If the smell of your own farts isn’t a deal-breaker, bubble concerts may be for you. The Flaming Lips just found a way around the COVID-19 pandemic, performing live for a crowd of 100 fans in isolation bubbles.
The ingenious idea may not be the future of the concert industry, but it allowed fans to experience live music after seven months of venue closures around the globe. The Flaming Lips show was held in Oklahoma City at the Criterion, which can usually hold 4,000 fans, and also served as a music video shoot. The band played a dance remix of “Assassins of Youth” as well as “Brother Eye” from their new album American Head, two times each.
Frontman Wayne Coyne posted footage of the bubble show, while the fans who attended raved about the special night on social media:
Expanding on the concept, Coyne told Brooklyn Vegan about the possible future of their bubble shows. “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.”
“The part about playing in the bubble, we already have down,” Coyne elaborated to JamBase. “It’s how we get the crowd in and out without cross-contamination that we need to figure out, but they’re giving us a few weeks in this venue to figure it out.”