*Updated on 7/27/10 to correct Black Keys line-up.*

CMAC continued its impressive summer 2010 concert line-up by bringing in The Flaming Lips Friday, July 23. Indie band Fang Island opened the show with a short set full of heavy guitars and melodic vocals, but it seemed that everyone I talked to at the show had come to see the riff rockers from Akron, The Black Keys.

Or, at least, that was the "cool" thing to say. Patrick Carney (drums) and Dan Auerbach (guitar/vocals) held their own through a high-energy, in-your-face performance that included favorites like "I Got Mine" off the album "Attack and Release." The duo filled the amphitheater with ear-pounding precision despite looking a little lonely on the huge stage for most of the set. The crowd responded jubilantly to the Keys' classic style and the band fed off the upbeat vibe, funneling its stripped-down sound all the way out to the lost lawn dwellers.

But The Flaming Lips, a band known for its ridiculous stage antics, was in a league of its own. The band was birthed on to the stage, emerging from a projected 30-foot vagina. Wayne Coyne, looking much like a fetus in a growing uterus, slowly stood up within a huge, plastic sphere that he called a "spaceball" and rolled his way through the pavilion on the hands of fans during the opening track, "Worm Mountain." The only word that came to mind was "epic."

The rest of the show continued like this; the band is master of the weird and did not disappoint. Throughout the thirteen-song performance, a merry collection of dancers donning orange, futuristic jumpsuits jiggled around onstage with Coyne and his cohorts. The Lips's sound is beautiful, ethereal, and important. But live, the stage performance is what you remember. Coyne constantly urged the crowd to follow him and his band mates along the confetti-infested spiritual journey that is a Flaming Lips concert.

The band played an extended version of its classic tune "She Don't Use Jelly," and sprinkled the rest of the spacey set with some other radio favorites like "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1" and "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song." Though Coyne writes honest and accessible lyrics, he still attained the poetic on songs like "In the Morning of the Magicians," where he asked the crowd if "to love is just a waste?" Of course, it isn't, we agreed.

The end of the set included a version of "Taps," with Coyne on trumpet, played in honor of the war still ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan, a reminder that some musical artists can be political without being sophomoric.

The band encored with "Do You Realize?" and had the intimate crowd locked in to its message. Do we realize "that the sun don't go down, it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning ‘round"? After asking us a few times, Coyne said, "I know you do," and made his exit into the muggy July night.