The Wayne Coyne-fronted band have been forced to postpone their upcoming concerts in hometown of Oklahoma because of the rising coronavirus cases in the city.
- Dec 3, 2020
AceShowbiz - The Flaming Lips have postponed their "space bubble" concerts amid a worrying rise in the number of cases of Covid-19 in Oklahoma.
Following an appearance on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" in June (20) - with the band and fans all encased in plastic bubbles during the performance - the group had been due to stage "the world's first actual Space Bubble live concerts" in their hometown of Oklahoma City in December (20).
However, the shows have now been postponed to 22 and 23 January (21), with frontman Wayne Coyne telling Rolling Stone that they made the tough decision to reschedule because of the increase of coronavirus cases in the town.
"It's worse here than it's ever been," he said. "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. 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."
"If you have to get on a plane, find a hotel - that's a lot of areas that aren't our concert. 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 the group are going to do their utmost to "work it out" to stage the shows in January, but concluded, "I don't want anybody to think this is some kind of f**king 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."
