Flaming Lips Live Debut “Transmissions…” and Electric Würms at First Avenue

With a setlist that began with the first ever performance of the entire 1993 album Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, followed by additional fan favs (like “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate“), The Flaming Lips played one of the most memorable shows of their 31 year career last Sunday at Minneapolis’ historic First Avenue. In fact, this was the first ever proper concert performance of “Plastic Jesus,” the second of “Pilot Can at the Queer of God” and the only since the ‘90s for five other songs. Just the album’s two signature cuts – hit single “She Don’t Jelly” and the epic closer “Slow•Nerve•Action” – have been played more than two times since Ronald Jones exited the band in 1996 (and the latter not at all since 2005), so even the songs that have been performed in the past decade were rare treats in Sunday’s setlist!

As if that weren’t remarkable enough, the opening act was none other than Steven Drozd and Wayne Coyne’s other band, The Electric Würms – their first ever show – playing their own material plus three Flaming Lips songs that have never been played live: “Found a Star on the Ground” (aka “The 6 Hour Song”), The Soft Bulletin companion’s “The Switch That Turns Off The Universe” and Embryonic’s “Your Bats.” Although a few songs had to be cut for time from the “hits set” (“The WAND,” “In The Morning of the Magicians” and “Do You Realize”), the triple set selection of songs are like no other Lips concert, and they brilliantly pulled it all off by all accounts. 

Electric Würms

The Flaming Lips

Transmissions from the Satellite Heart