In today's New York Times "Home & Garden" section, a visit to the Oklahoma City compound of Wayne Coyne, singer and guitarist for the amazing psychedelic pop band The Flaming Lips. His residence consists of four adjacent houses, one for living, one for storage, and two guest houses. From the New York Times (photo by Paul Hellstern):
"It's our firewall," Mr. Coyne said, standing under a pecan tree in the fenced-in courtyard surrounded by the houses. "It staves off the crack dealers…"Seen from the street, it resembles a do-it-yourself version of a Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie House; inside it feels mazelike and eccentric, qualities the couple have tried to enhance with color. (J. Michelle) Martin-Coyne painted an upstairs bedroom "breathless blue," she said, after a sky blue shade of nail polish, and her art studio across the hallway has a pink rubber floor.
She was showing off the contents of her studio, including a collection of vintage children's lunchboxes and an old jukebox she got from her grandfather, when Mr. Coyne reappeared. Glancing around, he said, "We're maximalists; Michelle and I both have the junk gene…."
The house is less a quiet sanctuary than a full-time Flaming Lips headquarters: a place where band members crashed in the early days; where rehearsals still take place in a cramped back room; and where Mr. Coyne can work up visual elements for concerts (like the mirrored disco balls sitting in an open-sided shed in the yard). On this particular day, the band's roadies were in a workshop behind the house building a "500-pound human brain," a Halloween display designed by Mr. Coyne (and actually made of lightweight foam). "There are still kids who think we showed off a dead guy," Mr. Coyne said, referring to the year he put a bloody, life-size rubber man on the porch.
