And I think this is one of those songs where people are focused on my singing, and it’s not really about the absurdness of the arrangement or whatever, so I wasn’t really worried about it going well. But nowadays, it’s easy to work with samples and real people, and have everybody stay in time. When The Soft Bulletin first came out in 1999, we really didn’t know what to do with the big sampling of the drums and stuff it was a long time ago, and we weren’t very good at figuring all that out. But it’s great it’s such a fun, ridiculous, but really heartfelt and melodic song. That’s a song that we’ve really never played live, except for when we do these Soft Bulletin shows. But it’s really a case of, “Whatever happens, it’s going to sound cool!” I think for the audience, it’s really great-they don’t have to do any of the work, they just get to sit there and have fun! It changes keys, it changes tempos, and sometimes you’re just standing there holding on, hoping we’re all together I’m counting in my head here and there to make sure we’re in the right spot, so worried about everything happening the way it should. But in a live context, it’s a very challenging piece of music for everybody to play. And when you’re in a recording studio, you just keep messing with it until the parts mesh and they’re all in the right tempo. “The Spark That Bled” was kind of inspired by “Good Vibrations,” by Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys it’s a bit of a construct, in that it goes from one part to the next. In my world, that’s a great combination! And then to have the orchestra playing all that ornate stuff at the beginning… I remember Steven and I looking at each other when the orchestra came in, like, “Now they’re really doing it!” I kind of remember standing there, thinking, “OK, ‘Race for the Prize’ is over, and nothing has fallen over-I think this is going to work!” And I really like singing “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton.” It’s a unique sort of Flaming Lips moment, anyway to me, it’s always kind of felt like Walt Disney meets Led Zeppelin, even back when we recorded it in 1997. And I’m kind of looking at the audience like, “Is this working? Is this working for you?” I know we always look very confident, or whatever, but I think that’s probably our greatest achievement: Being scared shitless in the middle of this chaos, worrying that something is going wrong, but looking like we know what we’re doing. We’re always nervous before a show, like, “Is this thing going to work?” So you kind of want to kick it off like, “Hey, we’re in charge, here!” But the very beginning of “Race for the Prize,” especially with a big ensemble like this, you can’t really hear everybody you kind of have to pick and choose what you’re following and what you’re honed-in on. What follows here is Coyne’s track-by-track breakdown of the live album, in which he recalls the show’s joyous high points, as well as the hair-raising moments where it seemed like everything was about to run off the rails. It’s almost like you have a dream of what something could sound like, and then all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Oh my god-it’s really happening!’” But I didn’t know until the show that night just how amazing it was going to be. “And I welcomed that, because we don’t need an exact replica of the record. “It definitely takes on another layer, a layer that isn’t there on The Soft Bulletin ,” Coyne agrees. RELATED: Wayne Coyne on The Flaming Lips’ New Album for Record Store Day Released this past week, The Soft Bulletin Recorded Live at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra is more than just an aural souvenir of that evening-it’s an object lesson in how such collaborations can, when done right, add entirely new dimensions to already-brilliant works. However stressful it may have been to pull together, to perform and record, the combination of band, orchestra and choir made for an absolutely stunning evening of music. In May 2016, Coyne and The Flaming Lips performed their classic 1999 album The Soft Bulletin in its entirety at Colorado’s legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre, a concert in which they were backed by the sixty-eight-piece Colorado Symphony Orchestra and a fifty-seven-member choir, all conducted by André de Ridder. So that adds another element of ‘Oh, my gosh!’” And then, of course, we’re recording this for, as they say, posterity, and we’re going to have to listen to this forever. Because we want us to be good, but we want everyone in the orchestra and choir to feel good about it, as well. So for The Flaming Lips, that’s a stressful situation. “All this stuff has to be done in advance-people have to make charts and everything-and when you get to the rehearsal hall, you don’t have that much time or that many opportunities to listen and go over all of it. “Playing live with an orchestra is a really big undertaking,” says Wayne Coyne, with a hint of understatement.