ViCE to bring legendary Flaming Lips

Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE) brought two big-time musical acts to campus last semester: the ambient melodies of Grizzly Bear and the poetic hip-hop of Clipse. For their third major concert of the school year, ViCE will provide an evening of pop-rock with one of the most recognizable names in the industry: The Flaming Lips.

On Saturday, April 17 the Grammy-winning rockers will perform at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center courtesy of ViCE. The band brings over two decades of experience, one of the most recognizable frontmen in indie-rock history (lead vocalist Wayne Coyne) and a penchant for elaborate live performances.

"I'm definitely a fan," said ViCE Director Peter Denny '10. "They have a very wide range of music that appeals to a lot of people."

The Flaming Lips began recording psychedelic rock in 1986 with their debut album Hear It Is, but since then they have delved into pop, ambient and alternative rock. Their most recent and well-known work has been self-described as "space rock," due to its lyrical and instrumental science-fiction undertones; this unique sound is particularly evident in their three highly celebrated albums Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, At War With the Mystics and Embryonic.

"If you look at all of their albums, they're all different," said ViCE Music Committee Chair Christine Yu '10. "Some are pop, some are experimental."

The band is notorious for their entertaining live performances. Wigs, masks, sasquatch suits, giant colorful balloons, psychedelic light and video sequences, confetti guns and a giant hamster ball that Coyne rolls around in are just some of the ways they embellish their set. These offbeat antics complement other bizarre footnotes to Flaming Lips history. The group wrote, produced and starred in a 2008 independent science-fiction film called Christmas on Mars, based on their concept album of the same name, in which the band lives on a derelict space station on the red planet. An executive order passed in March of last year by Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry named the band's single "Do You Realize," as the official rock song of the state (The Flaming Lips originally herald from Oklahoma City.)

They also re-recorded the classic Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon in a collaborative project with a band of fellow Oklahomans called Star Death and White Dwarfs.

ViCE chose the colorful pop-rock band based on an offer received from the band and negotiated by an agent commissioned by the organization's music committee. Since they were slated to play at a nearby venue anyway on April 18, and the band had been brought up by committee members in the past, they were the natural choice.

"Most people were too expensive to be available," said Denny. "When The Flaming Lips gave us the offer, we were excited. They're obviously a huge deal and have been around for a long time."

The event will be a departure from ViCE's previous concerts due to the off-campus venue. The 30-year-old Mid-Hudson Civic Center in the City of Poughkeepsie features a concert hall with the capacity to seat over 3,000 people, significantly more than any venue on campus can hold. ViCE decided to collaborate with the Civic Center because of the issue of capacity and to begin an overall shift in ViCE's role.

"This whole year we've been trying to expand the role of ViCE, which means working with other organizations, especially non-profits and the local community," said Denny.
The organization had been sitting on the idea of using the Civic Center as a venue for a while. "The [Vassar Student Association] approached us for doing this last year, but the timing just didn't work out," said Yu. "It's been a goal of ours since then."

This will mark the first time in recent history that a Vassar organization has collaborated with the Mid-Hudson Civic Center for an event such as this.

"When I was told that Vassar was looking to do an event with a larger name than they could accommodate in their own venues, I thought it was a fantastic idea," said the Civic Center's President Paul Lloyd. "I thought, ‘Why don't other colleges in the area do that more often?'"

Denny hopes that the event will also encourage students to explore the downtown community surrounding the Civic Center. Free shuttles will be running for students on the day of the concert for transportation to the event itself, and also to accommodate any pre-concert activity and after-parties in Poughkeepsie.

"We imagine it as a nighttime Meet Me In Poughkeepsie," said Denny. "We want people to get into the community and visit things like the local restaurants, bars and art galleries."

Although the logistics of ticket distribution have yet to be finalized, the concert will also mark a departure from past ViCE events as more tickets will be available to non-students. 1,400 tickets will be distributed to Vassar students at a discounted price at a time and place to be determined. Once those have been sold, the remaining tickets will be sold online to the public. These tickets will be marketed via college radio stations especially towards students at State University of New York at New Paltz, Marist College and Bard College.

"It's fantastic that this is going to be open to the public," said Lloyd. "When they have the ability to bring a show like that here, not only do the students benefit, but the community does as well."

Tickets will be approximately $35 for non-students and $18 at the discount price. ViCE concerts have been free for students in the past, but the high cost of bringing The Flaming Lips to Poughkeepsie means that students will have to cover some of the bill. "It was a tough decision to decide whether students should pay for tickets or not," said Yu. "But we decided that if students pay a price, it will pay for a bigger and better artist."

Bigger and better is right: ViCE's spring concert is one of the organization's most ambitious projects to date. With Wayne Coyne and company providing the evening's entertainment, this will be a difficult event for the organization to top.