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January 26, 2004
Lips, Bears, and a Nun (oh my!)
So in the last 24 hours we have seen the Flaming Lips twice.
Oh, and We've seen Peaches, Sonicanimation, Gerling, The Strokes, Cherry 2000, Ahpex Twin, some scary Kiss cover band, A little bit of Severed Heads (we think...) and a few other bands.
Of those shows, The Flaming Lips stand out.
Big, bold, and in Technicolor.
But this is not about the show itself, this is about what that happened on the way to the show and our attempt at getting into a smelly bear suit.
I looked at the Flaming Lips web site to see what the scoop is about getting on stage as one of the dancing furry animals. Their web site says to 'show up early and look for Corey the animal wrangler'. we did, and we did. Well, sort of.
We were there early, looked for Corey, but to no avail. No one fitting the description (a roadie with lots of tattoos) came around looking for bodies to fill suits.
I was a little bummed.
But there was still an awesome show to watch, right? So all was still good.
We had a good hour before the show started and it was the first time either of us had been in the Enmore Theater so we did a little exploring. The Enmore, for the uninitiated, is a small art deco theater in one of Newtown. (Newtown is one of Sydney's arty-farty inner suburbs.) I wanted to check out all of the cool plaster work on the ceiling and look at the deco wall sconces.
While staring at the ceiling I noticed something in the balcony.
A person in a bear suit.
My heart jumped.
Now at most shows a person in a bear suit might have gotten escorted out by the usher, but this was a Lips show.
I ran two steps at a time up to the balcony.
There were two guys filming the aforementioned person in the bear suit.
At this point I should mention something.
If you have seen the Lips in concert recently you know some of the props that they use. Hulk hands, balloons, strobe light, and a nun puppet. I happen to have one of those nun puppets. (mostly because of my SIL, but that is another story) And I brought my nun puppet to the show thinking that if I should see Corey the animal wrangler I would show him my nun puppet and he might say, 'wow, you are too cool for school. come and dance on stage in a koala suit' (ok, yes, I have a very active fantasy life).
The point is that it was time to whip out my secret weapon.
I first showed the usher (who laughed) and then caught the eye of one of the guys with the camera. He pointed at the nun and came over. He told me that they were filming a documentary about The Lips, the fans, and the whole animal suit thing. He was very impressed with the puppet and wanted to know if we wanted to be a part of their documentary!!!!!
uh, yeah!
So for the next 10 minutes of so they asked about the puppet, I danced with the guy in the bear suit, and made funny faces with the nun puppet at the camera. God it was fun. Josh (the fella from Sony doing the film) told us that the whole animal suit phenomenon has taken on a life of it's own. That they get calls from all kinds of famous people who want to be on stage. At the Sydney Big Day Out Drew Barrymore, her boyfriend (who is in the Strokes), and Peaches were all in animal suits at one point or another. Wow that's some famous sweat in those suits! They were such nice guys and really excited about out little homage.
Oh, for the record, yes, we did ask if there were any more suits to fill. But no luck. It really didn't matter. We got to chat with some people doing good stuff and get the inside scoop. Whoo-hoo!!!
So we may not have gotten into an animal suit, but hey, we could end up in a Lips documentary (if we don't end up on the cutting room floor!!!) Oh, and after all of that we still had one awesome show to watch! They even did She Don’t' Use Jelly.
What a night.
Can't wait to see the documentary.
-gg70
ed to add:
Here is a little shot from the BDO show. You can sort of make out the nun puppet on the screen behind the band. Sorry the shot is kinda crappy, I took it on the little camera on my phone.
Posted by gadgetgirl at January 26, 2004 08:39 AM