The Abandoned Hospital Ship

Album: Clouds Taste Metallic (1995)
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Songfacts®:

  • In the book Staring At Sound: The True Story Of Oklahoma's Fabulous Flaming Lips by Jim DeRogatis, Lips frontman Wayne Coyne told the story behind the song, which builds over the sound of an old reel-to-reel film projector. "It was a sort of Twilight Zone episode: I was thinking of a giant hospital spaceship going to different galaxies," he explained. "One patient shows up, they work frantically through the night to save him, and at the end of the episode, it's God that they saved; God was in some horrible galactic accident. In a typical Rod Serling sort of way, the patient leaves, and they're all sitting there thinking, 'Oh, nice work,' but they don't realize the extent of what they did. I was playing with a lot of film loops at the time, and the projector just sort of naturally made its way onto the tune. I think we tried turning it off, but the minute we did, the whole atmosphere disappeared."

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