RED KRAYOLA C/D

Klassic!

whenever i listen to the red krayola records i have, i always say to myself: "I should listen to these more." but i don't, really.

Corky's Debt to His Father is probably my favorite record of all time.

The early records aren't records I listen to straight through, I usually skip to the songs I like.

There's an MP3 of one of the songs from "Introducing" up on Drag City's site... it sounds similar to material from, say, "Hazel." I'm looking forward to getting the album...

I actually never understood the chorus until recently, when I read a reference to/explanation of the "Land of Culchane" (or however you spell it) -- though now I've forgotten what it means!

If someone could explain the "Tio tio tio tio tinx" chorus of that song about Trotsky, I'd love that (and I promise I'll remember it!).

"Oh, rustic Muse of such varied note, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, I sing with you in the groves and on the mountain tops, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx.[10] I poured forth sacred strains from my golden throat in honour of the god Pan,[11] tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, from the top of the thickly leaved ash, and my voice mingles with the mighty choirs who extol Cybele on the mountain tops,[12] tototototototototinx. 'Tis to our concerts that Phrynichus comes to pillage like a bee the ambrosia of his songs, the sweetness of which so charms the ear, tio, tio, tio, tio, tinx.

If there be one of you spectators who wishes to spend the rest of his life quietly among the birds, let him come to us. All that is disgraceful and forbidden by law on earth is on the contrary honourable among us, the birds. For instance, among you 'tis a crime to beat your father, but with us 'tis an estimable deed; it's considered fine to run straight at your father and hit him, saying, "Come, lift your spur if you want to fight."[13] The runaway slave, whom you brand, is only a spotted francolin with us.[14] Are you Phrygian like Spintharus?[15] Among us you would be the Phrygian bird, the goldfinch, of the race of Philemon.[16] Are you a slave and a Carian like Execestides? Among us you can create yourself fore-fathers;[17] you can always find relations. Does the son of Pisias want to betray the gates of the city to the foe? Let him become a partridge, the fitting offspring of his father; among us there is no shame in escaping as cleverly as a partridge.

So the swans on the banks of the Hebrus, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, mingle their voices to serenade Apollo, tio, tio, tio, tio. tiotinx, flapping their wings the while, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx; their notes reach beyond the clouds of heaven; all the dwellers in the forest stand still with astonishment and delight; a calm rests upon the waters, and the Graces and the choirs in Olympus catch up the strain, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx."

Introduction is really good, by the way -- like, surprisingly REALLY good. It's definitely my favorite since Amor & Language.

From latest Drag City newsletter:

THE RED KRAYOLA PRESENT CORRECTED SLOGANS LIVE!
The Red Krayola. Let's not be hyperbolic or anything (what, we exaggerate?) but Mayo Thompson and The Red Krayola have essentially inverted entire genres of music with their redefinitions of 'rock' over the years. They've managed to make albums entirely distinct from each other time and again. However, this weekend, for the first time, Mayo will lead The Red Krayola through a live set of the Corrected Slogans albums at the esteemed REDCAT (at CalArts Downtown Center for Contemporary Arts) in Los Angeles tomorrow.
(Meaning Nov. 7, apparently.)
Originally released in 1976, Corrected Slogans is a raucous, unabashed and, gloriously piece of provisional propaganda. Projecting from sparse instrumental setting and showcasing a profusion of collected voices, it is equivocally unlike any other recorded Red Krayola. Idiosyncratic and aggressive, it's required listening for anyone who calls themselves a fan of conceptual art! Travel from far away if you have to, this is NOT
something to be missed. And so, we won't. Will you?
more info here:
http://www.redcat.org/event/red-krayola-0

http://www.dragcity.com/uploads/products/2366/images/1096/large_DC651.jpg

Baby Child Care OUT ON May 13TH, 2016!
Drag City presents a newly-unearthed artifact from the long history of The Red Krayola: 1984's previously-unheard Baby and Child Care! Every year, we discover in our society the injustices of history in many and myriad forms. Surely among the most profound realizations of 2016 will be that the heads of (record) industry circa 1984 did not hear a fantastic new release when the tapes for Baby and Child Care were played to them! Grooving sinuously in prime mid-80s form in a production redolent with funk, dub and new-wave inflections, Baby and Child Care is of a musical vintage whose dry complexity is even more appreciable today.

The revolutionary advice found within The Common Sense and Baby Child Care opened doors in the mid-40s that are widening still; at the time of this album project, it had influenced a generation or two of generally young parents.When presented with the lyric qualities of Dr. Spock's psychoanalytic texts, passages of which had been transposed by Art & Language's Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, Mayo Thompson immediately set them to music. The Red Krayola "Black Snakes" band provided musical accompaniment in performances recorded by Eric Radcliffe at Blackwing Studios in London. Thirty-two years later, the conversant playing and production approach of Baby and Child Care comes across with an enduring completeness that belies its position on the shelf for the past several decades.

