A music festival at Jodrell Bank in the shadow of the mighty Lovell telescope was already a brilliant idea. Having the Flaming Lips as the headline was genius. What else could one ask for? Oh yeah, a sunny Saturday. We got that too. ‘Live From Jodrell Bank’ is the first music festival ever to be held at the new Jodrell Bank Discovery centre in Cheshire. We headed out into the country for the first show, Transmission 001.
We arrived mid-afternoon at the cozy and intimate space where five thousand people would gather to see Alice Gold, Wave Machines, Ok Go, British Sea Power and, of course, The Flaming Lips. The day started with a series of talks and Q&As in the visitor centre where astronomers and physicists spoke about pulsars, black holes and the massive Lovell telescope, which will be fifty five years old next year.
Alice Gold kicked off proceedings at five-thirty as people were still arriving, mixing her pop star look with a rockier sound. She didn’t fail to point out the release of her album on the 4th July, and treated the growing audience to a pleasant set of songs, ending with the appropriately named “Orbiter”.
Wave Machines followed, underpinning a cool sound with some strong, drum-driven grooves, but suffered with technical problems that seemed to continue throughout the set.
OK Go were next in line. Having made a bit of an effort with their distinctive red, blue and yellow suits they started the show with lots of energy. The American group played the hits, “Here It Goes Again”, “Do What You Want” and “This Too Shall Pass”. Singer Damian Kulash made an effort to get the crowd to sing louder, but may have hit a nerve when he tried to joke about Liverpool’s superiority over Manchester, as despite his efforts to take to the crowd with his microphone no one seemed to be singing. By the end of their set Kulash won the audience back, announcing that the whole show was being transmitted into outer space and that we were are about to have our minds blown by The Flaming Lips. We raised a glass to that and waited in anticipation for what was to come.
By the time OK Go left the stage the arena seemed to be full, with long queues to the chemical toilets and the food stands the only flaws to an otherwise perfect event. It was time for British Sea Power and apparently they didn’t go down so well with the Flaming Lips fans judging by the booing. It wasn’t as an intense a show as most of us expected. Drawing the majority of the material from their newest album they lost an opportunity to gain some new followers by playing their greatest hits. However, they managed to satisfy the crowd by the end of their set, playing “Carrion” and bringing a robot and a bear onstage to have what looked like a boxing match. Pretty cool, I must say.
Even before the stage was set for the headliners, Wayne Coyne was already onstage to give the public a little bit of advice about how powerful their strobes were and to tell us that if anyone had any problems with it they should “just look away from the lights”. He also advised people to finish their drinks quickly as he would soon be walking on top of their heads in his giant inflatable ball suit.
It was time for the grand finale. Dr Tim O’Brien, one of Jodrell Bank’s astrophysicists, took to the stage and contacted control at the Lovell Telescope making it rotate slowly towards the amazed public. It was like something out of a sci-fi movie, a majestic scene, enough to make anyone’s day. But there was so much more to come. The band emerged onto stage through a door in the middle of a background video screen and by the time the music started Wayne was already inside his huge inflatable ball crawling over the crowd as promised. The whole stage was like a psychedelic dream full of colour and pyrotechnics and with girls dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz in each corner. As the singer returned to stage giant balloons were released into the audience and he started singing into his megaphone.
“She Don't Use Jelly”, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1”, “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and “Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung” were just a handful of classics delivered with their now legendary joie de vivre, filling us with a sense that this wasn’t about them or their music - it was about us having fun. No arguments there!
Wayne praised the telescope a few times that night, but just before the band returned for the encore The Lips’ front man asked us to pay particular attention to it. That was when the great telescope had its moment. There appeared a projection of Bernard Lovell himself talking about his creation, along with images of the Moon, Earth and space that made this show truly unforgettable. The Cosmic icing on the cake!
“I Love it when people try”, said Wayne, “when they say: I think I can do that”.
It was a great big party that ended up with the beautiful “Do You Realize” and an elated audience. Including me, who wasn’t even a fan. Wasn’t.
Published on 04 July 2011 by willierunte
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