The Flaming Lips performed a pair of concerts this past weekend that were truly in the bubble – more than 100 of them, in fact.
Band members and fans at the shows at The Criterion in Oklahoma City were inside big bubbles. Going to and from the bubbles, fans were required to wear masks and stay six-feet apart.
“We still want you to get excited. We still want you to scream. We still want you to sweat. We still want you to have everything that a normal concert has,” frontman Wayne Coyne explained in a Q&A before the shows. “You just have to do it inside of this bubble that will be waiting for you.”
“We are going to great lengths to make sure what happens here doesn’t happen at a normal show, and what I mean is lots of people very excited, screaming at each other, sweating on each other, sometimes hugging each other, in each other’s faces.”
Each bubble in the audience accommodated up to three people from the same social bubble.
The Flaming Lips – who have embraced bubbles on stage for years – debuted the full bubble concept last June when they performed their 1999 track “Race For The Prize” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. They then tested it with a bubble show at The Criterion in October.
In November, the band announced “the world’s first actual Space Bubble live concerts” would take place Dec. 10 and 11, 2020 but had to postpone the shows due to rising COVID-19 numbers in Oklahoma.