There’s been lotsa chatter in print, on the tube and elsewhere about The Rolling Stones latest spate of shows constituting the tour of 2002.

Really?

OK, if someone handed me a ticket to one of the Stones’ theater shows-- where the venues max out around 2000 seats and the set lists are more adventurous--sure, I’d have gone. But I was hardly tempted to hit a Stones’ arena concert, and you couldn’t force me to attend their (or anyone else’s) stadium performance, even at gunpoint. It’s not so much the venue--though a stadium outing is usually dogged by bad sound, bad sight lines and too much vomit--but the Stones’ tour is little more than a gussied-up, if insanely lucrative, exercise in nostalgia. This time around, they didn’t even bother to impersonate an active recording unit by releasing an album of new material. They did put out Forty Licks, a two-disc greatest hits collection, with four new tunes thrown in--uh, did anyone confuse “Don’t Stop” with any of their best songs? Just asking. Another new one’s called “Losing My Touch.” Sometimes these snarky comments write themselves.

Nothing fatally wrong with any of this, of course. It’s just that, after you’ve been around for a few years/albums, to mount a truly meaningful concert tour boasting serious artistic heft, it’s absolutely essential to include new material. And not just any new stuff, but ideally a bloc of stellar new music.

Hell, even Keef, if not Mick, would cop to that. If it’s anything much less, aren’t we then merely talking about a live oldies package, however elaborate or fanciful? And, sadly, doesn’t this pretty much apply to some of 2002’s other big, high-profile tours: Paul McCartney (are you trying to tell me that, back in the day, the guy who wrote “Yesterday” wouldn’t wipe his ass with an embarrassment like “Freedom”?), The Who, et al.

A notable exception at that level is Spingsteen, who released a new CD, The Rising that was sufficiently acclaimed to be equated with his best work, and he played a huge handful of Rising songs at every show. A notable exception not at that level--that is, rather than a grizzled pro doing arenas, this is a guy who looks slightly younger than the paperboy, playing venues less than half that size--is someone who gets our nomination for the true tour of 2002:
Beck.

Actually, to be clear, Beck embarked on two tours this year: The first of those was an acoustic, semi-solo affair, backed only by guitarist Smokey Hormel. More importantly for our purposes, it was before he released Sea Change, a somber masterpiece, probably the best record Beck’s ever made and certainly one of the best anyone made in 2002; if I hadn’t sworn off making predictions in the pages of KDViationS, I’d guess--as I write this on Nov. 29--that Sea Change will make many critics’ year-end Top Ten list, and it’ll be Number One on quite a few of those lists.

This is a band ... both revels in and redefines the notion of the concert spectacle. ... costumes galore, ... more confetti than New Year’s Eve in Manhattan, ... fake blood and other props, ... videos of their own making and found footage, ... mirrored balls, ... smoke machines, ... anything else that might push the show’s visual quotient into some nothing- succeeds-like-excess nether world.

More on that CD in a moment, but the tour we’re actually referring to is the one Beck put together to support that new record--where The Flaming Lips open for him, and serve as his backing band.

Initially, to some of us, anyway, this sounded too good to be true. But here’s the thing: it turned out to be (a) true and (b) better than it sounded, especially toward the end of the tour. But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. Let’s back up for a moment to take a better look at just what an intriguing--and, initially, downright improbable--pairing this appeared to be, at least on paper.
Based in Oklahoma City and led by adventurous auteur Wayne Coyne, The Flaming Lips are an immensely imaginative and daring outfit that, since the mid-80s, have turned out a string of excellent, supremely inventive albums, including two back-to-back masterpieces of their own, 1999’s The Soft Bulletin and 2002’s Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots.

As did its predecessor, Yoshimi drew over-the-top rave reviews here and abroad. For instance, revered UK mag Uncut gushed: “The greatest album released in Uncut’s lifetime. 5 1/2 out of 5 stars.” But The Lips have otherwise tended to fly beneath the radar screens of all but the most avid music fans and media: Other than at cool college/community outlets like KDVS, the band never gets radio airplay (or MTV eyeplay) to speak of--apart from its one hit, “She Don’t Use Jelly,” and that was nearly a decade ago--doesn’t get much ink in other than music publications; you just don’t hear much about the Lips, which must be fine with them: all these years later, rather than relocate to L.A. or New York, they still hang in Oklahoma City. They’re apparently content to quietly make extraordinary records, and leave the hubbub to others. At the same time, there’s considerable hubbub to be found in their live shows, and now we’re starting to zero in on why a Lips/Beck teaming seemed so unlikely, especially tied to Sea Change. Namely, that, in concert, The Flaming Lips are...how shall I put this...COMPLETELY NUTS!

