Mark Flynn
Artist/Musicologist
Mark Flynn first made a name for himself in 1977, in Boston, as creator and contributor to Skunk Piss Mag (1977 – 1980), a bi-weekly art magazine, and co-curator of Punkt/Data Gallery (1977 – 1980), an exhibition space devoted to Boston’s burgeoning underground art world. It was at this time he was most active in the poster world promoting the magazine, gallery, and band night’s he produced, which included, among others, The Girls, La Peste, Human Sexual Response, and DMZ.
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In 1980 he began a 22 year stint as a weekly fixture on 2 of Boston’s most popular community radio stations, MIT affiliated WMBR and Boston College affiliated WZBC. Mark was the mid-day/weekday sports announcer on the Late Risers Club (1980 –1982) and cohost of the weekly comedy sports call-in program, The Sports Palace ( 1980 – 1983). During The Sports Palace era, he was member of “The Fabulous Billys Goons”, a short lived punk-a-billy band featuring the core members of the Sports Palace show team.
An avid record collector Mark was fortunate enough to be invited to be one of the weekly hosts of the Late Risers Club ( 1982 – 1987 ) the USA’s first weekday program devoted to punk, indie rock and it’s various manifestations. In 1987 he moved over to WZBC because it’s weeknight programming offered more avenues to explore new music in non rock forms. By 1997 his program had evolved into a weekly live DJ format which, until the end of 2001and featured live mix sets and live pa’s by a vast amount of DJ’s from Boston and beyond. During this time Mark designed and produced “flyers” for his radio show “Disc Error” and his weekly residency with Brother Cleve at The Milky Way “Solaris. Flyers were to the DJ music world of the 90’s and early 2000’s what posters were to the underground scene in the late 70’s and early 80’s
Mark has had regular residencies in Boston and NYC ( where he packed his records and art work in late 2000 and set up shop ). He has also DJ’d in Amsterdam, Berlin and Munich and produced a mostly weekly radio show “The Omnivores Experiment” on wtnr.com, from May 2009 until May 2013.
Since the birth of his second child in 2012, he’s stepped back, for a time, from the active nightlife world and now DJ’s benefits for his kids schools and neighborhood events in lower Manhattan. He’s also been living vicariously through his daughter and son’s development as artists in their own right and looks forward to retrieving his past skills as an artist and designer.
ASK MARK A QUESTION:
What is your background and how did you fit into the music scene back in the days between 1978_82?
Many of the posters plastered around the city came from the bands, but some from event driven art groups like Punkt Data. Tell us about Punkt Data.
What separated the look of the art created by Punkt Data and the poster look and feel that the bands were generating?
Magnus Johnson has some of his work featured in the Gallery and a tribute piece written by you here on the blog. Tell us a little about Magnus.
Do you think it’s fair to say that the posters you would find on the wall and street poles around the city of Boston had as much to do with the music scene as the music itself?
You every find yourself in any trouble posting your work, like putting up Punkt Data posters in the North End or being chased away by an angry merchant or property owners?
If you look in the Boston Flashpoint Gallery there are lots of different styles of work, is there anything that jumped out and surprised you?
There was a sharing of concepts and looks of band poster art styles, with 45 covers, and even pins and badges at the time. Where you involved in the creation of any of those other types of designs?
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