Fresh Air interview w/ Mike Mills

Mike Mills is a graph­ic design­er, direc­tor of many excel­lent music videos (among them: "Kel­ly Watch the Stars," by Air, the one with the 70's‑looking slow-motion ping-pong play­ers), and all-around aes­thet­ic bad-ass. Ter­ry Gross inter­viewed him on Fresh Air a cou­ple of weeks ago, and you can check out the archived ver­sion on the NPR web­site. It includes a fun­ny anec­dote about his expe­ri­ence as an appren­tice for a well-known Scot­tish artist — at the risk of giv­ing away the end­ing, Mills didn't assist in the cre­ation of the work as much as he cre­at­ed the work for the artist, who was too hun­gover to do it him­self. Here's a real­ly com­pre­hen­sive col­lec­tion of his video work, includ­ing "Kel­ly Watch the Stars."Incidentally, when I was grow­ing up, a dif­fer­ent Mike Mills was the bassist for my favorite rock band c. 1985–88 — REM. You can hear his thin, poignant har­mo­niz­ing on Mur­mur, Reck­on­ing, Fables of the Recon­struc­tion, Life's Rich Pageant, Dead Let­ter Office, and Doc­u­ment. (Don't both­er with any­thing after Doc­u­ment; it's all down­hill from there). Let's hear it for all Mike Millses!