The underground filmmaker Jack Smith is mostly known for his notorious 1963 fim FLAMING CREATURES in addition to a number of experimental theater works which presaged the New York performance art of the '80s. Part of the early-'60s bohemian avant-garde that included composer La Monte Young and violinist Tony Conrad, and which later gave rise to Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable and the Velvet Underground, Smith personified a wholly original Hollywood-derived trash-exotic aesthetic through his photography, drawings, essays, acting and, of course, his uniquely low-budget films. In the late '90s, Tony Conrad compiled two Jack Smith spoken word albums, comprised mainly of impromptu material recorded at Smith's Ludlow St. apartment in the early '60s.