Minnesota State Fair! Sonic Lips + Flaming Youth
 

I'm extreemly pleased to be attending tomorrow nights cosmic event.

I'm just panicing a bit because I want to film it. I just looked on the Grandstand site and the "rules" say no cameras! Bah!

So I'm putting messages out to try to get a camera in.

Some of you have more stealthy cameras then I. Would you PLEASE bring them and comit to recording one song? Even the limited video mode of a still cam would be suficient for one song. We could then pool the videos on youtube after, and have the entire collectivly-shot concert film.

Sounds good to ME anyway.
I'm still trying to film the WHOLE thing. Lips and Youth. Thinking I'll hide in an animal suit or something.

Good luck, and have fun people!

I'll be there if I can get in - haven't bought a ticket.

Hell yeah i'll be there! Someone definitely has to tape it! At least the audio!

Also,anyone know anything about posters? Lord i hope they make a poster!

I'll be going

Just a heads up: the weather forecast for tomorrow really sucks ass
http://www.weather.com/weather/local/55402?lswe=55402&lwsa=WeatherLocalUndeclared&from= whatwhere

Oh, and the Grandstand doesn't allow umbrellas. Yippie!

No Umbrellas? WTF.

CHOUT, I thought you were playing Marios (as per yrSpace) Hey, it's not sold out (yet), good luck.

Rain or shine, I'm trying to make that video.

whoa mang. i'm gonna be there. kinda want to chill with thurston afterwards, hah.

I'm actually not going to be attending as I had formerly planned. Sorry, folks. My presence was going to be the only reason the concert would have been worth attending.

It's freaking pouring at the State Fair right now.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/15347856.htm
Lips' Drozd gives us the biz on State Fair

BY ROSS RAIHALA

Pioneer Press



Flaming Lips

Tonight's Grandstand performance by Oklahoma psychedelic popsters the Flaming Lips won't be the first time the band has played a state fair. And, most likely, it won't be the worst, either.
"I think our least favorite was opening for Candlebox, somewhere outside of Fresno (in 1994)," said the band's guitarist, Steven Drozd, followed by an audible shudder. "Some fair shows have been better than others."
But this summer, the Flaming Lips are purposefully mixing it up with tonight's Minnesota State Fair gig, the first of several that will see the band playing for the corndogs-and-mini-doughnuts crowd.
"This year more than ever, we're fortunate to be able to pick and choose what we do," Drozd said during a phone interview last week. "We wanted to play club shows, we wanted to play jam-band festivals. And when state fairs were proposed to us, we took them."
Here's what else Drozd had to say:
On what he expects the crowd to look like: "I think it'll be a lot of people who would come to see us anywhere. We've got people who have followed us for many, many years. But we're also getting, like, our sixth wind. We've got kids 18 and 19 years old buying our records now. And we have the five- and six-year-olds who are the children of our fans."
On the fairs of his youth: "I had the county fair. And it was magical — at least until I was 12 or 13. Then it was more fun to go and look for fights."
On how the band's infamous stage show has changed for the current tour: "I think we're more of a bad-a** rock band now, but there's still that Barnum and Bailey element, too. We've got more confetti, more smoke, cooler videos, more lights. (Lead singer) Wayne (Coyne) has a space bubble he gets into. Oh, and now instead of people dressed up as animals, we've got people in Santa Claus and alien suits."
On whether or not it's tough to play music surrounded by all that hubbub: "For a while I thought it was kind of distracting. But sometimes it is fun to play guitar while I'm being smothered in confetti. Smoke bombs are especially fun. I'm serious. It enhances your performance. And whether or not it's in front of 1,000 people or 10,000 people, I think it draws people in."
On what it's like to be immortalized in the new band biography "Staring at Sound," written by Chicago rock critic Jim DeRogatis: "Jim's always been a Lips champion. He spent a lot of time on it. I think the writing is very — colorful. There are a few facts that are wrong, but I'm glad it's out there. It is interesting to read someone else's version of your life. I just hope now that with the book and the documentary ('Fearless Freaks') people don't think our career is over and it's time to pack it all up."
On whether or not it's cool to play a state fair: "Well, with Sonic Youth and the Magic Numbers, it sounds like a hell of a state fair show. If I was 16, it could be a life changer. When Sonic Youth signed on, it sweetened the deal for us. You can slag us for playing a state fair, but you can't slag Sonic Youth, too."
Pop Music Critic Ross Raihala can be reached at rraihala@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5553. Read more about the local music scene on his blog, "The Ross Who Knew Too Much," at blogs.twincities.com/ross.
Who: The Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth and the Magic Numbers
When: 7:30 tonight
Where: Minnesota State Fairgrounds, 1625 N. Snelling Ave.
Tickets: $30
Call: 651-989-5151

It was pouring all day, but it suddenly stopped around 7:00pm, before the show.

Setlist:

Teen Age Riot
noise jam
Reena
Incinerate
Eric's Trip
first 10 seconds of Rapture, then suddenly stopped
What A Waste
Tom Violence
Jams Run Free
Sleepin' Around
Pink Steam
----------
Do You Believe In Rapture?

total SY set time was around an hour or so.

