Everyone You Know Some Day Will Die...

In the spirit of The Flaming Lips’ 24 hour takeover of Hollywood Forever Cemetery, I’m going to make a timely post (for once)! I swear I’ll post England photos soon!
Between 7 p.m. on June 14, and 11:30 p.m. the following day, I spent a little over 10 hours on the grounds of Hollywood Forever Cemetery rocking my ass off with The Flaming Lips. The band took two weird and wonderful evenings to play two albums: the 1999 masterpiece, The Soft Bulletin, and their take on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

Frontman Wayne Coyne and company have a fascination with death and the ritual that surrounds it... not in a cultish way, and certainly not like these guys. Everything the Lips believe and convey can be summed up in a single song from the 13 LP’s they’ve created in their 25 years together.



Everything about The Flaming Lips is a celebration of life and love, and the location of this show amplified that tenfold. The band was so fervent about the opportunity that they decided to play an impromptu morning show outside the cemetery gates between the two evening shows. Wayne was overjoyed that they would be joined by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, stopping about halfway through their performance of The Soft Bulletin to make the announcement.

I sprung out of bed the next morning with the conviction that this was going to be something special. I drove through a very empty Hollywood to find a crowd of about 100 foggy-eyed Lips fans who shared this conviction patiently and quietly waiting on Hollywood Forever’s front lawn.

We couldn’t have been more right.

The band was setting up and tuning to the clocktower’s bells, and at 6:15, the exact time Wayne promised us the night before, almost all of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros appeared from behind the cemetery gates to join them.

The result was a stripped down, heartfelt, and utterly spellbinding 20-some-minute rendition of Do You Realize??


Wayne was giddy and eager coming into the soundcheck and set-up



Wayne and Steven (on keys) on the floor with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Michael was in the tower manning the bells. Wayne’s wife, Michelle, was photographing from on high


The fantastic Michelle Martin-Coyne making magic in the belltower


Do you realize??


Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ rhythm section


Wayne’s signature raised fist...


Steven was kneeling on the grass to play.


He should be next to “baller” in the dictionary


I think this made Wayne’s day. He was smiling for most of the performance.


After Wayne finished singing, Steven and the Magnetic Zero crew kept playing for quite a while


Not fond of this photo, but it’s a good story: Alex, the Edward Sharpe frontman, had a big glass bowl filled with water that he wanted to play in the same
way you spin your finger around the rim of a wine glass. Sadly, no matter the amount of water, it was always putting out a B flat, and the song needed a C.
After Wayne had stopped playing and singing, and Michael had stopped with the bells, Steven instructed everyone to change keys so the bowl could be used.


Wayne wandered into the crowd after the performance to thank the audience profusely for being a part of it


He cracked a few jokes about how everyone should leave because the cops were probably on their way


The ever-stoic frontman


Peace, love, and rock and roll






Let them know you realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning ‘round

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