The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club were the wild and wooly Zeligs of the American counterculture of the Vietnam Era: The Angels partied with Ken Keasey and his Merry Pranksters; they saw their reflections on the big screen in Easy Rider, and in the pages of Hunter S. Thompson’s first book; and they effectively ended the hippie dream at Altamant. But the group’s roots dig deep, back to an earlier generation of soldiers returning home to California after World War II, and naming their motorcycle club in the same bold, fierce nomenclature brandished by fighting squadrons in the war.

Here’s a great documentary from 1983 that tells the story of the rise and fall of Hells Angels. Here’s Hells Angels Forever…

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In 1981, in a small California town, a teenager raped and killed his girlfriend. Afterwards he took his friends to see the body. About a dozen young people had seen the body and known about the murder before the murder was reported two days after the slaying. River’s Edge is based on those events. The film offers an intimate tour of disaffected teen culture in small town California. The movie is memorable for its off-kilter tone which is often funny despite being thoroughly creepy at the same time. It also boasts a great cast with Crispin Glover, Keeanu Reeves, Ione Skye, and Dennis Hopper.

If you’ve seen this film, this making of will lend insights and trigger memories. If you’re new to River’s Edge this is a great introduction to one of the best movies of the 1980′s. Here’s River’s Edge: Across the Edge…

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On this day in 1846, the Donner Party set off on their infamous journey from Illinois to California. By February the following year the party would be rescued from their frozen hell in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, embedding their story of ambition, madness and cannibalism in the American psyche forever…

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I love how the New Year inspires the summing up of the year gone by. What’s the best movie you saw? What’s the best album you heard? I have a pretty sizable library of art books, artist biographies and exhibition catalogs, and this is the time of year when publishers send me their spring catalogs, looking for some press/blog buzz in the coming months.

Last year was a pretty good year for art books, but my favorite 2013 art books are two Mike Kelley titles that eclipse everything else in the category…

Pay for Your Pleasures: Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Raymond Pettibone – Profiling the edge of the Southern California art scene by illuminating three of its most controversial figures, Pleasures is an important volume the examines the artist’s separate oeuvres while also pointing to the overlap in their collaborative efforts. The book focuses on work produced in the 1970′s, 80′s and ’90′s, and author, Cary Levine’s investigations into the musical subcultures these artists were drawn to provides an intriguing jumping-off point for this tour of transgressive expressions which includes everything from disturbing statements on sex and gender to sculptures made of feces. The work here challenges the minds, hearts and stomachs of viewers – often simultaneously. And it’s Levine’s brave understanding of this work and these artists that makes Pleasures such a pleasure.

Mike Kelley is the most complete catalog yet produced on the work of the artist and it’s the companion book to the retrospective exhibition that followed Kelley’s death in 2012. The eponymous volume tracks the artist’s sculpture, works on paper, paintings, sound, music, installations, videos and performances from the 1970′s through Kelley’s last work, “Mobile Homestead.” The book suspends its audience between the harrowing and hilarious dichotomies that defined Kelley’s output and it’s an invaluable reference for writers, artists, teachers and the Kelley-curious, seeking a deeper, critical understanding of this important artist’s work.

Here is an experimental video project that features Kelley’s band Destroy All Monsters

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