It’s all a mystery

How seeing the Flaming Lips became a favorite moment of my life

On June 16th, 2023, a band called the Flaming Lips came to Omaha and played a concert at a newer music venue in town called Steelhouse Omaha. They were on tour and playing through their 2002 album, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. There are a handful of albums I’ve listened to straight through countless times over the years, but Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots has to be in my top three most-listened-to albums of all time.

I was a freshman in high school when the album came out, a time when I was in an intense music discovery phase of my life. I only knew of the Flaming Lips because one of my percussion instructors frequently wore a tour shirt of theirs which said “Flaming Lips Experiment.” I remember finally asking him one day during a break at marching band practice about what it was. He explained that it was a cool band and that they put on really amazing live shows.

II.

In 2002, while at Luna Music, the local independent record and CD shop in Indianapolis, I noticed a new album from the Flaming Lips. At the time I was in my first year of Japanese in school, and the album had what seemed to be a Japanese theme. Yoshimi is a Japanese name, and the album had Japanese writing on it. Since I was on a mission back then to discover cool music while also happening to be learning Japanese, it was an easy decision to purchase the album.

III.

Now, I can’t say that the Flaming Lips are a super popular band, or that this album is a particularly well known album by a lot of people, but the Flaming Lips are known for their over-the-top showmanship and antics during live performances, and the album is still very highly regarded, with its fun and funky electronic synth sounds and beats, and lyrics that are both playful and deeply meaningful. The Flaming Lips had been making albums for nearly twenty years when Yoshimi came out. It was their tenth album, too, which still blows my mind. It was released when the events of 9/11 were still fresh on everyone’s mind, and I think some of its reception was influenced by this. Wayne Coyne, the writer and lead singer of the Flaming Lips, touches a lot of topics that I think we were all a bit sensitive to at the time.

If you’re not into Indie Rock or some of its adjacent sub-genres, I’m not sure if you’d know many or perhaps any of the songs from the album. But if there is one song you would know, it would be “Do You Realize?” That song is perhaps the most beloved song by the Flaming Lips, which is somewhat surprising considering one of the main hooks of the song goes:

“Do you realize / that everyone you know / someday will die?”

Wayne sings with a sense of a soul-searching curiosity about the mysteries of the world and life, and of love and hate, and he reminds us to stay in the present and appreciate it because we don’t get a lot of time on this earth. He reminds us all that it’s important to tell the people we love that we love them.

IV.

I listened to this album straight through incessantly in my teenage years. I had recently purchased my first iPod (a 40gb brick that spun so loud that other students would turn around in study hall trying to figure out where the noise was coming from). It was one of the first albums I loaded onto the iPod, and I would listen to it most days at school. I introduced my friend Nathan to the Flaming Lips. He’d borrow the iPod for his study hour and listen to the album as well. He too loved it, and I remember him returning it to me during passing period while dramatically singing me lines from the album aloud in the hallway.

So, as I as saying, the Flaming Lips came to Omaha last year on June 16th and they were on tour playing this specific album. You can perhaps imagine my excitement when I found out that this tour existed. This band, playing this album. Are you kidding me? But you can also perhaps imagine my deep anguish when I realized this tour was coming to Omaha that very week, and perhaps it was even the very next day, and I had to work and did not have a way to get a ticket.

I was heartbroken and devastated that I was going to miss it. I know that sounds dramatic, but I was really bummed. I had also listened to this album a few times to help me cope with my brother’s fairly recent death, and it would have been a meaningful show for me in that regard, too.

My cousin Aaron was prepared and knew of the show ahead of time and was going and asked me if I was going. With pain I had to tell him I was not, that I had found out about it too late and that I was working. I think he kicked himself a bit for not mentioning it to me sooner because he knew that I liked the Flaming Lips, but he also probably figured that I would have heard about it before I did.

When the night of the concert showed up I was pretty sad about missing it. I was excited for Aaron, but really feeling like I was missing out on something that would have meant so much to me and that I would have really enjoyed being there.

