Two Buck Coyne: The Flaming Lips At The Bowl

The Hollywood Bowl. Quite a room. Quite a big room. Sunday night, I was one of many sticky people, who graced the historic landmark, to witness Wayne Coyne and his group "The Flaming Lips," cool me. But on a record setting day for highs in the temperature, and even while their intensions were good, ultimately, they flamed out. But ya can't blame the band for everything. One in a while you gotta blame someone else. This time, the culprit is everyone's favorite environmentally sound and world renown trail mix peddler, Trader Joe's.

You see, while binoculars were not allowed at The Forum for the Pearl Jam show, just about anything you could think of was allowed to fill the bowl. Picnic baskets that would make Yogi Bear drool were as rampant as Kabbalah bracelets at a Madonna concert. These baskets were filled with cheeses from around the world, crackers of every shape, and fruit salads of the Gods. Ahhh, but the most important part of the basket was the wine. Oh the wines! The reds, the whites, and of course, the Two Buck Chuck.

There is no bigger drunken asshole than the "Trader Joe" drunken asshole. See, at a ball game or a Metallica concert, you expect, nay, you prepare for those drunken assholes. They rock out with their cock out, pardon the expression. But the pompous, Trader Joe drunk is not only drunk on cheap wine, but drunk on privilege. It's as if the rest of us crashed their party. These are the same type of people who don't use their turn signal on the freeway. You getting the picture?

How could the rest of us seated behind these people (who literally packed the kitchen sink) enjoy the show while they interacted with each other as if the band on stage was background music to their private party? There was no way The Corporation or the Lips could battle that. It took us (and those around me) right out of the show. I've never wanted to punch somebody more than those morons who danced in front of us while eating cheese. To me, the whole idea of eating cheese at a concert falls under my theory about eating sushi at a baseball game. If you do, you don't belong there... and you should probably be at home listening to NPR.

Other than that, the show was great.

Thievery Corporation put on a great live show. I had the good fortune of seeing them last year do a DJ set, but if you can see them with a full band, opt for that instead. They reproduce all of their tracks faithfully, and add a bit of flare (or is it groove?) at all of the right moments. The Bowl might be too big of a room for them though, as their type of music tends to play better in clubs, where the dancing is feroucious and the bass is thick, but they were up to the challenge, and succeeded

The Flaming Lips were there to shoot a DVD that will hopefully be released later on this year. Frankly, I'm really curious to see it. The set list was tight, and they played all of their recent hits, but between songs Wayne often pandered to the crowd to keep their energy up for the sake of the DVD. Look folks, if you gotta ask that of your fans, maybe, just maybe, you're not doing your job. Which for Wayne Coyne, a man who crowd surfs in a giant hamster ball, uses puppets during his act, and employs a cast of at least 50 dancers dressed in Santa Claus costumes, seems a bit unusual. Perhaps the Hollywood Bowl might have been the wrong venue for their theatrics, as I said from the top, it's the big room. I'm just sayin'....

Here's a sample of what you missed. Looks like fun, right?