I Don't Wanna (album)

I Don't Wanna
Compilation album by Henry Flynt & The Insurrections
Released	2005
Recorded	1966
Genre	Avant-garde experimental rock garage rock proto-punk
Length	32:39
Label	Locust

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I Don't Wanna is a retrospective album consisting of demos recorded in 1966 by Henry Flynt & The Insurrections, an avant-garde and experimental garage rock combo led by musician, conceptual artist, and philosopher, Henry Flynt. It was released in 2005 on Locust Music. The ensemble consisted of Flynt on lead vocals and electric guitar, Walter De Maria on drums, Art Murphy on keyboards, and Paul Breslin on upright bass. Flynt, a classically trained violinist, learned guitar from Lou Reed and played briefly in the Velvet Underground, before recording with this album with the Insurrections. The music on I Don't Wanna is primarily a delta blues-inspired exercise in experimental primitivism, characterized by politically radical agitprop lyrics that anticipate sentiments that would increasingly come to the fore in the radicalized music and youth culture of the late 1960s.

Henry Flynt & the Insurrections were led by musician, and future philosopher/multi-media artist, Henry Flynt, who was a classically trained violinist who also learned guitar from Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground in the mid-1960s not long before the formation of the Insurrections. Flynt, a native of North Carolina, was living in New York City during the 1960s and had come into contact with many of the conceptual, "Fluxus", and avant-garde artists and musicians living there at the time, including Yoko Ono, before starting his own group. He is sometimes credited with coining the phrase "conceptual art". Flynt who had initially been trained on guitar by Lou Reed briefly joined the Velvet Underground in 1966 substituting for John Cale, at his suggestion, while Cale was suffering from an illness. During that time Lou Reed gave him his first guitar lessons. Flynt had been interested in writing songs with political messages, so he began assembling an act of his own. The act that became Henry Flynt & the Insurrections started as a duo with Flynt as the vocalist and electric guitarist. He was accompanied by Walter De Maria, a sculptor and friend, on drums, who had formerly played in the Primitives, an earlier garage rock combo that included Lou Reed. The Primitives had recorded "The Ostrich," which was co-written by Reed and Cale. The duo specialized began to hone the kind of agitprop approach to topical songs which became their hallmark as they evolved into a larger group, eventually adding jazz musician Paul Breslin on upright bass and organist Art Murphy, and taking the name Henry Flynt & the Insurrections. Many of the band's songs were highly satirical, rife with references to topics such as "napalm," "Uncle Sam," "CIA-backed coups". They recorded songs onto rehearsal demos in 1966, but, due to Flynt and DeMaira's wariness of commercial success, the material was not released until years later. The band broke up shortly thereafter. The group's demo tapes were re-issued in 2004 as the album I Don't Wanna, on Locust Music.

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