How were the lips, as well?

I didn't have a camera, sorry. I'm assuming someone out there did and will post the pictures online at some point.

the show was pretty good overall, but not quite as good as the gig they did here two years ago** (although it was still cool to hear Teen Age Riot, which they hadn't done last time). Sound quality seemed pretty decent overall. Lee's voice sounded off key on Eric's Trip; Kim's voice was off early in the gig (she was looking at the soundguy and pointing at her ear like she did on Conan), but seemed to improve by What A Waste.

The between-song banter was kept to a minimum tonight. Thurston was "shocked" to see that so many people showed up in spite of the shit weather. The band apparently enjoyed their late breatfast/early lunch at Mickey's Diner in downtown Saint Paul (note to non-Minnesotans: it's an old abandoned streetcar that was turned into a diner; it's considered a "landmark" by some, but somehow I have spent my entire life in the Twin Cities without bothering to check the place out), and Thurston jokingly asked if it would be a cool place to go for a late night meal after the show (knowing that a crazy mob would probably follow them there if they did go), before deciding to settle for the toxic food-on-a-stick crap served at the fair (Minnesota State Fair = a vegetarians worst nightmare)

As for Kim's attire, I had trouble figuring out whether it was actually supposed to be a dress, or if it was some nighttime smock meant to be slept in and not worn in public.

**please note that my opinion may be affected by the fact that I was a little more excited to hear the Sonic Nurse material two years ago than I was for the Rather Ripped material this time around. Also, the 2004 gig was my first time seeing SY live, and was a longer show (1 hour and 45 minutes versus just 1 hour), although SY didn't really have control over how long they could play tonight.

Sort of like that, but in a solid off-white color.

They had played Eric's Trip and Tom Violence here two years ago. Good songs, but I was hoping for Catholic Block or some material from Confusion is Sex, considering that it had appeared on other sets from this tour. Oh well. Maybe they'll tour the Midwest again sometime in the next year, since they haven't really done any headlining gigs in this region, excluding Milwaukee.

Anyone tape anything? I mean audio or vid?

http://www.startribune.com/457/story/634971.html

Rain doesn't extinguish Flaming opening

Review: The Flaming Lips put on a hot show even as the weather doused the State Fair grandstand.

 

Music





It was no coincidence that the first song played at the Minnesota State Fair's opening grandstand concert Thursday night was Sonic Youth's "Teenage Riot," with the opening line, "Everybody's talking about the stormy weather."
As if the show didn't promise to be wild enough, what with Oklahoma's radical Flaming Lips as headliners, Mother Nature kicked up a wallop of a storm just before show time. The opening band, the Magic Numbers, had to blow off its set because its gear got soaked, although the Lips brought the group out for a couple of songs later. Otherwise, the show went on as planned before nearly 8,000 poncho-clad fans.
"You came!" was Sonic Youth singer-guitarist Thurston Moore's greeting to the crowd. "We were told you weren't going to show up."
A band that sometimes doesn't play full force, Moore's team put on a powerful, if abbreviated, set. After "Teenage Riot," the New York art-punks launched into two songs on their new CD, "Rather Ripped," and mostly stuck to the album from there, with only one more oldie, "Eric's Trip."
The weather made things especially difficult for the Flaming Lips, whose elaborate stage show (video screen, confetti shooters, etc.) had to be hastily assembled after Sonic Youth. Lips frontman Wayne Coyne apologized for not going on until about 10:20 p.m., but the wait certainly paid off with an eye-candy freak show complete with psychedelic movies, costume-wearing dancers and streamer guns whose leftovers probably still will be hanging around for Rascal Flatts' big grandstand show Saturday.
"This show looked like it wasn't going to happen two or three different times," he said, praising "the union guys who made it work."
For his part, Coyne worked it, rolling out over the crowd in his inflated Space Bubble before the opening tune, "Race for the Prize," and emphatically urging the crowd to sing during "Free Radicals" and "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots."Nature or the universe conspired against us," he said about the weather, "but [expletive] them." Well put.

Cool article, but what's this about them not performing well sometimes? BS. And did they suddenly forget about Tom Violence?

The show sucked.
They cut out of Rapture, because Thurston forgot the words. His guitar tech found the words, and then they played it at the end.
The setlist had shaking hell and some other stuff on it, but they didn't play it. Fuck, man.
The lips were great, though. Definitely one of the best shows I've ever been to despite the Youth Sucking it up.
I was up against the fence, right in the middle. It was sweet.

They were so mellow. I was at the front, about 5 feet away from Isoflurane and you could carry on a decent coversation it was so quiet when they were playing. Tom Violence seemed like a ballad - there was no intensity to it. I was really hoping for Shaking Hell too. I wouldn't say it was a bad show at all, but it was definitely not one of my top sy concert experiences.

I left halfway into the Lips first song cuz I had to go play a show. Then I got there and we didn't get to play. We still got $190 bucks though to split between 3 bands!

found some photos on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/solace7...7594250639013/ (24 total)

Here's a few: