What was 2 hours and 30 minutes starting at midnight, a rough night for some, was just the beginning of the night for Wayne Coyne. Throughout the whole Flaming Lips set, he tried his best to get the crowd loud and ramped up. Not that he needed to much, it was already at a good few thousand in attendance and a lot of those people were screaming the entire time.

The longest set of the day, clocking in at 2 hours and 30 minutes, was Flaming Lips set, which included a full show’s worth of their own songs followed by a performance of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. And they lived up to the hype — with massive balloons, seemingly infinite amounts of confetti, and some classic Flaming Lips stunts, they gave Bonnaroo a huge show.

An hour before the show, a large crowd had already gathered, you could hear Kings of Leon finishing their set in the distance. And pretty quickly the area started to fill up. Thousands of people filled in to the back of Centeroo compound, the bleachers full and no end to the crowd within sight.

And the crowd that was there didn’t lack energy. The Flaming Lips weren’t even out on stage to play yet and the group was singing along to the radio, tossing beach balls and waiting for the show to begin.

When it did, that’s a whole different story. The Flaming Lips are known to be crazy and to pull stunts in their shows, but there’s nothing like it until you’ve actually experienced it. They had an LCD screen in the back where they would show random video related to the songs they were playing. And the songs were really good, some big ones like Ya Ya Song and Do You Realize??

And so it’s probably one of those things that you have to see for yourself. It can’t really be described except that it’s insane, that it breaks so many rules of shows and it engages its audience in ways many musicians do not.

The Pink Floyd cover wasn’t as good as it could have been. It took what was a really good album and in an attempt to make it sound different. It just didn’t translate as well as the other much.

Then it was off to LCD Soundsystem and B.o.B, which lasted until about 5 a.m. LCD was awesome, and Galactic was playing off in the distance behind them, both playing loud, electronic, fast-paced music. Essentially the whole Centeroo compound turned into a dance party until it got light outside.

So Coyne was right -- The Flaming Lips was just the beginning.

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