GULF SHORES, Alabama -- Just in case anybody in the crowd only shuffled over to The Flaming Lips' 7:15 p.m. Hangout Music Fest set just to hear the band's biggest hits, "She Don't Use Jelly," and "Do You Realize?", those folks could cut out after the band's first two songs.

They'd be massively missing the point of a Flaming Lips show, but they could do it. It was almost as if the Lips started the set that way on purpose, to weed out the check-listers. Or maybe the band threw them a bone early to convert them to the belief that festival stage shows can be more than just a handful of musicians pounding out radio-friendly hits in front of a live audience.

Then those new apostles could join the rest of the throng gathered at the east end of the Hangout Festival grounds, the hard-core fans, the die-hards, the ones who get it, and felt free to dance and jump and sing and karate chop and wear squid masks on their heads. For all of the above people, frontman Wayne Coyne and the Lips brought the goods of an unforgettable stage show and prop-filled spectacle that has become their trademark over the course of a 30-year career.

The band started off by distributing massive inflatable ducks into the crowd while the recognizable riff to "She Don't Use Jelly" echoed out over the beach. The presentation only escalated from there, with people in costume creating a whimsical scene complete with green grass, a two-person rainbow, and Coyne-sized toadstools.

From there, the show got even stranger and more intense with a giant green alien and other less easily-distinguishable shapes and characters, many with silver tinsel that matched Coyne's ensemble and shimmered even to the farthest recesses of the crowd.

The Lips even unveiled an inflatable message for the crowd, which we can only say read "___ yeah, Hangout."

Scroll through the gallery above for more scenes from the Lips' performance and check AL.com/hangout for complete festival coverage from the beaches of Gulf Shores.