I'm not one for filling my gig reviews with photos. Normally I look down on people who spend the entire show with their mobile phone pointed at the stage. But last night's gig at Jodrell Bank was definitely camera worthy... luckily I had my new Blackberry (yes, yes, get over it) on hand to capture the wonder.
For those unfamiliar with the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, it's home to the Lovell Telescope, the third largest radio telescope in the world. This incredible device is manned 24/7/365, recording and monitoring the sounds of outer space - quasars, pulsars... and maybe, one day, extraterrestrial boogie woogie.
But the noises being monitored in mission control last night were of slightly more earthbound origin... I say "slightly" because when your headline act is Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips, the jury's still out on whether we all weren't experiencing a close encounter in the shadow of that 76 metre dish. The band were performing at the climax of Transmissions, the observatory's first mini-festival, following an evening of entertainment from Alice Gold (promising), the Wave Machines (ramshackle), OK Go (worthy of further investigation) and British Sea Power (always entertaining). All the acts had a certain spacey or scientific bent to their songs, and the Flaming Lips push the outer limits better than just anyone else in rock... if Bowie's off floating in a tin can somewhere, unavailable.
Two scientists were racing
For the good of all mankind
Both of them side by side
So determined
Locked in heated battle
For the cure that is their prize
But it's so dangerous
But they're determined
Theirs is to win
If it kills them
They're just humans
With wives and children
If you've ever seen a Flaming Lips show, you'll know the music comes second to the spectacle. Dancing cheerleaders, giant animal costumes, lasers straight out of Lucasfilm, even the lead singer walking out onto the shoulders of his audience in a giant Prisoner-esque bubble. But for last night's performance, the Lips had found a way to top even these theatrics... by getting the Lovell telescope itself in on the act. As the band finally took to the stage, just before 10pm, the enormous disc rotated to face the audience for the first time and became a projection screen for deep space imagery, followed by a huge film show tracing the history of Jodrell Bank and its founding father, Bernard Lovell. The Lips rightly saved their two best songs for the encore, but it was too late to stop them being overshadowed by one of the most impressive feats of scientific engineering in the world.
Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face?
Do You Realize - we're floating in space?
Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry?
Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die?
Trippy indie music + deep space investigations... it's a geek's dream festival. Thank god I had my camera!