This is a band that both revels in and redefines the notion of the concert spectacle. So this means costumes galore, it means more confetti than New Year’s Eve in Manhattan, it means fake blood and other props, it means videos of their own making and found footage, it means mirrored balls, it means smoke machines, it means anything else that might push the show’s visual quotient into some nothing- succeeds-like-excess nether world.

This madcap approach has generated a distinctly different and more entrancing impact in the last few years, as the shows have also included samplings from one, now two of the premier albums in the recent rock pantheon. Indeed, where most bands would employ such onstage insanity as a gambit to distract the audience from weak material, the Lips seemingly do so now to apply additional colors, tones and dimensions to extraordinary material. Plus, Coyne & Co. obviously feel concerts should be festive, joyous--fun.

Against this backdrop came the startling announcement that The Lips would open for and back Beck on the new tour. It’s not like Beck Hansen--highly acclaimed versatile virtuoso and Grammy winner--is considered a killjoy. Not at all. His catalog is studded with humor and irony, but, again, the CD they’d be touring behind was Sea Change--which to paraphrase a different band, ain’t no party, ain’t no disco, ain’t no fooling around.

The sixth tune he played was “The Golden Age,” and partway through, the Lips-- sans costumes--kicked in to join him on that song, suddenly illuminated behind that scrim.

For all its undeniable excellence, the album is a highly introspective, often- brooding, extended rumination on the end of Beck’s relationship with his longtime girlfriend, Leigh Limon. Sea Change is awash in heartache and melancholy, and, not surprisingly, rendered in largely subdued, folk-inflected musical settings--this clearly wasn’t the place for Beck to exercise his hip-hop, funk and other dance music leanings. Hell, Sea Change is so low-key it makes Mutations seem like Midnight Vultures.

So, Beck hires the Flaming Lips to back him on this tour? Is he crazy? You bet. Crazy like the proverbial fox. On October 14, three nights before the tour was to open in Minneapolis, Beck and The Lips played what they labeled a warm- up/dress rehearsal show, and any time the Lips are involved, “dress rehearsal” takes on a deeper meaning: While Coyne sported a white suit, bandmates Steven Drozd and Michael Ivins were wearing bear and zebra costumes, respectively, and the band was flanked by a coupla dozen flashlight-wielding folks wearing assorted, mostly furry costumes, though there seemed to be at least one goldfish. So it was obviously Lips business as usual, including confetti, balloon, four big mirror balls, smoke machines--including one connected to a bullhorn--and lots of video clips that were still being rejiggered for an opening versus headline set. And an excellent 45-minute set it was, even as some bugs were being worked out, largely drawn from Bulletin and Yoshimi, and they played “She Don’t Use Jelly” after Coyne explained how disappointed he is as a fan when he goes to see a band that doesn’t play their breakthrough hit, citing Radiohead eschewing “Creep” on the last tour.

After the crew tore down the Lips set and gear, cleaned up their mess, and erected a dark scrim, Beck strolled out to begin the show in solo fashion, starting with “Cold Brains” and chatting amiably between other, mostly Sea Change tunes. The sixth tune he played was “The Golden Age,” and partway through, the Lips-- sans costumes--kicked in to join him on that song, suddenly illuminated behind that scrim.

The scrim soon parted, making Beck and the Lips--joined by keyboardist Greg Kurstin (ex-Geggy Tah)-- one, big, happy family. Yeah, I said “happy.” Beck was clearly loving playing with the Lips, and vice-versa, on top of which he and Coyne periodically engaged in some often-witty, sometimes goofy repartee that may mark them as a comedy team with a real future.

