Shows/1995-01-04

January 4, 1995
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Middle East
City	Cambridge, MA
Tour
Event
Billing	The Red Krayola Magic Hour Mile Wide

Photo

Photo by Eric Antonioli

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Announcement

Boston Phoenix

December 12, 1994

[...] And get this: Red Krayola, originally the very weirdest of the West psychedelic bands and still in an on/off existence after 27 years, hit the Middle East on their first US tour on Wednesday. Leader Mayo Thompson also played in Pere Ubu circa 1980; ex-fIREHOSEr George Hurley’s in on drums.

Listings

Boston Phoenix

• 
  Dec 12, 1994
• 
  Dec 30, 1994

Reviews

Boston Phoenix

January 13, 1995

Matt Ashare

Red Krayola: Still on the Fringe

It's taken Mayo Thompson, the mercurial leader and only steady member of the Red Krayola, almost three decades to mount a full-fledged US tour for his band, a tour that made its first stop at the Middle East on January 4. Backed by burly George Hurley, the dextrous drummer of Minutemen/fIREHOSE fame, and flanked by two other able guitarists — Gastr del Sol's David Grubbs and Slovenly's Tom Watson — Thompson steered a haphazard course through a dozen and a half twisted tunes that probably only a dozen and a half rock archivists in the world own on vinyl — songs as sketchy and convoluted as the Red Krayola's history.

What? You've never heard of the Red Krayola? Well, nobody's going to downgrade your hip-music credentials for that particular transgression. When it comes to obscurity, Thompson's truly in a league of his own. Until very recently the Red Krayola were nothing more than footnote to a footnote in the book of rock history.

Thompson founded the band in Houston in 1966 with Frederick Barthelme, who went on to become better known as a novelist. The early Red Crayola — then spelled with a copyright-infringing "C" — explored the outer fringes of whacked-out psychedelia and free-form noise on 1967's Parable of Arable Land and 1968's God Bless the Red Crayola (both on International Artists). Then Thompson went on his first hiatus, only to resurface on the fringes in the late '70s, where he played with and eventually joined the pioneering art-punk band Pere Ubu. He also struck up a long-lasting relationship with Rough Trade, the British label he worked for throughout the '80s as an A&R scout. He continued to make his own albums, but most of them were available only as poorly distributed imports in the US. He was better known for producing seminal punk and postpunk bands like Stiff Little Fingers, the Raincoats, the Fall, and Cabaret Voltaire.

Thompson and the Red Krayola were ahead of their time. The clamorous, disjointed improvisations that punctuate the Red Krayola's 1966 debut — they're listed on the album as "Free Form Freakouts" — presaged the evolution of Sonic Youth and their noise-mongering kind. And the challenging combination of low-fidelity production and abstract lyrics that dominated God Bless the Red Crayola could be seen as a direct link to contemporary indie bands like Pavement.

The times may at last have caught up with Thompson, who still expanding on his own peculiar brand of avant-pop. These days alternative rock is such a big commercial business that the underground is constantly scurrying for the cover of music that's more and more obscure. Drag City, the Chicago indie that gave Pavement their start, picked up Thompson a year ago, reissuing his out-of-print 1970 solo album Corky's Debt to His Father. Thompson then hooked up with members of another Drag City band, the quirky, experimental Gastr del Sol, and recorded 17 new tunes for The Red Krayola, which came out a few months ago. The new Red Krayola are a lot like the old one — maddeningly convoluted and thoroughly intriguing. The first song on the new disc is a countrified number laced with offputting embellishments: a strange synth-squawk here, a stray, out-of-tune guitar note there, and nary a hook in sight. Frenetic pop deconstructions, a grating socialist rap, and other minimalist oddities flesh out a skewed vision that doesn't gain much focus in a live setting. When the Middle East show ended, one diehard fan remarked, without a trace of irony, that "he played all the hits." Thompson has yet to have anything even remotely resembling a hit, but with Drag City gearing up to re-release most of the Red Krayola's back catalogue over the course of the next year, he'll finally have a shot at it.

Interview

Warped Reality

Interview from this show

References

The Red Krayola Shows
1966, 1967, 1968			1969	1970	1971	1972	1973	1974	1975
1976	1977	1978	1979	1980	1981	1982	1983	1984	1985
1986	1987	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995
1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024
Live recordings