The Red Crayola/The Red Krayola: An Approachable Subject

Author(s): Dustin Ericksen

Source: Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context, and Enquiry, Issue 19 (Autumn/Winter 2008),
pp. 80-88
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Central Saint Martins College of Art and
Design, University of the Arts London
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The Red Krayola and The Red Crayola/The Red Krayola:
Scritti Politti at An Approachable Subject
?
Checkpoint Charlie, Dustin Ericksen
West Berlin, during
the Soldier-Talk tour in

1979. Above, Mayo

Thompson leaving the

platform for viewing

the 'no-man's land'

and the eastern sector.

Below, from left to

right, Mayo Thompson,

Lora Logic, Jesse

Chamberlain, Nial

Jinks, Tom Morley,

Glenn Churchman (tour 'Listen toThis' is the titleof a very short song. In itone voice (unaccompanied) says listen
sound), Green Gartside to this', then there is a single strike of a note or two on thepiano perhaps, simultaneously
-
and Matthew Keys accompanied by a shot on a tightsnare, and maybe a ride cymbal itall lasts about eight
seconds, including a little silence on either end. It really is like:

Listen to this... blampf!

where the 'blampf is that strange trio,or something, of instruments being struck at
the same time. This is a song/piece by The Red Krayola on the album God Bless The Red
Krayola and All Who Sail with It (1968). The terms 'song' and 'piece' are used together
because the creation lands somewhere between art and music: it shows
popular
influences from JohnCage and process art, but also frommusicians such as Albert
and compresses familiar sounds into a small chunk of
Ayler, pop-instrumental
recorded music.

The Red Krayola made a number of other extremely short songs called 'One-Second
Pieces' in an earlier recording session for the album Coconut Hotel in 1967. These are
a bit like 'Listen toThis' butwithout thevocals - theyeach consist of a single strike,
sometimes of one instrument, sometimes of two or three (drums, piano and horns).

The descriptive title is not quite accurate, as the songs, even are short,
though they
last slightly longer than one second (three,perhaps four). The album features 45
of these, along with longer pieces titled 'Organ Buildup', 'FreeGuitar', 'Piano' and
'Water Pour'. The titles again set up a pattern of deception: while
seemingly descriptive
some of them aremore or lesswhat they say theyare ? 'Organ Buildup' consists of
single chord on an organ slowly getting louder over the course of a fewminutes, and
-
'Free Guitar' features three strumming and jangling guitars others absolutely don't.

'Water Pour', for example, is another piece of guitar improvisation, although something
like a water sound can be heard for a few seconds in themiddle of the four-and-a-half
or the name-game
minute song. Coconut Hotel's songs were too
pared down, they

played was too confusing for International Artists (theband's record label at the time),
which decided not to release the album. Itwasn't made available until Drag City,
The Red Krayola's current label, released it in 1995. According to original member
Frederick Barthelme:

The second LP by theoriginal group, which was released about thirtyyears later
as Coconut Hotel, was a refinement ofwhat we were intrigued by? noise, cutup
into hat-size sections. where we each played
The 'One-Second Pieces', single sounds
at but orchestrated-by-watching-each-other intervals, were a
unplanned high
as were various other concept pieces (three minutes
point, of organ, for example,
six hands on a piano, pieces for various prepared instruments). This iswhat The
was about in '67.1
Crayola

1 Frederick Barthelme, 'The Red Crayola. All we wanted to play was the crack-ball stuff, Oxford
American, n.d., available at http://www.oxfordamericanmag.com/content.cfm?ArticleID=287
(last accessed on 15 July 2008).

The Red Krayola |81

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So the 1968 album satisfied something the 1967 album didn't for International Artists, The Red Krayola at

and perhaps vice versa for themembers of The Red Krayola. the Englischer Garten,

Munich, 1983-84,

during the Black Snakes

tour. Chris White

Thefree man tries to enrich himselfwith everything and to let the life in every at thewheel, Allen
? even it is
being affecthim if only a burntmatch. Ravenstine on the front,
- The Blaue 2
Wassily Kandinsky, Reiter Almanac Ben Annesley in the

back seat and Mayo

The Red Crayola was formed in 1966. Themusic, with some skips and drifts and gaps Thompson behind.
in production, has since been stylisticallypolymorphous, mirroring theband's ever Photograph: Carmen

revolvingmembership. Early on, theyhad a hippie and art-music fan base and nowadays Knoebel (maybe?)
a larger part of their audience consists of indie-rock fanswith an art crossover. These
audience inflections have happened inparallel and are perhaps partly due to the shifts
inmake-up of theband. Itsmembers, most of them temporary, are eitherwell-known
musicians - such as TomWatson, Steve Cunningham, Mayo Thompson, Lora Logic,
Gina Birch, David Grubbs or JimO'Rourke - or, like Stephen Prina, Albert Oehlen
or Christopher Williams, known more as visual artists. Frederick Barthelme, amember
of the original formation, is now a writer. Any description of theband's changes is
also partly a cartographic exercise: Texas, New York,London, Cologne, Los Angeles,
Edinburgh and Japanhave been networked into temporary nodal production sites.