The night of the concert, after putting our kids to bed, I remember I changed into some running gear, grabbed my AirPods and headed out to the track. I figured it was right around the time that the show would have been starting downtown, so on my walk over to the track I put on Yoshimi and hit play. I then ran around the track listening to the album straight through, knowing that my cousin at that very moment was listening to the album live.

He sent me a couple photos and videos from the show with huge inflatable pink robots and confetti and giant inflated balloons bouncing around the venue. As I ran around the track that night, the lyrics hit deeper and traveled to more places than they did for me back when I was in high school. It had been twenty-one years since I purchased that album from that CD shop. A lot of life happens in that time.

VI.

The next day, I met up with my cousin Aaron to catch up with each other and to hear about the concert. He graciously bought me a really cool shirt from the show. He mentioned how much of a bummer it was that I didn’t get to go and that he wanted to figure out a way for me to still go see them play this album. I looked at the tour dates, and nothing was really feasible.

I regarded it now as a moment that came and passed and that would continue on with a lingering sense of regret. Oh well. These things happen sometimes. I’d survive.

VII.

Fast forward to this summer: I was at my cousin Becky’s 40th birthday party and Aaron mentioned to me that the Flaming Lips were coming to our area’s two-day summer music festival called Outlandia in August, and they were the headliners for the Friday show. He asked me if I would be able to join him and go.

Now I somehow once again didn’t know that the Flaming Lips were coming to town, but I was so excited that they were, because this time I had enough time to prepare my work schedule so that I could go.

And so I went!

VIII.

I had looked nothing up about their current tour and figured that the Yoshimi tour was sort of a one summer, kind of short-lived thing. But no, Aaron informed me at the festival that they were still on their Yoshimi tour and that they would likely play it as they did last year, but this time with a lot more space to work with. My heart jumped with excitement.

After the opening bands played their sets, and after the sun had set, I put on a long-sleeve shirt to keep warm on the unseasonably cool and perfect weather evening. I wandered down to the crowd that had gathered to prepare myself for the start of the Flaming Lips set. Aaron and his wife Robin also were right there with me, and the show kicked off with the sounds of an album I had heard hundreds of times in the last twenty years.

IX.

The anticipation before those first notes came with a very high bar of emotional and perhaps spiritual expectation. And that bar was cleared with ease. The show was everything I had hoped it would be and more. And if I had been there alone, that would have been wonderful for what it would have been, but the night was made infinitely more special for me because I was standing with my cousin Aaron and watching it with him. I told him before the show that I had one request: during “Do you Realize?” that we would turn around and take a selfie together.

Before the song came on, they took a pause to set up a big inflatable rainbow. Wayne discussed the importance of telling the people we love that we love them, and that spending time with them is so important. It was about perfect. Hearing it, I of course was grieving the loss of my brother, and I know Aaron was grieving the loss of loved one’s of his own. I leaned by head back onto his shoulder, and he gave me a pat on the back and a squeeze of the shoulder. And I was overwhelmed with all the feelings that fit within joy — both grief and gratitude, and everything in between.

In the middle of the song we turned around together and took the selfie and captured a moment I know I’ll hold with me forever, (which is still a short time, btw).

The show was fantastic and fantastical. It was energetic and fun and rambunctiously filled with who knows how much confetti. They played the album just like I had hoped, along with the few other hits they’ve had over the years. (Including the “Yeah Yeah Yeah” song, which was on the Muzak CD we played at the Quiznos Sub shop I worked at in high school).

I made sure to do my best to soak it all in, which means having moments where I’m capturing photos, moments where I’m closing my eyes and purely soaking up the sounds, moments where I capture some video of my favorite songs to remember later, and moments where I look around with amazement and think “I’m here right now! This is my life right now! And this is amazing!”

Looking over and seeing Aaron having fun right alongside me was tremendously fun for me, and it immediately marked this night as top night of my life to this point.