Obituary: Mike Kelley

Noise musician and artist Mike Kelley committed suicide today. Did I know him? I talked to him once very briefly on the phone when I was an intern at an art magazine (TRANS>arts.cultures.media) a long, long time ago. Mike Kelley and I knew a few people in common. Actually, I alluded to Mike Kelly on a blog I wrote recently in reference to the one thing I am kind of influenced by that he did, which is this essay he wrote about the old Baby Huey cartoons. Mike Kelley wrote about how uncomfortable watching Baby Huey as an adult is, and came to the conclusion that they succeeded as art for that reason. I think he was somewhat on to something there. But he was far leftist like most of the rest of the art world, he was sort of irritating, and I'm only interested in him rather than obsessed with him. He did a few things that are sort of interesting. It is not at all surprising that he committed suicide. There was that very early punk band Destroy All Monsters band he was in- it is what it is. Every once and a while Mike Kelley's name comes up. That's about how it is with the author David Foster Wallace who also killed himself. I never meet David Foster Wallace but I did study with Rick Moody who knew him well. Rick Moody's work is now an abomination and certain ways I feel he was a bad influence on me as a teenager.David Foster Wallace and Mike Kelley are on about the same level to me. There's a weird dreariness to their work. I don't know about god-worshipping artists just because they committed suicide. The indie rocker Eliot Smith wasn't good, but he committed suicide. To put some perspective on it, I have a confession to make. Years ago when I owned a magazine that flopped I went through the process of trying to contact Natalie Curtis, the daughter of Ian Curtis. She's now a photographer in Manchester, UK. It actually didn't have anything to do with her photography or even much to do with Joy Division. Have you ever seen a picture of what his daughter looks like now? Goddamn!!!!!

Important Update 5/18 Was I once a student of Rick Moody? Yeah, when I was 16 turning 17, summer program at Bennington College in Vermont. It's a true story. Have I read his new book? I've read section of it which is more than I can say of The Diviners, Four Fingers of Death, The Black Veil, or even Demonology. I don't really care for his work to be honest- not at this point in my life, at any rate. He might have done a few interesting things in maybe the mid-to-late 90's. My preferred reading these days is Ron Paul or the copy of the Book of Mormon missionaries gave me, to be honest. I listen to a lot of right wing talk radio, there are a lot of inexpensive horror film screenings in Vegas that are kind of fun. If I had to read literature, I'd read William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, or Cormac McCarthy probably. I've laughed out loud at how bad Rick Moody's new book is. He's trying to write on music- he'll go on and on about indie rock bands like Sonic Youth for pages and pages and pages. If you've had a lengthy conversation with record store employee in a neighborhood like Williamsburg, Brooklyn or Harvard Square in Boston, that's exactly what this book is. I kid you not. He did a whole chapter on the Magnetic Fields. He did a whole chapter on Wilco. He spends a huge number of pages writing about how he doesn't like drum machines, and at the end, which is the funniest part, he refers to post-structuralism as being "interesting". I'm not sure what decade he is trapped in with that one. I'll tell you my opinion about music very briefly. Do you remember a few years back when the Jaycee Dugard thing hit the news and they dug up Phillip Garrido's demo of excremental outsider music type stuff that he had done on a four-track? That was hilarious. I'm not saying that Phillip Garrido shouldn't be stabbed in prison, but that was hilarious. I'm sure that Philip Garrido is probably better than 95% of the musicians Rick Moody writes about in his new book, if not a 100%. Hey, my favorite band is Goblin who mostly only did soundtracks for Italian horror movies, meaning ultimately that I care more about the whole horror film thing than bands. I've stopped doing music reviews out of lack of public interest. His new book really is a total abomination in a lot of ways.