After spending the last few months touring Europe to support "The Soft Bulletin" -- one of the most acclaimed releases of 1999 on both sides of the Atlantic -- the Flaming Lips will return to the road this week for their first extensive North American tour in more than a half-year.
The last time the Lips were out and about in America, the band was headlining its first International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue, which also featured Robyn Hitchcock, Sebadoh, and Spacemen 3. But for this round of dates, which begins on Tuesday night in Champaign, Illinois, the focus will be squarely on the Flaming Lips and the band's rather unorthodox presentation of "The Soft Bulletin." For the shows, the trio of singer-guitarist Wayne Coyne, keyboardist Steven Drozd, and bassist Michael Ivins will continue to go without a drummer, performing with a synch track against a backdrop projection of images that relate to specific songs in the set list. In a recent interview with MTV News, Coyne talked about how he and Drozd decided upon how to approach taking material from "The Soft Bulletin" and presenting it in a live setting. "Me and Steven were having a conversation one time as we were making the record," Coyne said, "and we would always think, 'Well, how could we get people together to play these sort of things?' And we were thinking that we'd get a bunch of multi-instrumental guys who could play guitars and keyboards and work through a bunch of samples. "One of the songs, 'Sleeping On The Roof,' at one part of it, [there's] a refrigerator. I mean, we just put a microphone in the back of a refrigerator, and it's played as an instrument. It comes on, it has a certain pitch to it and all that. "And I remember me and him sitting there saying, 'Who would play the refrigerator?'" Coyne continued. Coyne confessed, "but it was a way that we thought we wouldn't sacrifice the way that the songs [sound]. 'Cause the songs, I think some of them, without having their bigness and their exaggerated drama, I don't think they would be good trimmed down to some playable thing with four or five guys out there." [RealAudio] For the tour, The Flaming Lips have tapped Looper (which will release its second album, "The Geometrid," on May 9) to serve as the opening act. Dates for The Flaming Lips' North American outing:- 3/7 - Champaign, IL @ High Dive
- 3/8 - Iowa City, IA @ Union Bar
- 3/9 - Lincoln, NE @ Knickerbocker's
- 3/11 - Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
- 3/12 - Milwaukee, WI @ Shank Hall
- 3/15 - Lawrence, KS @ Granada Theatre
- 3/16 - St. Louis, MO @ Firehouse
- 3/17 - Columbia, MO @ Blue Note
- 3/19 - Boulder, CO @ Fox Theatre
- 3/21 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Zephyr Club
- 3/23 - Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
- 3/24 - Seattle, WA @ Show Box
- 3/25 - Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
- 3/28 - San Francisco, CA @ Maritime Hall
- 3/30 - Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theatre
- 4/1 - Tempe, AZ @ Nita's Hideaway
- 4/2 - Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theatre
- 4/5 - Dallas, TX @ Trees
- 4/6 - Austin, TX @ Stubb's Barbeque
- 4/17 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
