The 10 Best Flaming Lips Songs (That Even Flaming Lips Fans Might Not Know)

Forty years ago today, on February 22, 1983, the Flaming Lips performed their very first show at Oklahoma City’s Blue Note Lounge. But if you could take a time machine back to that moment, chances are, you wouldn’t recognize the band onstage. None of the qualities we now associate with this band — the kaleidoscopic pop anthems bursting with positive vibes, childlike wonder, and a shit ton of confetti — can be detected in early setlist standards like “Bag Full Of Thoughts,” which sounds like a group of stoned misfits trying to figure out how to play Echo And The Bunnymen’s “Do It Clean” and coming up with a sludgy goth-garage jam of their own. Even the group’s most instantly identifiable characteristic — Wayne Coyne’s fragile, folksy voice — was nowhere to be heard; lead vocals back then were handled by his brother Mark, whose voice teeters on the edge between humorously dazed and genuinely disturbed.