Thursday night, The Flaming Lips and Weezer performed their first joint performance at Holmdel, NJ’s PNC Bank Arts Center. The show began with a speech from Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, explaining the how the night would proceed. “You leave to go to the bathroom and Flaming Lips are playing and you come back and Weezer is playing,” he explained. After a brief intro, the two bands appeared on stage together for a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Sweat Leaf” while Coyne and Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo rolled through the crowd in the Lips’ trademark “space bubbles.”

Throughout the rest of the night, the two bands alternated every few songs with the stage going from Weezer’s flashing ‘W’ to The Lips’confetti-laced psychedelic circus. Both Coyne and Cuomo gave their reasons for the odd pairing, Cuomo revealing “We used to go see them play. Now we’re up here.” Coyne, although somewhat less to the point, was equally as enthusiastic, “I say, you gotta fucking live your life and do different shit!”

At the end of the show, the bands came together again for a joint take on The Lips’ “She Don’t Use Jelly” followed by Weezer’s “Undone (The Sweater Song).” At one point during the closer, Coyne fired off his streamer gun while riding through the crowd on the back of a man dressed in a bear suit.

The bands perform again (with Yeasayer opening) tonight at Jones Beach.