It was a very fine show, a bit rough in spots, the way a dress rehearsal should be, but impressive for the way the Lips navigated their way through the sprawling Beck musical landscape, while the set was predictably anchored in Sea Change material. I loved the concert, but I know people who walked away with a few quibbles--slightly disappointed that Beck didn’t play his breakthrough hit, “Loser,” that he leaned so heavily on the new record, and, as such,that there was a bit of a downer vibe undermining the sense of celebration that many people seek at concerts, especially Beck concerts.

What a difference a month and half makes. Having traversed much of the country in that time, the Beck/Lips juggernaut rolled into L.A. for one of the last nights of the tour, a sold-out concert at the Universal Amphitheatre--and, from start to finish, it was awesome. As good as the warm-up outing was, this show was somehow a good deal better, at the uppermost level of the greatness scale. Even the quibblers were raving. The evening wasn’t significantly different from the earlier one. But it did reflect some minor changes here, some tweaks there, and some fascinating ways the Lips had influenced Beck (where some might’ve predicted it’d be the other way around).

The night commenced with another blast of Lips lunacy, largely unchanged from the last time, except at once tighter and more over-the-top. For one thing, there was a pit of standing audience members right in front of the stage, which seemed to spur more smoke-spewing, balloon-launching, nun puppeteering (!) and other antics from Coyne, and more frenzied flashlight-wielding dancing from the folks in animal costumes (fans recruited at each tour stop).

Still, the Lips set was more honed: the video clips--from footage of surgery to the Teletubbies--was perfectly synched, and they sounded great, from “Race For The Prize” to “Do You Realize??,” one of the best and catchiest songs about mortality you’ll ever hear. And Coyne’s plaintive vocals, which were a bit thin in the warm-up show, sounded firm and robust this night, as counter intuitive as this seems after all the touring.

But, boy, Beck raised the bar, too. He started with the same solo-in-front-of- the-scrim approach, but the content had changed. There were still a pair of Sea Change tunes (he opened with “Guess I’m Doing Fine” and, a few numbers later, still brought the Lips in by way of “The Golden Age”), but mostly, things were different and varied: “Nobody’s Fault But My Own” played on harmonium, a harmonica-hoedown version of “One Foot In The Grave “ and a stripped-down, gorgeous rendition of “Do You Realize??”

Covering that song not long after his buddies had performed it stood as just one of Beck’s notable nods to the Lips. Another was that, this time around, Beck and the boys did play “Loser”--reinvented as a swaying dance tune--and I’ll bet the entire fee I’m being paid for this article that this was at least partly the product of Coyne’s lobbying.

What a difference a month and half makes. Having traversed much of the country in that time, the Beck/Lips juggernaut rolled into L.A. for one of the last nights of the tour, a sold-out concert at the Universal Amphitheatre--and, from start to finish, it was awesome. As good as the warm-up outing was, this show was somehow a good deal better, at the uppermost level of the greatness scale.

Similarly, in whatever way it came about, the set offered more range--and more pep. It was still built around Sea Change (a third of the night’s songs), but they were sequenced more effectively, as the band also took the audience on a delightful and pretty representative tour of the enormously varied Beck catalog, and did so, generally, with swinging authority, from the slithering Brazilian lilt of “Tropicalia,” to the psycho electronic bounce of “Get Real Paid,” to the slinky roll of Sea Change’s “Paper Tiger” (spiked with razor-sharp Drozd guitar leads) to the back-to-back Odelay encores, “Devil’s Haircut” and “Where It’s At.”

Was it flawless? Nope. But damn close. And the flaws were few and microscopic, and in some cases, pre-emptively addressed. Before playing “New Pollution,” Coyne explained that, in rehearsal, the band could never find the song’s groove, so they just decided to play it really fast. Sure enough, they did play it ridiculously fast and the groove proved elusive. Not great. But on the plus side, this song featured some of Beck’s kickass, truly impressive dance moves, with Coyne shining one of those flashlights on him, to heighten the effect of the hoofing.

So, even a less than perfect musical moment emerged as one of the night’s highlights. Actually, the whole evening was one big highlight, joyously executed by a bunch of breathtakingly talented, multi-instrumentalist iconoclasts who are responsible for two of the very best albums of 2002.

Gee, could there even be another bona fide contender for tour of the year?