Since the covid broke into our lives, a little over a year ago, expressions such as social distance and bubble groups are part of our usual vocabulary. Until now metaphors to exemplify the need to reduce contacts and keep ourselves in safe spaces, bubblesHowever, it could also be used literally as a security measure.
At least it is what the American rock group is testing, and successfully Flaming Lips, which organizes concerts of up to 100 people in which absolutely everyone, from the musicians to the spectators, attends enclosed in gigantic plastic bubbles.
Concert-bubble
It is not the first occurrence that groups and event organizers try so that we can enjoy live music safely. Last summer at a festival in Newcastle, in the north of England, 2,500 people enjoyed music from 500 fenced and conveniently separated metal platforms.
But if there was any group that could bring the bubble concert to reality and in the most literal sense of the concept, it was Flaming Lips. The band, formed in Oklahoma City in 1983 and known for her psychedelic rock, she has been using what they call ‘space bubbles’ in her shows since 2004.
It is true that for years the only one who got into a gigantic bubble was the leader and vocalist of the group, Wayne Coyne, and he did it as part of the show – for example, to launch and roll above the public – and not so much as a measure of security. But now, and as the singer pointed out in the podcast People Have The power of Steve Baltin, “As ridiculous as it may sound, we have a lot of first-hand experience of how it works, what’s good and what’s bad.”
Bubbles for everyone
His last two of his concerts took place on 22 and 23 of this month of January in the hall The Criterion from his hometown. Around a hundred people were able to enjoy in each of them their classic songs, as well as news from their latest album, American Head which is, for Coyne, one of the best of his career.
Under some silver balloons that formed the legend ‘Fuck you covid-19’, the singer’s big bubble occupied the central part of the stage. Around him, the rest of the band with their instruments, each one in its ‘space bubble’. And in the public, as can be seen in the videos uploaded to Instagram, dozens of fans enjoying live music in complete safety. Inside their bubbles – with capacity for up to three people – they were able to jump, animate and sing the lyrics at the top of their lungs and, above all, without fear of the dreaded aerosols.
Like an underwater concert
And what is it like to listen to music from inside a giant plastic bubble? “The bubble is so big that it is not really claustrophobic at all,” explained one of the attendees to a concert already last October to Daily Mail. He did acknowledge that it sounds “a bit distorted, a bit like you’re underwater.” In any case, “not too much, enough to notice it,” added this fan.
Music for times of pandemic
That concert last October was taken as the litmus test of the idea of its leader, who proposed taking what he himself did in the shows to a larger scale. When you first thought about it, during the early days of the pandemic, in mid-March, you never believed the crisis would last long enough to see it become a reality. However, as the months passed, they decided to take action.
They first tested it in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, on American television, where they went to promote their latest single Assassins of Youth, of the disk American Head, with 20 people in bubbles.
They repeated it later on their way through The Tonight Show of Jimmy Fallon. The success in both cases made him say to himself: they ordered another 100 bubbles and tested the formula in a concert for 100 people. The Criterion, in Oklahoma City, and with a capacity of 3,500 spectators, was the chosen place. The same one that had to hang the sold-out poster at the same concert in December and the same one that has hosted the last two shows this January.
“We like to think that we are doing something different,” explained Coyne, who, however, has high hopes for the vaccine. For now, he assures, it is “a unique experience” and “absolutely safe” with live music. Sure enough for many fans, given the times.
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