Who: Flaming Lips

Where and when: The Other Stage, 10.30pm

Dress code: A white suit for the ever-smart and deceptively handsome Wayne Coyne, and orange munchkin outfits, gorilla suits, worm garb and frog's heads for the many, many extras.

What happened: The Flaming Lips are a perennial cult band, and having almost crossed over around 2003, they've since reverted to their natural habitat: underground. Which makes them an odd choice to headline the other stage, and sure enough the crowd is scanty, though it fills up as Gorillaz tank on the Pyramid stage. Yet the Flaming Lips respond in the only way they know how - with a prog-meets-garage extravaganza aligned to an eye-popping spectacle taking in glitter cannons, green lasers and balloons. Wayne Coyne is the perfect MC, endorsing Snoop Dogg's advocation of weed smoking and insisting that everybody makes a peace sign, in the hope that the energy will shoot out of our fingers and stop all wars. That's Glastonbury right there.

Who's watching: Hippies, hardcore indie kids, and as the night wears on, people bored of Gorillaz.

High point: The closing Do You Realize??, a beautiful song about coming to terms with the fact that "everyone you know, someday, will die." At their best, as in this song, the Flaming Lips are like a great Russian novelist interrogating the ultimate question: why live?

Low point: Their attitude to women seems to be straight out of 1968, with endless backdrops of naked dancers or women in baths seductively licking their fingers.

In a tweet: The Flaming Lips channel Hawkwind by way of MC5 to destroy all bad vibes – and it works.