Search - Henry Flynt & the Insurrections :: I Dont Wanna

"Velvet Underhoedown?" Or maybe "Velvet Underground jamming

Al-Ghaieru | Wisconsin, AKA | 11/15/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Kudos go to Julian Cope for pointing out this album. It's on "Locust" records. I can't say this is the best thing I've heard in my life, but as an archival recording, this one is pretty interesting. Henry Flynt has been credited with coining the phrase "conceptual art," and making an appearence/splash in New York's art world in the 1960's. He was also a sloganeer ("No More Masterpieces" was one of his, I believe)activist, and a concerned theoretician regarding the creation of art. He did music as well, concerned with what he was to term the "creation of a new American folk music (wanting to free it from the constraints of the music industry/record making as commerce and nothing but in other words. I admire the conviction to Adorno's ideals here, although he may never have read a word of Adorno, regarding his criticism of the "culture industry" in opposition to true art/culture)." He also rubbed elbows with Lamonte Young and the Velvet Underground. In fact, he was John Cale's stand-in for a while with the Velvets, which came to an end when Lou Reed and Flynt got in an onstage fight over Flynt's injection of country fiddle in the middle of the usual Velvet trance death raga, which cracked the S/M decadadence facade the Velvets tried to project. So Flynt was out, but not without having been given some ideas from the Velvets on music making. His own band, the Insurrections, did something similar to the Velvets minimialistic skittering, maybe some technical ineptitude apparent, but hardly a sin in pure music making. The Velvets may have forbidden "rural influences" in their music (stories circulate about their charging band members a dollar if they played a blues riff), but Flynt made use of them, inserting blues skiffle and country twang into an occasionally atonal minimalistic shuffle. Or, if you want to avoid art's pretensions alltogether, you can say its equally great primitive 60's garage rock. He stopped recording music after the 60's, and I can only say that I'm sorry he never got a chance to jam with the Velvets again (who recorded a GREAT country song in "Pale Blue Eyes"), or jam with Hasil Adkins, with whom I'm certain Flynt would have an affinity with as a fellow folk musician."