I Was There: The Flaming Lips

With the countdown for our Spring Concert weighing in at 14 days, it certainly is the season for springtime college festivals.

Last night, Vassar College's ViCE organization held its spring concert for its student body and surrounding committee. With a fall line-up of Grizzly Bear and Beach House - who arguably have the best albums of 2009 and 2010 respectively - how was the spring concert going to top such a musical line-up.

The bill featured the likes of The Hood Internet and Stardeath & White Dwarfs headlined by The Flaming Lips.

The Hood Internet opened the whole show. The duo, best known for their Chicago-town pride and mash-ups, set up their laptops and mixers and went to work. I immediately went to work trying to figure out all the artists/songs used - but was able to only identify half of the samples. Lykke Li, Cut Copy, Kanye West, Biz Markee...the list goes on. The Hood Internet have several mixtapes available for free (.mp3, .zip format) at their website here.

Stardeath and White Dwarfs played next. In the moments leading up to their performance, few people in the crowd had no clue has to who exactly this band was, why the band was opening for The Flaming Lips and more importantly, "How would the crowd react to them?" Those who knew about the band only knew that they worked with The Flaming Lips on their recent reworking of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. However, those who seemed skeptical quickly put all distrust behind them. Certainly, S&WD put their music where their mouth is and put on a great, long psychadelia/noise set.

I made my way to the photo pit for The Flaming Lips, shaking with anticipation. Their live sets are littered with fun visuals, including loads of confetti, lasers and balloons. However, words will never be able to describe fully what it is like to be down in the photo pit and shoot for a concert where hundreds of things are happening at the same time. The band played hits from their discography, which dates back to 1986's Hear It Is. The encore was the only tracks I took note of, which included "Eclipse," the last and final song on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Wayne and Co. politely asked the Stardeath & White Dwarfs on stage to play the recomposed song off of their album. Following that, the band went into a confetti-fueled sing-a-long to the commercially popular "Do You Realize??"

Some photos I took of the show are below...

-Nicholas Palumbo