Dream Team Double Header – Gretchen Peters, Flaming Lips: “Imagine it – sensational!”

So, perhaps we need to remind readers new and old about this occasional feature. Songkick is a great and useful website, and it kindly sends out email shots highlighting artists on tour that one has expressed some sort of interest in. These arrive, as emails are wont to do, with a title – in this case listing artist X and artist Y are on tour and it looks, just for a moment. as if they are touring together. That is the, admittedly somewhat weak, premise for this feature. What makes it interesting is the thought process that goes – “really, those two on tour together? Wow! But isn’t that a really odd combination?  How would it work – and is there any tenuous explanation as to why it would happen anyway?”  And let’s not forget that real life has seen some weird combinations of artists – who thought Jimi Hendrix would be a good opener for the Monkees – and who would not have wanted to be at that gig?  Imagine it – sensational!

And so – how would Gretchen Peters and cosmic cowboys The Flaming Lips end up on tour together?  And really the only explanation we could come up with was that the tour booker was looking for someone to complement the psychedelic craziness of perpetual dude Wayne Coyne.  “Dude – hmm, what’s that song from The Big Lebowski?  “Find someone who does that song” they cried “that’d be perfect.”  And thus an unlikely pairing came to (not actually) be…