OKC-based art-rockers The Flaming Lips release their first live album, revisiting 'The Soft Bulletin' with the Colorado Symphony

Flaming Lips fans surprised that the venerable Oklahoma City-based experimental rockers are just releasing their first live album, take heart: Wayne Coyne finds it hard to believe, too.

"The other things that we released were like DVDs, so it would be a concert where it's really about the video," the band's frontman said in a phone interview last week from his OKC home. "But it was never a live album where you're just listening to the music."

Out Friday, "The Soft Bulletin Recorded Live at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra" not only marks the Grammy-winning band's first live album but also commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Lips' seminal 1999 breakthrough release.

The art-rockers performed the widely acclaimed "The Soft Bulletin" in its entirety and in sequence May 26, 2016, with the Colorado Symphony at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado. The Lips — Coyne, Steven Drozd, Michael Ivins, Derek Brown, Jake Ingalls, Matt Kirksey and Nicholas Ley — were accompanied by an almost 70-piece orchestra and nearly 60-member chorus at the concert, under the baton of celebrated conductor Andre de Ridder.

It was an undertaking so huge, Coyne said he sometimes still can't fathom it actually worked.

"It's a venue where people really from all over the world travel to ... so it's a tall order just to do a performance there, without an orchestra," he said. "Then it's a particularly tall order to go to Denver, rehearse with an orchestra doing this kind of complicated music. ... And then to think you're gonna do all this, do a performance, do it with an orchestra, and you're gonna record it is like, 'Oh my gosh.' I can't believe we actually pulled it off."

Grand Canyon experience

Although the Lips previously had worked with orchestras, including in Oklahoma City, Coyne said the band had never collaborated with a symphony to the extent of the live project.

"The people that were involved in the Denver symphony, these people know our music, probably better than we do. They're the ones that brought us there. The very first couple of times you go through songs, luckily, you're not having to perform. ... You're kind of like 'oh, my gosh, this is pretty great,' 'cause it's just a sound that's hard to describe because you're in the middle of it," Coyne said.

"That presence is kind of like standing in the Grand Canyon: I can take a picture of it and showing it to you, or I can tell you about it, but it's not like being there."

For the singer, songwriter and musician, incorporating so many performers meant more anxiety, too.

"On the day that we did the performance, 20 more people were added to the choir — and the choir is singing from the very back of this giant stage. And it was already an impossible task to mike them. ... I just think there was a lot of enthusiasm for being part of this concert," he recalled.

"My nervousness about it and my worry about it, I really think turned into the greatest thing about it, because you could really hear this insane choir blaring. It's like this triumphant, religious experience almost 'cause they're so powerful on the thing. And we didn't realize that until we got the recordings back and started to kind of listen ... so we were very relieved that we captured the audience being insane and we captured the choir being insane. That part of it makes it so special 'cause when we were there, I think that surprised everybody how cool that was and how it just sent chills up your spine."

Gift from the gods

The live album gave the band a chance to celebrate the 20th anniversary of "The Soft Bulletin." The concert was produced by the Lips, their manager Scott Booker and their collaborator Dave Fridmann, who all worked on the original album, and the live recording is being released on the band's longtime label, Warner Bros.

Although now regarded as an essential rock album of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Coyne said the band didn't look at it that way when they were making it

"That's probably the reason why we were able to make it. We really just made it for ourselves ... and we were very lucky that we had been left alone for a long time. Even after we signed to Warner Bros., (we had) people believing in us, saying, 'Just go make your records,' " he recalled.

"I say it to people all the time, it's as if the gods of music said, 'This is album needs to be made, this album that speaks about this optimism despite realizing how brutal the world is.' ... And I think the gods of music said, 'It's gotta be made by some weirdos that don't know what they're doing, otherwise they'll (expletive) it up.' And they said, 'There's this band in Oklahoma' ... and then the gods of music let us make it. We really never would have been able to make it if we thought, 'Oh, we're making something important.' "

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