the Flaming Lips

If youve never seen The Flaming Lips in concert and you decide to check out their show Sunday in Bend, chances are pretty good youll see something youve never seen before.

Never a band to shy away from showmanship, a Lips show is more an event than a rock concert. Its a celebration of life, love, luck and longevity.

Its kind of like your typical 50th wedding anniversary party, but with people dressed as aliens, a singing nun hand-puppet and lots of fake blood.

The idea is that (when) you come in to wherever we are, that its going to be this experience, said Lips bassist Michael Ivins last week in a telephone interview from his home in Bellevue, Ky.

The Flaming Lips have made a two-decade career of exploring the outermost reaches of art, a career that seems to be gaining momentum rather than winding down.

Ivins, 43, and frontman Wayne Coyne, 45, formed the group in 1983 in Oklahoma City, Okla., playing a weird blend of noisy punk and acid-fried psych, with a dash of Coynes high-pitched pop melodies.

The group chugged along through the 1980s and early 1990s, gaining a cult following of fans with albums that gained critical favor, but little commercial success.

After several lineup changes, including the addition of the third current member, 36-year-old multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd, the Lips 1993 album Transmissions From The Satellite Heart spawned a fluke hit called She Dont Use Jelly, which landed the band on MTV and Beverly Hills 90210.

Suddenly, the rest of the world knew The Flaming Lips, and the band responded with a string of four ultra-creative and well-received albums. First came Zaireeka, which had four separate discs designed to be listened to simultaneously, followed by The Soft Bulletin, a sunny, synth-laden pop record that is widely considered one of the best albums of 1999.

The bands new album, At War With The Mystics, was released last month, 23 years after Ivins and Coyne first met at a party in Oklahoma.

The band has been together longer than most rock groups and has remained vital throughout. The success of the last few years is something Ivins attrib-utes to sheer staying power.

I think theres a lot to be said for plain longevity, but I think a lot of it is just luck, he said. You know the old cliche, You cant win the race if youre not running. I think just the fact of us being here has allowed (us to take advantage of) whatever luck thats come our way.

All the while, the Lips famous live act has evolved. In the late 90s, the band did a number of shows at which dozens of boom-boxes were distributed to audience members, who would play and stop band-made cassettes at Coynes direction. For a few years, the band invited people to don animal costumes and dance on stage, while Coyne covered his trademark white suit in fake blood.

Today, the animal suits are gone, replaced by alien costumes and Santa Claus gear, Ivins said. In a band with three hyper-creative minds, these things just happen, he said.

Well be talking and its like, Wouldnt it be cool if somebody did that? Ivins said. Then well look at each other and go, Well, we should do that.

The bands live style is based on its philosophy that live performances are more for the fans of the band and less for the musicians, Ivins said.

We take the attitude that all the introspective exploration of sound and ideas and all that sort of stuff, that all happens in the studio and the time around making the record, he said. Once the records done, (its done, and our attitude during shows) is that were not up there for ourselves. Were up there for the people watching.

The idea is also to live in the moment and, simply, to have a blast doing so, he said. Ivins said the Lips outlook can be summarized by lyrics to the hit song from their 2002 record Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, called Do You Realize??

The song goes like this: Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die/and instead of saying all of your goodbyes/let them know you realize that life goes fast/its hard to make the good things last.

After 23 years, thousands of miles on the road, and a dozen or so albums, The Flaming Lips are trying hard to practice what they preach, Ivins said.

(We) try to point out that not only do we sing (that song) but thats us. Thats what we think, he said. Theres no time for sitting around going, Gosh, I wish this next 10 minutes would hurry up, because once thats gone, its gone.