Psychedelic Lunch

Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore psychedelic tunes from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!

The Flaming Lips, The Spider Bite Song. Album: The Soft Bulletin (1999)

This song chronicles the experiences the band members had prior to recording The Soft Bulletin. Lead singer Wayne Coyne’s father passed the year before, bassist Michael Ivins was in a very strange car accident. Lastly, drummer/guitarist Steven Drozd came close to having to have his arm amputated due to a spiderbite.

This song is very piano-driven but has an intriguing drum effect all throughout.

It turned out that Drozd’s arm was abscessed as a result of his heroin use rather than because of the spider bite. Wayne Coyne recalled to Uncut magazine June 2008: “Everyone wants to know on ‘Spiderbite Song’ whether I really knew that Steven had a drug problem. All I can say is, not as much as I knew later! Everybody was busy doing their own trip, and being around drug addicts, they’re not much different than they were the previous week. I mean, it happens so slowly that you get used to it. It must be like those guys that have giant tumors on their faces. It grows a little every day. When I think of it now, I’m surprised at how precarious the whole thing was. That probably played into the song and the whole theme of the LP. In a way I probably thought that Steven may not even be here for another year.”