The Flaming Lips
Festival Hall
Melbourne, Australia
February 1, 2025

Taped by Claire Laura Fredriksson (CLF, choc_eClaire, fuzzbluerain, etc.)
Specs: Zoom H1n internal mics, bass rolloff @ 80 Hz, positioned in shirt collar
Position: ground floor, in line with left speakers, ~15-20m back
Lineage: 24/48 .wav > Audacity (fades, tracking, slight pan adjustment) > TLH (level 8 FLAC) > foobar2000 (tagging)

Track listing:
-----------------Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots-----------------
1. [intro] 2:07
2. Flight Test 4:16
3. One More Robot / Sympathy 3000-21 5:04
4. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1 5:10
5. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 2 3:15
6. [banter] 3:59
7. In the Morning of the Magicians > 6:27
8. Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell 5:25
9. Are You a Hypnotist?? 6:24
10. It's Summertime 5:23
11. [banter] 3:34
12. Do You Realize?? 4:41
13. All We Have Is Now 4:03
14. Approaching Pavis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia) 3:48
set total 1:03:35
------------------------------Set 2------------------------------
1. [intro] 1:22
2. She Don't Use Jelly 3:52
3. [banter] 3:51
4. Flowers of Neptune 6 4:02
5. [banter] 2:24
6. The Spark That Bled 6:53
7. Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung 5:00
8. [banter] 4:43
9. Waitin' for a Superman 4:48
10. [banter] 3:38
11. Riding to Work in the Year 2025 (Your Invisible Now) 5:38
12. [banter] 2:40
13. Christmas at the Zoo 3:11
14. [banter] 2:28
15. Love Yer Brain 4:43
16. [banter] 1:59
17. The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power) 4:08
18. [encore break] 3:21
19. [banter] 4:03
20. A Spoonful Weighs a Ton 4:15
21. Race for the Prize 6:06
set total 1:23:05
------------------------------Set 2------------------------------
total 2:26:40

Personnel (instruments are kind of a guess):
Wayne Coyne - lead vocals, (mimed?) horns
Steven Drozd - guitar, keyboard
Derek Brown - keyboard, guitar
Tommy McKenzie - bass, guitar
Matt Duckworth Kirksey - drums

Review:
I'm not sure it would be accurate to say I saw the Flaming Lips in Melbourne last night - really,
I experienced the Flaming Lips. Psychedelic rock goofballs from Oklahoma, they've spent the last
few years touring in celebration of 2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and they finally bought
this show to Australia at the start of 2025. It was my first time at Festival Hall, a box in the
inner west with a capacity of 5,400 and a reputation in Australian music history (it was where the
Beatles played their only Melbourne shows, for instance) - it was purchased by a weird evangelical
megachurch group in 2020, to much disdain, but some of the theatrics of the Flips made me think of
that.

Because, in all honesty, this audio only captures part of the experience. The band performed in
front of a giant LED screen, with every word sung flashing up on there as he sang it; there were
lasers flying over our heads constantly; balloons and confetti were thrown into the crowd with
enthusiasm and regularity (the loud cheer at the end of Yoshimi Pt. 2 is because one of them popped
a little while after the song finished); and the band was joined on stage by giant inflatable
robots throughout the first set (there were costume changes in the second). There's really nothing
else like it.

The music was pretty great, unsurprisingly; I haven't listened to the album in a while but it was
quite a faithful performance, and the second set gave us another collection of fun neo-psych jams
(opening it with 'She Don't Use Jelly' was an inspired choice, although I really liked 'Riding to
Work in the Year 2025'). Wayne was very intent on making sure we were all having a good time,
constantly getting us to scream for him and generally trying to hype up the love and happiness and
all of that (I was too busy praying I didn't overheat to really get on board), so there's a lot of
banter tracks in the second set that I normally wouldn't track out individually but figured I had
to this time around. At the end of a long evening, yet more confetti was blown out onto us all and
we made our way out into the night - an experience that (the sober people in) the crowd will never
forget.

Requests:
Please don't sell this - nobody, tapers or artists, will like you if you do.
Please keep this info file around if you post it anywhere else (which you're welcome to do!)
If you give this recording a remaster/matrix treatment, please message me before you do so.
I can be reached on Dimeadozen (fuzzbluerain) or Twitter (fuzzybluerain) most easily.

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show: