Red Crayola

It is not a coincidence that Thompson was rediscovered by the new wave ten years later: his Soldier Talk (1979) could have well been the album of the Pere Ubu (the band he eventually joined).
As of 1997, none of the major encyclopedias and histories of rock music published in Anglosaxon countries mentioned them.

Parable of Arable Land was recorded in 1967, but composed the previous year. The album is one of the milestones of rock music, a carousel of savage harmonic inventions/sabotages that makes it a timeless psychedelic masterpiece.

Far from being just a “brain-fried” hippie, Mayo Thompson was playing avant-garde music for rock bands. Noise is the undisputed protagonist (the original epigraph should have been “what is that tiny record drowned in all that noise?”), the open format of the tracks and their free-form structure can host a virtually innumerable variety of instruments within the songs, from electronics to chimes, hammers and motors included (during a concert they used some ice dripping on an aluminum plate) with the declared intention of exploiting all the instruments’ possibilities (even though harsh-sounding) up to the point that you would not be able to recognise some of the instruments themselves. They experimented on everything human ears can perceive. The conceptual and programmatic rigour of their musical research couples with an inappropriate taste for nonsense which is expressed through a manic preference for funny noises (such as raspberries and blunderbuss shots) and bold percussions.

The album shows how to play a perfect psichedelic suite: the creative chaos is reached at the end of the song, after a melodic introduction that usually features a certain degree of rowdiness, percussive frenzy and swarming electronic effects. The songs degenerate into psychedelic mini-symphonies for expansions and streams of consciousness, based on disjointed syntaxes and demolished by atonal vortices or harmonic hurricanes that can only be compared to the most radical free-jazz sessions, although unprecedented as for pollution and proliferation of basic sounds. The music of Red Crayola goes beyond a simple psychedelic trip: which heavy drug can cause similar sensory shambles and nervous breakdowns?

One after the other, these songs really tell the parable of a boundless and fertile land, still undiscovered: Hurricane Fighter Plane, the most melodic track, obscured by a dark incessant sound in the background, with a rhythm that rides at a gallop and a chaotic coda for harmonica and all sorts of percussions; the frenzy war dance of War Sucks, the most ferocious and infectious track, dictated by the most epileptic tribalism, where all instruments beat the dance’s time while Thompson rails against war; the filtered and distorted folk-rock of Transparent Radiation, for voice and harmonica, that after two strofes is overwhelmed by a general pandemonium; the subsonic and metallic vibrations, the knockers, the out-of-tune riffs with their deformed timbres, the pneumatic hammers, the blood-curdling screaming of Stainless Tail; and then Parable Of Arable Land, arguably the greatest harsh-sounding solo in the history of music, where clangors of cans and screeching saws play the overture to another bacchanalian of exhausting total-dance.

Roky Erickson plays keyboards in Hurricane and harmonica in Transparent Radiation.

Live 1967 (Drag City) collects long improvised jams recorded live in California (one of them even features John Fahey).

The second album, recorded in 1967 but rejected by the record label, would only be released in 1995 as Coconut Hotel (Drag City, 1995). It was even closer (in spirit if not in sound) to the likes of Edgar Varese and John Cage. The centerpiece is the anarchic dissonant concerto Boards, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the album swings between a trance-anemic form of free-jazz (Vocal), a dissonant piano sonata titled Piano, a solo guitar improvisation a` la Robbie Basho (Free Guitar), and a horribly disfigured form of world-music (Water Pour), with even 36 One-Second Pieces (36 compositions that last one second only).

In the meantime the band had changed its name to Red Krayola (with a "K", in order to avoid legal problems).

God Bless (International Artists, 1968), composed after a stay in New York and a collaboration with Joe Byrd of the United States Of America, contains twenty weird fragments of songs.

Thompson, accompanied by bassist Steve Cunningham and drummer Tommy Smith, is a much more subdued animal in these brief songs. The singing and the playing are all "wrong" but wrong according to a madness closer to David Peel than to Captain Beefheart. The bulk of the album are slightly demented folk songs such as Say Hello To Jamie Jones, Save The House and Coconut Hotel, which can derail into the Dadaistic cabaret of Big and Night Song. The rest, however, is widely distributed: Victory Garden is a more serious elegy, Music is a brief incursion in the world of barbershop vocal harmonies, Sheriff Jack is a boogie, Dairymaid's Lament is a bizarre garage rave-up, Sherlock Holmes is a sort of pop ballad, and The Jewels Of The Madonna predates noise-rock of the 1990s. Finally, at the abstract end of the spectrum, there is the musique concrete The Shirt , the free jazz of Free Piece and the incompetent sonata Piece For Piano And Electric Bass Guitar.

Their music was not exactly Sgt Pepper. Red Crayola disbanded among the general indifference. Thompson lived in a long and dark seclusion playing amateur music and releasing a faded record, Corky's Debt To His Father (Texas Revolution, 1970), a collage of pop songs, bluegrass rhythms and psychedelic effects.

In 1973 Thompson moves to England, where he set up a multimedia lab called "Art And Language", participating to some of the most prestigious international art exhibitions. Art & Language’s provocative approach to art also reflects upon Thompson’s musical activity. He now sympathizes with the new wave movement.
Corrected Slogans (Music Language, 1976), the lab’s musical manifesto, doesn’t resemble any style of music, rather it looks like a musical treatise: ideological summations at a hard pace, folk ballads, Renaissance songs, jams that srip the flesh off, soprano trills, café chantant and cabaret "verfremdung". Every fragment is orchestrated for voice and one instrument only, while the lyrics recite essays on Trotsky or advanced capitalism. Thompson has staged a circus of neurotic intellectuals occasionally posing as Fugs or bohemiens.

Thompson is rediscovered by the new wave movement and he takes this opportunity to come back on the music scene with a fluent band still called Red Krayola. Not only the album Soldier Talk (Radar, 1979) is as noble as the first one, but it is also formally the best of his career. It is eclectic to the point of lunacy, licentious to the limits of free-jazz, abstract as much as acid-rock can be, self-referential like postmodern art (Wonderland, the sickest and gloomiest Sixties revival). Thompson picks up the original project of harmony disintegration (just listen to the copybook guitar solo of X, psychedelic and completely out of tune) exactly where he had left it (the title-track’s sluggish/insane dance is the aphrodisiac apogee, a thorny mix of squabbling, clinkers, roars and bangs). He is helped by Lura Logic’s playful saxophone and by Pere Ubu (who can be considered his children, after all), the champions of the new wave movement that he joined permanently the following year.

The EP Microchips And Fish (1979) is the result of a collaboration with other British creative minds (among them Lora Logic) of the new wave movement. The title track is a concerto of atonal guitar stabs, even though it features a funky-disco rhythm and android vocals; the B-side, The Story So Far, begins with a pressing instrumental bacchanalian and finishes with an agonizing swollen blues.

The Eighties begin with the release of Kangaroo (Rough Trade, 1981), a more accessible report when compared with the sociomusicology of Art & Language. The album is another rosary of alienated slogans (on the history of Soviet communism!), still supported by Logic’s saxophone and by Ravenstine’s noises.

Black Snake (Rec Rec, 1983) shows that Thompson is getting closer and closer to Pere Ubu, on the point of becoming the Jack Kerouac of the Eighties (many songs are “recited” in the>

A few years later Mayo Thompson is talked about once again, thanks to a long series of recordings in the name of Red Krayola (singles, compilations, compositions for soundtracks), like the album Malefactor Ade (Glass, 1989), that is basically a collaboration with the German keyboardist Albert Van Oehlen, and Red Krayola (Drag City, 1994). The latter also features Jim O'Rourke, guru of Chicago’s post-rock. The album is sketchy and disorganized like no other, although it still features a few great psychedelic numbers (People Get Ready, I Knew It) and some self-indulgent dadaist show (Rapspierre, Suddenly, Art-Dog, Stand-Up).

The sound of the mini-album Amor And Language (Drag City, 1995), featuring Thompson among Chicago’s intelligentsia (Dave Grubbs, John McEntire), is less bizarre and more relaxed, almost like  a drawing-room soul-blues (relatively speaking) in tracks such as The Ballad Of Younis And Sofia, A-A-Allegories, Hard On Through The Summer, T, The Wind.

The singles 14 (Drag City, 1994) and Chemistry (Drag City, 1996) are auteur's divertissments.

Thompson veniva dal free-jazz, aveva militato in un gruppo di folk satirico, ed era vissuto fra i folk-singer del luogo, prima di formare nel 1966 i Red Crayola. Thompson, imbevuto di uno spirito freak affine a Frank Zappa, si attornio` dell'equivalente texano delle Mother's Auxiliary di Zappa, denominate "Familiar Ugly", e abbraccio` la sfrenata creativita` del maestro di Cucamonga. Al suo fianco assunse Frederick Barthelme, altro visionario sperimentatore (fratello del piu` celebre Donald e presto avviato anche lui alla narrativa), e il chitarrista Steve Cunningham.

Parable Of Arable Land (IA, 1967), registrato nel marzo 1967 ma in gran parte composto l'anno prima, e` uno dei capolavori assoluti della psichedelia mondiale e uno degli album di musica rock piu` importanti di tutti i tempi.
Thompson, lungi dall'essere semplicemente un hippie "scoppiato", aveva in mente una musica d'avanguardia per complesso rock. Il rumore e` protagonista incontrastato (l'epigrafe originale sarebbe dovuta essere: "che cos'e` quel piccolo disco in tutto quel rumore ?"), la struttura dei brani e` libera e aperta, in grado di accogliere una strumentazione pressoche' infinita, dall'elettronica ai campanelli, compresi motorette e martelli (durante un concerto usarono del ghiaccio che sciogliendosi gocciolava su una lastra di alluminio), e con lo scopo dichiarato di sfruttare tutte le possibilita' (anche cacofoniche) di ogni strumento (fino a renderne irriconoscibili alcuni). La loro ricerca si sviluppo' in direzione di tutto cio` che puo` essere percepito dall'orecchio umano. A tanto rigore programmatico e concettuale fa riscontro un gusto improprio per il nonsense che si esprime in una maniacale predilezione per i rumori buffi (pernacchiette, trombonate) e per le percussioni baldanzose.
Il procedimento illustrato dal disco e` il modello per eccellenza della suite psichedelica: il caos creativo viene raggiunto al termine di una fase melodica introduttiva, piu` o meno scalmanata, sottolineata da frenesia percussiva e da un pullulare di effetti elettronici. Le canzoni degenerano in mini- sinfonie psichedeliche per flussi ed espansioni di coscienza, rette da sintassi disarticolate e sventrate da centrifughe atonali, uragani armonici apparentabili soltanto alle piu` radicali session del Free-jazz, ma in ogni caso senza precedenti per polluzione e proliferazione dei suoni base. La "musica" dei Red Crayola riproduce uno "sballo" piu` che allucinogeno: quali droghe pesanti possono provocare simili sconquassi sensoriali e collassi nervosi ?
Una dopo l'altra Hurricane Fighter Plane, la canzone piu` melodica, ottenebrata da un suono cupo e continuo di sottofondo, a ritmo di galoppo, con una coda di caos per armonica e ogni sorta di percussioni; la sfrenata danza di guerra di War Sucks, all'insegna del tribalismo piu` epilettico, il brano piu` cattivo e trascinante, dove tutti gli strumenti battono il tempo della danza mentre Thompson inveisce contro la guerra; il folk-rock per voce e armonica filtrato e distorto di Transparent Radiation, che nel breve volgere di due strofe viene sommerso da un pandemonio generale; le vibrazioni metalliche e subsoniche, i batacchi, i riff stonati, deformati nel timbro, i martelli pneumatici, le urla agghiaccianti di Pink Stainless Tail; e Parable Of Arable Land, forse il massimo assolo rumoristico della storia della musica, in cui clangori di latte e stridori di seghe fungono da ouverture per un altro baccanale di sfinente danza totale, raccontano davvero la parabola di una landa fertile e sconfinata, ma tuttora inesplorata.

Roky Erickson plays keyboards in Hurricane and harmonica in Transparent Radiation.

Live 1967 (Drag City) contiene lunghe jam improvvisate dal vivo in California (una persino con John Fahey).

Il secondo album, registrato nel 1967 ma rifiutato dalla casa discografica, verra` pubblicato soltanto nel 1995 come Coconut Hotel (Drag City, 1995), e conferma, seppur orrendamente trasfigurata, la propensione per i modi dell'avanguardia americana colta (da Varese a Cage).

The centerpiece is the anarchic dissonant concerto Boards, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the album swings between a trance-anemic form of free-jazz (Vocal), a dissonant piano sonata titled Piano, a solo guitar improvisation a` la Robbie Basho (Free Guitar), and a horribly disfigured form of world-music (Water Pour), with even 36 One-Second Pieces (36 compositions that last one second only).

Nel frattempo il complesso aveva cambiato nome in Red Krayola (con la "K" per evitare problemi legali).

God Bless (International Artists, 1968), composto dopo una permanenza a New York e una collaborazione con Joe Byrd degli United States Of America, contiene venti strani frammenti di canzoni.

Thompson, accompanied by bassist Steve Cunningham and drummer Tommy Smith, is a much more subdued animal in these brief songs. The singing and the playing are all "wrong" but wrong according to a madness closer to David Peel than to Captain Beefheart. The bulk of the album are slightly demented folk songs such as Say Hello To Jamie Jones, Save The House and Coconut Hotel, which can derail into the Dadaistic cabaret of Big and Night Song. The rest, however, is widely distributed: Victory Garden is a more serious elegy, Music is a brief incursion in the world of barbershop vocal harmonies, Sheriff Jack is a boogie, Dairymaid's Lament is a bizarre garage rave-up, Sherlock Holmes is a sort of pop ballad, and The Jewels Of The Madonna predates noise-rock of the 1990s. Finally, at the abstract end of the spectrum, there is the musique concrete The Shirt , the free jazz of Free Piece and the incompetent sonata Piece For Piano And Electric Bass Guitar.

La loro musica non era esattamente Sgt Pepper. I Red Crayola si sciolsero nell'indifferenza generale. Thompson inizio` un oscuro e lungo ritiro nella musica amatoriale, da cui scaturi` un disco svanito come Corky's Debt To His Father (Texas Revolution, 1970), collage di canzoni pop, ritmi bluegrass ed effetti psichedelici.

Nel 1973 Thompson si trasferi` in Inghilterra, dove allesti` un laboratorio multi-media denominato "Art And Language", presente ad alcune delle piu` prestigiose mostre internazionali. L'approccio polemico all'arte di Art & Language impronta anche l'attivita` mudicale di Thompson, che solidarizza con la new wave.
Corrected Slogans (Music Language, 1976), il loro manifesto musicale, assomiglia a un trattato sulla musica piu` che a una qualsiasi musica: arringhe ideologiche a cadenza hard, ballate folk, song rinascimentali, jam scarnificate, gorgheggi di soprano, chanson da caffe` concerto e "verfremdung" da cabaret. E ogni frammento e` orchestrato per sola voce e uno strumento, e i testi declamano saggi su Trotsky o sul capitalismo avanzato. Thompson ha allestito un circo di intellettuali nevrotici qualche volta Fugs qualche volta bohemien.

Thompson viene riscoperto dalla new-wave e approfitta delle circostanze per tornare sulle scene, con un complesso fluido battezzato ancora Red Krayola. L'album Soldier Talk (Radar, 1979) non solo e` tanto nobile quanto il primo, ma e` anche formalmente il migliore della sua carriera. E` eclettico fino alla follia, dissoluto al limite del free-jazz, astratto al limite dell'acid-rock, autoreferenziale al limite dell'arte postmodernista (Wonderland, il Sixties revival piu` tetro e malaticcio), che riprende il progetto di disintegrazione dell'armonia (da manuale, psichedelico, lo scordatissimo assolo chitarristico di X) la` dove era stata interrotto (apogeo afrodisiaco la danza demente/indolente della piece omonima, un coacervo spinoso di bisticci, stecche, barriti e colpi), spalleggiato nell'impresa dal sassofono ludico di Lora Logic e dai campioni della new-wave, i Pere Ubu, che in fondo sono figli suoi, ai quali si unisce in pianta stabile dall'anno dopo.

Frutto della collaborazione con altre menti della new-wave inglese (fra cui la sassofonista Lora Logic) e` l'EP Microchips And Fish (1979), il cui brano omonimo e` un concerto di stilettate afone della sua chitarra, sia pur su un ritmo funky da discoteca e con vocals androidi; e il cui retro The Story So Far inizia con un baccanale strumentale incalzante e finisce in un angosciante blues dilatato.

Gli anni '80 si aprono con Kangaroo (Rough Trade, 1981), report piu` accessibile della socio-musicologia di Art & Language, un altro rosario di slogan straniati (sulla storia del comunismo sovietico!), ancora sorretto pero` dal sax della Logic e dai rumori di Ravenstine.

Black Snake (Rec Rec, 1983) mostra un Thompson sempre piu` imparentato con i Pere Ubu e prossimo a diventare il Jack Kerouac degli '80 (molti brani sono "recitati" alla maniera dei poeti beat).

Qualche anno dopo Mayo Thompson torna a far parlare di se' con una fitta serie di registrazioni (singoli, compilation, brani per colonne sonore), a nome Red Krayola, fra cui gli album Malefactor Ade (Glass, 1989), che e` praticamente una collaborazione con il tastierista tedesco Albert Van Oehlen, e Red Krayola (Drag City, 1994). Sul secondo figura anche Jim O'Rourke, guru del post-rock di Chicago. L'album e` frammentario e dispersivo come pochi, con qualche numero d'alta psichedelia (People Get Ready, I Knew It) e qualche autoindulgente show dadaista (Rapspierre, Suddenly, Art-Dog, Stand-Up).

Il sound del mini-album Amor And Language (Drag City, 1995), con Thompson sempre contornato dall'intelligentsia di Chicago (Dave Grubbs, John McEntire), e` meno bizzarro e piu` rilassato, quasi soul-blues da salotto (relativamente parlando) in The Ballad Of Younis And Sofia, A-A-Allegories, Hard On Through The Summer, T, The Wind.

I singoli 14 (Drag City, 1994) e Chemistry (Drag City, 1996) sono divertissments d'autore.

Fingerpainting (Drag City, 1999) restores some old material and mixes it with new material. The result is entertaining but not particularly significant. This album is like a tribute to the old Red Crayola paid by the new Red Krayola.

The mini-album Blues Hollers And Hellos (Drag City, 2001) resorts to a more contemplative and mellow accompaniment for Thompson's proto-Beat poetry.

The Red Crayola singles were collected on Singles (Drag City, 2004).

Hazel (1996) è il miglior album dei Red Krayola dai tempi di Soldier Talk. Thompson consegna la sua solita dose di sketches dadaistici, e almeno I'm So Blase`, Duke Of Newcastle, GAO sono da annoverarsi tra i suoi lavori migliori. Ma il miglior elemento dell’album è un ritrovato talento nel comporre canzoni la cui struttura "stonata", in qualche modo anarchica, che lascia fluttuare allo stesso tempo la melodia e il ritmo, sia al contempo un esercizio avanguardistico e un mero intrattenimento a mezzo di semplici canzoni come Father Abraham, Another Song Another Satan, We Feel Fine, Serenade.

Fingerpainting (1999) ripropone un po’ di vecchio materiale, unito a qualche novità. Il risultato è piacevole ma non particolarmente significativo. E’ una sorta di tributo dei Red Krayola ai vecchi Red Crayola.

Il mini-album Blues Hollers And Hellos (2001) ricorre a un accompagnamento più maturo e contemplativo per la poesia proto-beat di Thompson.

I singoli dei Red Crayola sono stati raccolti in Singles (2004).

