American rock band The Flaming Lips performed in front of an audience of fans inside individual human-sized plastic bubbles at The Criterion in Oklahoma City.
Frontman Wayne Coyne has been crowd surfing over fans in his own bubble for more than 15 years, and developed the idea to perform in front of a large crowd of fans in bubbles due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The band, who ordered 100 bubbles from China for the unique music event, showcased the concept during their June 11 appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and this week the band did a trial run of a full-fledged bubble show at the 3,500-capacity venue.
The Flaming Lips performed in bubbles to an audience entirely in bubbles and it’s very 2020https://t.co/f6vyIwe2DZ pic.twitter.com/de9iccnFTD
— The Poke (@ThePoke) October 18, 2020
Coyne said, according to CNN: “I don’t think anybody would have thought … in the middle of March that this is still going to be going, you know, eight months later. I think we all thought this is a month, this is maybe two months, but we’re going to get a handle on this.
“I like the way this looks, because you can get as excited as you want, you can scream as much as you want, you just can’t infect the person next to you, no matter what you forget about, how excited you get. That barrier is still there, they’re protected, and you’re protected… that part of it is what we really felt like was the success.”
Coyne told Brooklyn Vegan: “We’re starting to get ready to do an actual show where yeah, there’s three people in each of these space bubbles, and we play… We think maybe playing two shows a night, and getting a big audience in there each time.”
He told JamBase the venue was giving the band “a few weeks in this venue to figure out” how to safely get fans in and out of the bubbles without turning it into a super spreader event.
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