Coconut Hotel

Coconut Hotel
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Studio album by The Red Crayola
Released	1995
Recorded	1967
Studio	Walt Andrus Studio Houston, Texas
Label	Drag City
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Track listing

Side A

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Boards"	6:28
2.	"Water Pour"	4:39
3.	"One-Second Pieces" (36)	3:24

Side B

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Organ Buildup"	1:05
2.	"Vocal"	6:28
3.	"Free Guitar"	6:27
4.	"One-Minute Imposition"	1:08
5.	"Piano"	2:10
6.	"Guitar"	1:28
Total length:		33:21

Background

Valle Aridane Hotel, 2021

Recorded 1967

Released 1995

Personnel

The Red Crayola

• Frederick Barthelme
• Steve Cunningham
• Mayo Thompson

Technical

• The Red Crayola - producer

• Walt Andrus - engineer

Cover art

The cover photo was taken by Mayo Thompson, likely in 1966, and shows the Coconut Hotel in the Canary Islands. The building is now the Valle Aridane Hotel.

The band photo on the back cover is by Les Blank.

Issues

	Release	Format	Label	Cat. No.	Notes
	1995	LP	Drag City	DC62
	1995	CD	Drag City	DC62CD
	2014	LP	Drag City	DC62

Reviews

CMJ New Music Report

July 3, 1995

We casually dismissed initial pre-release announcements of Coconut Hotel, the great "lost" Red Krayola album from 1967, thinking it was merely a joke from those nutty pranksters at Drag City, but lo and behold, here is an unheard curio from the Mayo Thompson archives. Bearing little relation to either the freak-out psychedelia of Parable of Arable Land (1967) or the wonderfully oddball songs of God Bless The Red Crayola And All Who Sail With Her (1968), Coconut Hotel is not a great revelation but a rather interesting oddity: Thompson and Krayola kohorts Rick Barthelme and Steve Cunningham play spare improvisations with a pile of different instruments — occasional plucks, miscellaneous horn bleats, piano tinkling, wandering drones, the sound of pouring water, etc. The highlight is several dozen "One Second Pieces" for trumpet/piano/percussion.

Testcard #1

September 1995

The Trouser Press guide to '90s rock

1997

Coconut Hotel, however, is pushing it. The all-improvised doodles on various real (guitar, horns, bass, piano, organ) and found instruments (mainly splashing water, handy clangables, shakeables and chalkboard-pleasant scrapeables) was recorded in 1967 by the original Red Crayola (Thompson, Steve Cunningham and Frederick Barthelme) and understandably rejected by International Artists as the followup to The Parable of Arable Land. The trio's photo on the back cover is no less unnerving or off-putting than the random contents, which could only serve as a fatal test for hypertension or the soundtrack to something far more squirm-inducing than Eraserhead.