Last month, the Flaming Lips announced plans to bring Wayne Coyne's stage schtick to their audience, placing ticketholders inside their own plastic bubbles for a COVID-safe concert. However, the band have now postponed their shows.
On social media, the Lips confirmed that performances set for December 11 and 12 at Oklahoma City's the Criterion venue have now been moved to January 22 and 23, respectively. The move comes as a coronavirus case numbers continue to climb in the Oklahoma metro area.
Coyne explained to Rolling Stone that over the last week, the state has averaged 2,839 new cases per day, telling the publication, "It's worse here than it's ever been."
"We know of an emergency room worker just a couple of nights ago who said someone came in, and they didn't have any place for them, and they died, and they shouldn't have died. They were a young person," Coyne shared. "The mayor is advising us, 'Let's not get together in big groups' … I think we're just feeling like this is going against what our concerts are really about."
Having tried out the bubble method earlier this year — something that was displayed in the Lips' "Assassins of Youth" video — Coyne also considered the potential of travel despite the bubble concerts being "safer than going to the grocery store."
"If you have to get on a plane, find a hotel — that's a lot of areas that aren't our concert," the frontman explained. "So we're hoping by the third week in January that all this activity around New Year's Eve and Christmas will have started to play out. Then we might be able to be in a stable position when we can say, 'Let's try to do these space bubble concerts.'"
Coyne added, "I don't want anybody to think this is some kind of fucking freak party. It's a very restricted, weird event. But the weirdness is so we can enjoy a concert before putting our families and everybody at risk. And I think it can actually work, but just not when it's this serious here."
The Flaming Lips shared their 16th studio album American Head in September.
On social media, the Lips confirmed that performances set for December 11 and 12 at Oklahoma City's the Criterion venue have now been moved to January 22 and 23, respectively. The move comes as a coronavirus case numbers continue to climb in the Oklahoma metro area.
Coyne explained to Rolling Stone that over the last week, the state has averaged 2,839 new cases per day, telling the publication, "It's worse here than it's ever been."
"We know of an emergency room worker just a couple of nights ago who said someone came in, and they didn't have any place for them, and they died, and they shouldn't have died. They were a young person," Coyne shared. "The mayor is advising us, 'Let's not get together in big groups' … I think we're just feeling like this is going against what our concerts are really about."
Having tried out the bubble method earlier this year — something that was displayed in the Lips' "Assassins of Youth" video — Coyne also considered the potential of travel despite the bubble concerts being "safer than going to the grocery store."
"If you have to get on a plane, find a hotel — that's a lot of areas that aren't our concert," the frontman explained. "So we're hoping by the third week in January that all this activity around New Year's Eve and Christmas will have started to play out. Then we might be able to be in a stable position when we can say, 'Let's try to do these space bubble concerts.'"
Coyne added, "I don't want anybody to think this is some kind of fucking freak party. It's a very restricted, weird event. But the weirdness is so we can enjoy a concert before putting our families and everybody at risk. And I think it can actually work, but just not when it's this serious here."
The Flaming Lips shared their 16th studio album American Head in September.
