Bluedot: day two/PSB and Flaming Lips

When I look forward to Bluedot, it's for the music, the science, and also all of the food and drink. I tend to forget that it's also a holiday! So it was nice to wake up in the tent this morning and realise that I had nothing more pressing to do than have a shower and breakfast. 

In fact, we didn't go into the main field until early afternoon, where we watched Plastic Mermaids on the main stage and then went to the Nebula tent to see Vide0 and Tom Rogerson. The last of these recently did an album working with Brian Eno and is part of Three Trapped Tigers, who I'm looking forward to seeing later, this year. 

This evening was the part of the festival that I was looking forward to most,  mainly because Public Service Broadcasting were playing. It's been two years since they opened the first Bluedot and they remain my favourite live band. Of course, Jodrell Bank is the ideal setting for their tracks from 'The Race For Space' but their whole performance was as brilliant and entertaining as ever. 

After that we went to grab some food and a drink while we waited for The Flaming Lips. The last time I saw Wayne Coyne's band playing must have been more than 15 years ago in London. The only song I can remember is  when Beth Orton joined them on stage to cover Kylie's 'I Should Be So Lucky'; apart from that I just remember huge balloons and people dressed in animal costumes dancing on the stage.

Over the years, their stage show has become even more ambitious: there are still the huge balloons but now also inflatable robots, Wayne riding on a full-size model unicorn, and, most memorably, the section where he gets inside an inflatable ball - a "zorb" apparently - and travels out over the audience, coming to rest on a pod, which, thanks to the Minx's foresight, was right where we were standing!

****
No scales
0 words
Reading: ‘Total Rethink’ by David McCourt