Shows/1995-01-13

January 13, 1995
[[File:|center|frameless|]]
[[File:|center|frameless|]]
Lounge Ax
City	Chicago, IL
Tour
Event
Billing	The Red Krayola Scissor Girls

Press

Chicago Reader

January 12, 1995

Peter Margasak

After making the first Chicago appearance of their 27-year existence last fall, the Red Krayola are in town for a return engagement. Their September show was a spirited blend of oblique humor and lean guitar-drenched rock, informed by a keen sense of dramaturgy. Expect more of the same. Founder Mayo Thompson, the band’s only constant, will be joined by guitarists David Grubbs (of Gastre del Sol) and Tom Watson (of Slovenly and Overpass), both of whom performed at the Chicago debut, and drummer George Hurley, the tenacious timekeeper for Firehose and the legendary Minutemen.

Reviews

Chicago Reader

January 19, 1995

Bill Meyer

[...] At the Red Krayola’s recent Lounge Ax performance the guitars, played by Thompson, Grubbs, and Watson, were even more dominant. O’Rourke’s synthesizer was relegated to embellishing the guitar racket. Drummer George Hurley, filling the drum seat that McEntire vacated to tour Europe with his regular combos Tortoise and the Sea and Cake, was fully up to the task of driving the band with his splashy fills and all-over-the-kit attack. The group was astonishingly tight and controlled. But where a conventional rock band would show off its chops with a string of tedious instrumental solos, the Red Krayola’s players used their virtuosity to creatively build curveball dynamics into the songs, which sped up, slowed down, or went sideways. With the three guitarists playing big power chords in unison, “Dairy Maids” almost sounded like a punk rock classic, but unpredictable halts undercut its momentum.

Unwilling to merely rock out, Thompson and his band tested the boundaries of rock music. On “People Get Ready (The Train’s Not Coming)” Grubbs bashed out a mutated blues riff, insistently holding to it while the other players did their best to pull it apart. He repeated it endlessly, eschewing the key change that one could usually expect to resolve the music’s tension. Instead, Thompson intoned the song’s title over it, dryly mocking the creative stasis that created that expectation. Grubbs’s extroverted stage presence, however, was entirely unironic. He bopped to the music, ranging about the stage with a smile on his face, evidently happy to be there. Thompson’s sure grasp of dynamics kept his critical distance from being alienating; he followed a free improvisation with “Mistakes of Trotsky,” a stately, swinging, and very accessible song. Throughout the night the Red Krayola juggled subverted conventions and satisfying payoffs. After 28 years, with a boost from some young blood, Mayo Thompson’s still ahead of the crowd.

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