We definitely got closer to Wayne Coyne as we assembled our cover story on him and his band, the Flaming Lips. Heck, the man even hand-lettered the graphics on our cover, and within the story itself! But artistic talent wasn't all Wayne shared with SPIN.

During the spring of 1994, while the Flaming Lips were barnstorming across America, convincing radio programmers and their own label that a brain-fryingly weird pop tune, "She Don't Use Jelly," from their album Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, could be a hit, I was engaged in a middle-class rite of passage, backpacking across Europe.

The Flaming Lips have always been about big ideas: In 1997, it was Zaireeka, an experimental release comprising four CD's designed to be played simultaneously; in 2002, it was Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, a concept album so theatrical the band decided to adapt it into a Broadway musical with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin; and come Oct.

If you're hankering to see a low-budget sci-fi movie featuring a suicidal Santa that very loosely concerns the fate of the first baby conceived in space, then by all means, check out Christmas on Mars. That such an offbeat film is the directorial debut of Wayne Coyne, frontman of psych-rock oddballs the Flaming Lips, should surprise no one.