A long time ago, in a backyard outside of Oklahoma city, the brothers Coyne played an unusually rough game of pick up football. Akin to a “semi-civilized gang fight,” the game was merely an excuse for the second youngest, Wayne, to listen to his older siblings’ 8 -Track collection. A few years later, when his brother, Mark, decided to leave the band he started, Wayne took over as lead vocalist for The Flaming Lips, adopting the family football team’s name, the fearless freaks, as a mantra.

It’s hard to believe that the Flaming Lips as still more relevant and more productive a full thirty years later.

The beauty of The Flaming Lips is their unpredictability. The only constant members have been Wayne Coyne and Michael Ivins, the bassist who was invited to join the band in his teenage years more for his (now missing) mountain of hair and less his bass skills. Before being the beacon of creativity and weirdness they are today, they existed as punk outfit with a fetish for pyrotechnics and ostentatious Jabberwocky. The band was signed to Warner Brothers immediately after this concert below.

In the early 90s, the Lips replaced their old drummer and guitarist with Steven Drozd and Ronald Jones, respectively. The line up change was tangible; replacing the band’s previous policy of relentless assault with bombastic intricacy. The Lips’ new sound, a mix of grunge and bluegrass with guitars that wailed like bowed saws, nose-dived them into the alternative rock scene. For they next few years, the band would be known as guys who wrote “She Don’t Use Jelly” and that song from the Batman Forever soundtrack.

Then Ronald left the band. Without a guitarist, Steven took the reigns and the band began to experiment. First, the parking lot concerts, in which the band recruited fans to play 40 pre-recorded tapes at the same time off of boom boxes. These anti-concerts spawned Zaireeka, the legendary 4 CD set that required four separate audio systems in one room just to listen to eight tracks, which were critically panned individually. The band would have been doomed were it not for a contractual obligation to release another album immediately after Zaireeka. The frustration and rebellion culminated into The Soft Bulletin, one of the greatest alternative releases of the 90s.

The Lips rode the energy of The Soft Bulletin and opted to tour as a three piece. With Drozd playing guitar and keys while a videos of his younger self drummed in the backgound, the band forged forward with an instant nostalgia and a visual schism for the Lips of the new millennium. The band had made a permanent and change and there was no going back.

The Fearless freaks achieved a mainstream breakthrough with the Grammy Award winning Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The single Do You Realize??? would become an anthem for high school mix tapes for years to come.

In 2002, Beck asked the Flaming Lips to be his backing band for his Sea Change tour. Eventually Beck would punch Wayne in the face for opening his big mouth, a recurring theme for the present Lips. Still, the tour solidified the band’s need to create for themselves and use their occasional tour drummer, Kliph Scurlock, more proactively.

A few years, some soundtracks, a documentary (which you can watch here), and a movie about christmas on mars, called Christmas On Mars, later, the band released At War With the Mystics. The catchy, Dell commercial sound was not as well received as their previous magnum opus releases. Still, At War With the Mystics is good in the sense that cotton candy should not always be eaten for dinner.

The band took a breather on releases for almost three years before announcing Embryonic, a new double album that would be like Mile Davis’ Bitches Brew if he owned a time machine and saw the future but it scared him [editors note: I couldn’t find the exact quote, but I remember reading it and it was something just like that]. Later that year, the boys teamed up with Henry Rollins to release a full length cover of Pink Floyd’s seminal album, Dark Side of the Moon.

Which brings us to the now. To see a Flaming show is to get a glimpse into heaven. Balloons, confetti, a man in a bubble running over your head only to grab a pair of giant foam hands that emit green lasers at a disco ball. Seeing them ring in new year by playing The Soft Bulletin in its entirety will always be the greatest concert experience of my life. To call their shows bucket list worthy is an insult because you should have done it years ago. The Flaming Lips will be releasing their next full length album, The Terror, on April 1st of this year. The tour to follow will surely be one to remember.

It should also be noted that Wayne Coyne looks exactly like my Dad, minus the facial hair. I met Wayne once and showed him a picture of Papa Kaufman to which he replied “that’s me!”