The Red Krayola (formerly
The Red Crayola) was a psychedelic, avant-garde rock band from Houston, Texas
, formed by art students at the University of
St. Thomas 
in 1966. The band was led by
singer/guitarist and visual artist
Mayo
Thompson, along with drummer
Frederick Barthelme (brother of novelist
Donald Barthelme) and Steve
Cunningham.
Their work prefigured punk and the no wave scene
in 1980s New York
City
.
They made
noise rock,
psychedelia and occasionally folk/country songs
and instrumentals in a
DIY fashion, an approach
that presaged the
lo-fi aesthetic of many
1990s US
indie rock groups. Reviewing the
band has produced conflicted results - in an extremely positive
review from Pitchfork Media, critic Alex Lindhardt wrote "It's a
band that has no idea how to play its instruments. In fact, they
don't even know what instruments are, or if the guitarist has the
ability to remain conscious long enough to play whatever it is a
'note' might be." He added, "This is a band that was paid ten
dollars to stop a performance in Berkeley. If Berkeley's not having
it, you know you're in for rough sledding."
Thompson has continued using the name, in its legally required
permutation
The Red Krayola, for his musical
projects since.
History
1960s
In 1966 the band signed to
International Artists, home label to
fellow psych-rockers
The 13th
Floor Elevators that was run by
Lelan
Rogers (brother of
country
musician Kenny Rogers). In 1967 the
label released the psychedelic album,
Parable of Arable Land,
featuring six songs by the original three members interwoven with a
cacophony generated by approximately 50 anonymous followers known
as
The Familiar Ugly who
appear on a number of noise tracks called
Free-Form
Freak-Outs. 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson also
makes guest appearances on "Hurricane Fighter Plane" (playing
organ) and "Transparent Radiation" (on harmonica). The album's
title track was a
tape loop of
electronic sounds with
musical improvisations layered on top
of it, a sound that foreshadowed the Red Krayola's second
recording.
The
minimalist music album
Coconut Hotel was recorded in
1967 but rejected by International Artists for its lack of
commercial potential because of its complete departure from the
full-sounding guitar/bass/drums/vocals rock sound of the Red
Krayola's first album.
Coconut Hotel featured such
self-described tracks as "Organ Buildup", "Free Guitar" and a
series of
atonal "One-Second Pieces" for
piano,
trumpet and
percussion. The album did not see release
until 1995.
During this period, the band performed a
concert in Berkeley,
California
where they attached a contact microphone to a sheet of aluminium foil that was set under a block of
melting ice; this performance is captured on Live 1967. The Red Krayola also
performed with guitarist
John
Fahey and recorded an entire studio album of music in
collaboration with him, but label head Lelan Rogers demanded
possession of the tapes and recorded documentation of those
sessions has been missing ever since.
The band's second album to see release (and the first to be
released with the new "Krayola" spelling) was 1968's
God Bless The
Red Krayola And All Who Sail With It.
God Bless
presented a middle ground between
Parable of Arable Land
and
Coconut Hotel, having veered away from the cacophonous
psychedelic approach of their first album, but performing short,
minimalist songs on
electric guitar,
bass and drums (interspersed with occasional
a cappella harmonies and
piano interludes) to achieve some surprisingly melodic
results and even more surprisingly off-kilter lyrics. Hints of the
as-of-yet unheard music on
Coconut Hotel also revealed
themselves (the track "Listen To This" is a one-second piece with
spoken introduction, and "Free Piece" sounds like an outtake from
Coconut Hotel). The album was not as well received as the
band's first release and the Red Krayola's original lineup
disbanded.
In 1969, Thompson recorded a solo album called
Corky's Debt to His Father
for a small label called Texas Revolution. The album, which has
come to be regarded by many as the unheralded jewel of the Krayola
catalogue, is devoid of Thompson's usual avant-garde indulgences,
and consists instead of ten lyrically dense but warm-hearted pop
songs, in various styles -
Dylan-inspired
blues-rock, Tex-Mex pop-rock with psychedelic touches, and early
country rock not dissimilar to the
contemporary work of
Gram Parsons and
the
Flying Burrito Brothers.
Thompson was backed by studio musicians on the album and none of
his usual Krayola (or 13th Floor Elevators) cohorts appear.
1970s–80s
Mayo Thompson continued to make music, both under his own name and
as The Red Crayola (reverting to the original name for Europe). He
teamed up with American drummer Jesse Chamberlain and recorded the
single 'Wives in Orbit' and the album
Soldier Talk both of
which could be seen as musical responses to punk rock. His
collaborations in the 1970s and 1980s read like a roll call of the
avant-garde and
experimental artists and musicians of the
era. The Red Crayola teamed up with the
Conceptual Art collective
Art & Language for three LPs: 1976's
Corrected Slogans, 1981's
Kangaroo? (also
featuring
The Raincoats'
Gina Birch,
Lora Logic
and
Swell Maps'
Epic Soundtracks) and 1983's
Black
Snakes. Thompson joined
Pere
Ubu for a period in the early 1980s, performing on a couple
releases, and provided soundtrack music for
Derek Jarman. Throughout this time he was
prolific as a producer for many other seminal experimental and
alternative rock acts, including
The Fall (1980's
Grotesque ),
The Raincoats,
Scritti Politti,
Blue Orchids,
Cabaret Voltaire,
Stiff Little Fingers,
Kleenex/LiLiPUT,
The
Chills and
Primal Scream.
1990s–present
The 1990s
found The Red Krayola with a new audience, who came to the group
via musicians associated with Chicago
's Post Rock scene and in particular the Drag City label, who had joined the
band's ever-shifting line-up for a number of releases including the
LPs Hazel (1996) and Fingerpainting
(1999). These were, amongst others,
Jim O'Rourke and
David Grubbs of
Gastr
del Sol, the
post-Conceptual
visual artist
Stephen Prina, German
painter
Albert Oehlen,
George Hurley (formerly of
Minutemen and
fIREHOSE),
Tom
Watson of
Slovenly, and
John McEntire of
Tortoise. In 2006 the group issued an album,
Introduction and an EP,
Red Gold.
In 1995, Drag City released 1967's
Coconut Hotel LP and in 1998 issued
The Red Krayola Live
1967 with material from the Angry Arts Festival and Berkeley
Folk Music Festival including their live collaboration with
John Fahey.
Thompson
is active as an art critic and currently
lives in Edinburgh
, Scotland
, and in
California
, where he teaches at the Pasadena Art Center
College of Design.
Covers
Houston
, Texas
hardcore punk band Really Red recorded a cover of "Just the Facts,
Ma'am" for their Rest in Pain LP from
1984.British
Space Rock group Spacemen
3 recorded a version of "Transparent Radiation" from the Red
Krayola's Parable of Arable Land, and the same album's
lead track "Hurricane Fighter Plane" was covered by Nik Turner's
Ladbroke Grove-based post-Hawkwind outfit Inner City Unit, UK
Goth rock
legends Alien Sex Fiend in 1986 and
by Scottish act Future Pilot AKA in 1996, as well as by
ultra violent punkrockers, The Dwarves
(who were originally a psychedelic garage band).
Also
covering "Hurricane Fighter Plane" was New Zealand
post-punk band, The Pin Group, led by future solo performer,
Roy Montgomery. Boston-based
indie outfit
Galaxie 500 also covered
"Victory Garden" from the Red Krayola's second album.
See also
References
External links
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