Standing tall next to the already-known classics of early-80s Red Krayola, from Kangaroo? through Three Songs on a Trip to the United States, Baby and Child Care drops into the hands of parents and progeny alike on May 13th!

The Red Krayola Online:
Official Website-http://www.dragcity.com/artists/the-red-krayola"> http://www.dragcity.com/artists/the-red-krayola

THE REDDIT KRAYOLA

As a devoted fan of Drag City (if you are reading this, guilty as charged!), familiarity with the many (and merry) works of Mayo Thompson is expected of you. Possesssed of such an enjoyable body of work over these past 50 years with and without The Red Kryaola, it's easy not to imagine what goes on in that man's mind - just based on the records, we certainly can't. We're all in luck then; earlier this week, for the first time ever, Mayo Thompson participated in an AMA on r/indieheads on Reddit!

https://www.reddit.com/r/indieheads/comments/4v21u0/im_mayo_thompson_ama/
slobberfest follows:
In addition to his innovative/influential/inflammable output with The Red Krayola, a group whose history spans psychedelic, punk, post-punk, and post-rock eras and continues on through to the present day, Mayo is a visual artist and former professor at the Pasdena Art Center College of Design. As well as embodying the "International Artists" sound of Texas in the late-60s alongside label mates 13th Floor Elevators and playing with Cleveland's seminal Pere Ubu in the early 1980s, he played an essential part in creating the "Rough Trade sound" in collaboration wth Geoff Travis, producing records for The Raincoats, The Fall, Cabaret Voltaire, James 'Blood' Ulmer, and Stiff Little Fingers. He collaborated subsequently with Krautrock legends Moebius and Conny Plank. Additionally, he has produced albums by Felt, The Chills and Primal Scream. With an ever-expanding lineup of Krayolites and collaborators including Frederick Barthelme, John Fahey, Allen Ravenstine, Lora Logic, Epic Soundtracks, Albert Oehlen, Jim O'Rourke, George Hurley, and MANY others, PLUS a career spanning genres, mediums and the requisite highs and lows, eliciting parables (and real life incidents) from Mayo proved to be a hoot!

oh well, thee right links at least---appalling description of Houston even after Civil Rights Act. RK had to do something alright.
http://www.houstonpress.com/music/the-mystical-origins-of-the-red-krayola-8617795

Drag City alert:

Celebrating their 50th anniversary, The Red Krayola--recently dubbed the best Texas psychedelic band in history-appear for two nights with separate concerts. Band members performing throughout the weekend include Bill Bowman (bass);Dylan Ryan (piano, drums);Tom Watson (guitar, vocals);Sandy Yang (vocals, drums); and Mayo Thompson (vocals, piano). These performances mark the band's first in New York since their celebrated sets at the Whitney Biennial in 2012.
On Friday, November 4 at 8pm, the group perform the New York premiere of a new arrangement of Corrected Slogans (1976), their first collaboration with Art & Language.
As Art & Language says: "The texts-the lyrics-of Corrected Slogans, which consist of insecurely rhyming and metrical samplings of Marxist economic theory, historiography, and social critique, are in the main, 'not at home' in the music. Together, they make a chimera. It could be said simplistically that the rock n' roll of the music carries the message of the text into circumstances where it would not otherwise be heard (on the Salvation Army principle that the Devil should not always have the best tunes). Alternatively, it could be said that the improbable détente between music and text is a disguise for both: the music clothes the text in auditory garments such that it cannot appear as itself, and the text makes a semantic demand on the music that it can only hide."
On Saturday, November 5 at 8pm, the band presents a NYC jamboree (Cooking in The Kitchen), a survey of 50 years of their music with the Familiar Ugly. Preceding the Saturday performance will be a conversation with Mayo Thompson at 5pm.

JUst enjoying Corky's Debt To His Father.
Glad I finally got this earlier this year.

RK music in this:

Art + Language at Soccer Club Club, Opening September 15th!

Soccer Club Club is proud to present selected works from two different periods of Art + Language's illustrious visual career. For one week only, multi-media works will be displayed for the first time in Chicago.

Please join us for the opening on Thursday, September 15th at 7PM! Complimentary drinks will be provided by Illuminated Brew Works and records will be spun by the Drag City DJs!
Art & Language Sings a Song

The actors of the Jackson Pollock Bar perform a script written by Art & Language in which they pretend to be Art & Language learning to sing a number of songs from an LP by Art & Language and The Red Krayola called 'Sighs Trapped by Liars' (Drag City Records). In fact, they are lip-synching to a prepared sound track that includes all their speech as well as their singing. The performance was at ZKM Karlsruhe, March 2nd, 2008.

