embarrassed. And why not, why shouldn't that thought make you cry. I didn't cry, I just had nightmares, the kind where at the end, I awoke by considering that I might be in a dream and counted to three, jolting out of it. The joy in that success was quickly wiped away by the dead stranger appearing on my phone.

This is the world we live in.

The Flaming Lips have always seemed to live outside of our reality, just visitors to this world we live in. And, this isn't just commentary of the druggy DIY stage show they have come to be known for, but rather, is an extension of their relationship with Warner Brothers, their longtime label. After many underground releases in the 80's, where the band lived by the mantra "if they can't say we were good, at least they can say we were loud," the band impressed the major label with their live spectacle and scored a deal. It took a couple albums to get a radio hit with "She Don't Use Jelly," and it is still the only song to make it into heavy rotation on alternative radio. It took the group another decade to get to a place that would seem commercially viable to the unbiased observer, but they somehow were believed in enough to have a major label put out a record that was meant to be played on four stereos at the same time.

And thus, the fantastical nature of every aspect of the band, including the hamster ball, the gummy vaginas, Christmas on Mars, headphone concerts, and Dark Side of the Moon, it was all explainable because a different set of rules that governed the band. The music of the Lips has never been been oblivious to our reality, though. It is a reaction to it. A song like "The Spiderbite Song" could directly relate to an incident with Coyne's creative partner, Stephen Drozd, and his heroin addiction and turn it into something sweet and almost playful. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, as their first album after 9/11, turned thoughts of death and confusion into a piece of whimsy, and the performances of The Flaming Lips became about the balance of melancholy lyrics with the power of the mass gathering and the positivity that can be harnessed within it.

This spirit seemed both perfect for the setting of the Orange County Fair, and totally wrong for it in the same sense. Because of the confetti and the costumes and the lights, yes, The Flaming Lips on paper seem ideal for the environment of games and rides and togetherness that county fairs attract across the country. Tickets to any of the OC Fair concerts even allow for free admission to the fair, and a pre-concert stroll around revealed a setting whose absurdity and strange beauty complimented The Flaming Lips as we've come to know them.

There was indulgence.

There was sadness.

There was wonder.

And there was even subtle, layered comedy that many people wouldn't get.

Even the activities seemed custom-selected to relate directly to the evening's entertainment.

The overall festivity of the occasion was enough to overshadow the implications of headlining a county fair. Right up there with the Indian casino circuit, the county fair has long held the reputation as a place to see bands decades past their prime, or easily booked acts that appeal to a lowest common denominator crowd. According to CarnivalWarehouse.com, the OC Fair is only 10th as far as National fair earnings go, but the musical acts, undoubtably attracted by their onsite amphitheater that is a legitimate concert venue, are far better than theit larger neighbor. the LA County Fair. While L.A.'s biggest booking this year is Ke$ha, Orange County landed Weezer, Hall & Oates, and The Who's Roger Daltry.

Bigger bookings, yes, but all of these serve the purpose to provide greatest hits-type performances in a safe, family environment. This is generally the case at fairs, though there are exceptions, like Kendrick Lamar's night at the San Diego County Fair (not a family show) or Macklemore and Ryan Lewis with Talib Kweli and Chance the Rapper at the Minnesota State Fair (not many well-known hits). And, in case you were wondering, number-one ranked fair, the Texas State Fair, landed Kelly Rowland and Kacey Musgraves. (Texas also is hosting "An Evening with Molly Ringwald," which who the fuck knows what that entails but I'd be there in a second)

The Flaming Lips, from the point of view of the booker, could fit into the "songs everyone knows" category if they played the set they have been playing for the past decade, with Wayne rolling on top of the audience in his giant beach ball and confetti and maybe some fireworks. But, as any who have seen the band recently might attest, this is not who The Flaming Lips are right now. Their latest album, after all, is called The Terror.

There was no hamster ball. There were hardly even any hits. Instead, The Flaming Lips' new stage show begins with an assault of harsh, flashing lights, while Coyne stands high on a podium holding a fake baby. While he sings, Coyne rocks and makes faces at the baby, and you are forced to think if it is representing an anti-christ, as there is something very totalitarian about Coyne's gestures. Or, maybe this represents the world that any baby today would be born into, so loud and bright and changing and utterly frightening, you almost pity the thing.

Either way, this wasn't the joyous opening to a Lips show most expect.

While the fair crowd might have been expecting to sing along to the Yoshimi title track, the old songs that were played were either chosen because they sonically fit in with the new material, or they were rearranged significantly, causing their joy to leak out like air from a pierced tire. The dichotomy between sadness and bliss tilted far into the gloomy sector. "Race for the Prize" was sung almost without any backing save the synthesized strings. "A Spoonful Weights a Ton" and "Do You Realize?" also seemed particularly heavy, slowed down and quieted and affecting in completely different ways than they have come to be known. It was as if the live entity of The Flaming Lips had finally adjusted to their last two albums. They were still captivating, but the songs turned to tension and release to provide thrills, rather than familiarity.

And while it is easy to recognize the correlation between the new material and the performance, the question is still there as to why The Flaming Lips have lost their joyful spirit. Between songs, Coyne would try to hype the crowd, getting them to make noise, but it seemed almost out of habit, as if Coyne assumed like a Flaming Lips concert ought be joyful by virtue of it being "A Flaming Lips Concert," regardless the actual tone of the music. However, that's simply not the case. Stunning, engrossing, and emotional, yes. But bleak and frightening is generally not something that makes people feel happy.

It has been noted the Coyne split with his significant other of 25 years before the recent album was made, and that Drozd had temporarily relapsed with heroin. Coyne has spoken in depth about what the titular terror refers to; that even in the absence of love, life goes on. From a band point view, where in concert they repeat over and over that they love their fans, the idea is that they don't want us to feel how they feel. But it is too late. They have now joined our reality, not vice versa.

Watching a Flaming Lips concert in 2013 is like watching what the world can do to people in vivid technicolor. It has taken a song that was always about appreciating what we have while we have it, "Do You Realize?," and turned it into a song about realizing that one day we won't have our friends, or our family, or our lives.

But maybe it is still appropriate for the fair, where the darkness is just as visible, but we just choose to ignore it.

Because we don't want to think about where this came from.

Or whether life is fair. (no pun intended)

Literally, our thrills come from approaching death and surviving.

It's hard to blame The Flaming Lips for putting together a live experience that uses all their tools of lights, props, and music to show us a bit of the terror that we should feel more often. It's hard to blame someone for sending me a picture of a dead body via text message. It's much more logical to blame yourself for still thinking that people will turn the ship around and get it together, like the world is just a dream we can count to three and wake up from. This is just where we are at, and I guess that means no more hamster ball.

Now that the album is over, life isn't worth living. (we're joking!) #TheTerror — The Flaming Lips (@theflaminglips) April 11, 2013

Philip Cosores is not always #sodark, proof on Twitter - @Philip_Cosores