After a long hiatus, Mayo Thompson recruited a new crew to record a Red Krayola album, Introduction (Drag City, 2006): guitarist and vocalist Stephen Prina, Tom Watson (of Slovenly), drummer John McEntire (of Tortoise), accordionist Charlie Abel, bassist Noel Kupersmith. The album is another highlight of Thompson's uncompromising career, although his capricious genius seems to have mellowed quite a bit. Most of the songs follow the lead of Breakout (a liberal revisitation of the country anthem Will the Circle Be Unbroken), that straddles the line between sanity and madness without falling into either camp. Thompson's delicate phrasing and a rollicking boogie punctuated with shy accordion evoke the spectre of Bob Dylan on a rainy day. Most songs are even less lively, bordering on whispers in the night, and even shorter, bordering on mere shadows. Greasy Street even dispenses with trying to "sing": it's just plain talking amid sparse instrumental sounds. The soaring It Will Be is doo-wop for mentally impaired children. The instrumental L.G.F. is much closer to new-age music and plain muzak than to vintage psychedelic freak-outs. The dejected instrumental Elegy is a folk dance for Parkinson's patients. By those standards, the catchy and well-arranged Vexations is a shameless pop tune.

The EP Red Gold (2006) sounded like left-overs from the same sessions, but they were often worthy of the album's material (Bong Bong, Easy Street, Oh I Was Bad).

Thompson completed the transition to old-fashioned singer-songwriter on Sighs Trapped By Liars (2007), credited to the Red Krayola With Art & Language, a collection of 13 regular-length songs, by far the least interesting album of his career.

Il mini-album strumentale Japan in Paris in L.A. (2004) contiene la colonna sonora di un cortometraggio. name=int>

Dopo un lungo silenzio, Mayo Thompson ha reclutato un nuovo gruppo per registrare Introduction (Drag City, 2006), un album dei Red Krayola: il chitarrista e cantante Stephen Prina, Tom Watson (degli Slovenly), il batterista John McEntire (dei Tortoise), il fisarmonicista Charlie Abel, il bassista Noel Kupersmith. L’album rappresenta un altro momento saliente dell’irriducibile carriera di Thompson, anche se il suo genio capriccioso sembra essersi tranquillizzato/mitigato non poco. La maggiorparte delle canzoni segue l’esempio di Breakout (una rivisitazione liberale dell’inno country Will the Circle Be Unbroken), che cavalca il confine tra sanità mentale e pazzia senza mai cadere in nessuna delle due. Il delicato fraseggio di Thompson e un brioso boogie con interventi di timida fisarmonica evocano lo spettro di Bob Dylan in un giorno di pioggia. La maggior parte delle canzoni sono anche meno vivaci, tanto da sembrare sussurri nella notte e, quelle ancor più corte, addirittura ombre pure e semplici. Greasy Street fa anche a meno del "cantato": è solo un discorso fra radi suoni strumentali. La sublime It Will Be è doo-wop per bambini con handicap mentali. La strumentale L.G.F. è più vicina alla musica new-age e ad insignificante muzak, piuttosto che a un memorabile viaggio psichedelico. L’avvilito strumentale Elegy è una danza folk per pazienti Parkinsoniani. Con questi metri di giudizio, l’orecchiabile e ben arrangiata Vexations è una spudorata canzone pop.

L’EP Red Gold (2006) suona come se contenesse scarti di quelle stesse sessions, spesso all’altezza del materiale originale dell’album (Bong Bong, Easy Street, Oh I Was Bad).

Con Sighs Trapped By Liars (2007) Thompson completa la sua trasformazione in cantante-cantautore all’antica, pubblicando l’album meno interessante della sua carriera.

Five American Portraits (Drag City, 2010) presents again a mostly sober Thompson trying to sound melodic in Wile E Coyote. However, the rest is wildly different, ranging from the smoky blues with chaotic horn fanfares of Jimmy Carter to the Mozart-ian piano sonata and Bach-ian grand fugue Ad Reinhardt that ends the album on a hilarious note. Unfortunately the satire of George W Bush is stale and overlong. The 15-minute John Wayne is much more intriguing, especially the surreal instrumental overture (a cowboy rhythm that duets with a tentative piano improvisation) if not the drunk country song itself (a` la Holy Modal Rounders) that includes a spastic instrumental intermezzo.

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