Posters for Art & Language Paints a Picture Installed in the Style of The Jackson Pollock Bar

'Art & Language paints a Picture' is the product of a particular moment in the early 1980s and it relates to a specific body of work from that period: a series of paintings of the Artists' Studio. The text was originally written as a kind of drama - which is to say that the dramatic form was used as a mode of representation of Art & Language's idiomatic discourse. But there was no intention or expectation that the text would be performed. And it goes without saying that there was no conception that anyone might go so far as to carry out the stage directions, let alone do so while miming the words in a language foreign not only to the original text but also to the principal actors themselves, for Horn and Cieslinski are both German. Yet this is the project which the Jackson Pollock Bar have undertaken: to mime the text in English while fulfilling the practical instructions which the text contains: to be painting actors, to act painting, not under any immediately familiar guise but under conditions of bathos and desperation.
ART + LANGUAGE
September 15th - September 23rd
Soccer Club Club
2923 N. Cicero Ave
Chicago, IL 60641
312-455-1015

JUst enjoying Corky's Debt To His Father.

Yes. Worried Worried is an alltime classic.

Heads up: Mayo Thompson is performing all of Corky’s Debt to His Father for free in LA next month: https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2020/mayo-thompson

Oh sh*t, thanks! I had assumed the Corrected Slogans performance downtown in 2015 would possibly be the last time I saw Mayo perform - thrilled to have another opportunity.

(My heart skipped a beat when I saw this thread revived, not gonna lie...)

Haha, me too. Roky and Mayo in the same year would be too much.

Saw the show in NY. with every other head in the city. It was fantastic.

The group played a few shows in SF recently, which Drag City had said would be recorded for a live album... but from what I hear (from someone who attended), Mayo ended up mainly playing Bob Dylan covers!

I've seen Mayo/ Red Crayola twice. Once amazing. Once terrible. Drunk and unable to play.

Let's hope he's up to it

He didn’t play so you don’t have to worry about that.

Saw him at the Kitchen 4 years or so ago. He didn't play or sing a note. Sat at a desk reading from a detective novel with random excerpts from Jansson's History of Art and his own interpolations. At the end, he asked the audience if there were any questions (there weren't). Couldn't tell if he was trolling.
Watched some video of the Corky's Debt Band at the Cropped Out fest around that time and it was a total shambles if memory serves.
Remaining tix for LPR show were $35 + 2 drink minimum when i checked. Gave it a miss.

I was at that kitchen "performance". It was totally impenetrable. IIRC he asked if there were any questions and immediately got up and left.

This Corky's performance was great. His voice isn't what it once was but it was good enough and his physicality was entertaining. The band was aces. Don't know if he played the cropped out fest but guitar was handled by Tom Watson of Slovenly who's played with him/Red Krayola on and off since the Drag City days.

Yeah, I knew it was a gamble. At that price it was a stretch, so the uncertainty as to whether he would put a good band together to do it properly this time or wouldn't bother was decisive for me. Glad to hear he did it up. That's one of my favorite records.

The Corrected Slogans thing at REDCAT was such a pleasure... talk about albums I never dreamed I’d see performed live!

Just a reminder for you LA folks, this free concert is on Thursday: https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2020/mayo-thompson

I will be there (assuming there are still tickets left by the time I get to Westwood!). Anyone else here going?

I will be there of course (did I mention I work at the Hammer).

No, I didn't realize that! Save me a ticket if you can, ha ha...

There’s apparently a pretty long guest list, but I’m confident I’ll get a ticket!

That was amazing. I’m so happy. It was actually a pretty emotional thing, to be there and see Mayo perform those songs. The band was terrific, too.

Thank you, pgwp, for posting about it here.

https://i.imgur.com/ycp3ZOD_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

Yes, it was a great show! I think Mayo’s dogs sitting in the front row was the highlight. One seemed to know all the right times to bark.

FYI, he’s doing this again in Chicago, in March:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7ocEkRgkdw/?igshid=13vhma8ks4m7n

bought a ticket! thanks!

I should go to this

I am going to this

chicago show cancelled :(

That's too bad. I wonder if it's b/c Mayo's mobility is limited (he was using a cane at the L.A. show).

I am not going to this

I happened to visit the Drag City website, for the first time in ages; saw this featured, snapped it up - https://www.dragcity.com/products/keep-all-your-friends

I'm not the world's biggest Kangaroo? stan, but I found that 'zine entertaining and informative. A real labor of love.