Consistently anti-programmatic and with an extreme rate and quality of change,

The Red Krayola's collective intelligence offers specificityrather than a 'type' ofmorpho
logy.Their discontinuous years of creative activitydiscourage thematic categorisation
at everypoint, and the structure of theband dissipates into larger communities involved
in differentgenres (experimental, indie, pop, punk). The collaborative nature of the
project ismanifested in all aspects, and even theband's mode of self-representationwas
-
open to change in 1968 the 'C changed to 'K* in thename 'Crayola' (a decision partly
taken in response to legal concerns from International Artists about copyright issues).
More significant are the instrumental shiftswhich reflect the internal logic of theband's
organisation: theband's musical breadth encompasses singer Gina Birch's proud,
confident tone in songs such as 'AnOld Man's Dream' or 'Born in Flames' (both from

2 Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc (eds.), The Blaue Reiter Almanac, Boston: MFA Publications, 2005.

82 Afterall
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The Red Krayola,

Coconut Hotel, Drag City,

1995

The Red Crayola,

Live 1967, Drag City,

1998

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 THE RED CRAYOLA
WITH ART &
LANGUAGE

AN OLD MAN'S DREAM

THE MILKMAID
Produced by Adam Kidron and The Red Crayola

RT 073; 'An Old Man's Dream' b/w 'The Milkmaid' from the LP
Kangaroo?
(Rough 19) by The Red Crayola with Art & language.

Musicians: Epic Soundtracks, Lora Logic, Gina Birch, Ben Annesley,

Allen Ravenstinc, Mayo Thompson

Rough Trade Records 137 Blenheim Crescent, London, W.U.

(01)221-1100

84 IAfterall

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 Jesse Chamberlain's drum tracks on the release Soldier
1981); loosened-up post-punk
Talk (1979); the staggered squeals ofTomWatson's guitar on themid-1990s and early
2000s productions; the explicit lyrical shiftofArt & Language's contributions; and
finally the 'guy' (an unnamed character in The Familiar Ugly, which was thename given
to the large group of friends, acquaintances and otherswho accompanied the original
band in performances and recordings) who litmatches by themicrophone during
live performances and sessions in 1968.3 contribution is
recording Mayo Thompson's

particularly significant,but itdoes not anchor thepermutations of theband. It is rather

an occasional burst ofwind, offeringmellow meanderings of vocalinstability, interrup
tedby splenetic paroxysms delivered with crystalline production and pronounced with
a of elocution. The conventional on contributions to
clarity emphasis specific personal
the corpus is all but eliminated. (An email from one of themembers ofThe Red Krayola
reminds the editors ofAfterallthat theband discourages hierarchical references to its
membership.4 No doubt there is an ideological streak as well.) Themix of influences
that inform The Red Krayola's unfixed roster is subtlybalanced, but thevariety of sounds
it creates bears witness to an and deliberate intention of a-typification.
underlying

Themain idea of thenovel [The Idiot] is todepict thepositively good man.

There isnothing more difficult than this in theworld.
?
Fyodor Dostoevsky5

The moment of a band's formation, for most bands, a

crystallises Zeitgeist. And,
from that starting point, the conventional metrics of success success and its
(industry
?
constituent parts favourable critical reception, commercial stardom,
viability, celebrity
and eventual nostalgia) turns discographies intomausoleums inwhich theband's spirit
is enshrined. Under these criteria, a successful band needs to change as littleas possible,
and thediscography must represent amild progression at themost, a reflection of the
effectof the changing times on themusic rather than the otherway around. Like some
happily deceased spectre, the samemusic can haunt a house likeMuzak can haunt a
shopping centre. The Red Krayola has done the exact opposite. Throughout fortyyears
and nineteen albums (not including EPs or compilations), themultiple line-up changes
have been accompanied by almost ludicrous stylistic shifts.The lack of a 'coherent'
history becomes straightforward disrespect towards its idea when a collection ofnew
songs is titledwith theband's name after two-and-a-half decades of activity (The Red
Krayola, 1994) or another is called Introduction (2006) after four.Nevertheless, an idea
ofhistory is expressed ? not just in thepoliticised lyrics of the albums and singles that
The Red Krayola released collaboratively with Art 8cLanguage, but also irreverently
through two albums with a very similar title (Fingerpainting [1999] and Fingerpointing
[2008]) that originated from the same recording session, forwhich the foundingmem
bers of theband reunited, joined by a cast of The Red Krayola 'irregulars'. Fingerpaint
ing's titlerefers toyouthful creativity,and themusic bears marks of thepsychedelic rock,
folk and experimentalism of theband's early releases, combined with electronic pop,
fragmentary edits and noise collages (perhaps, but it is hard to say, including samples
of some of their early compositions). Song titles such as Hybrid Creature ofGreed,
Ignorance and Powers ofComprehension Plays a Vaulted Drum Kit' or 'Out of a
Trombone That IsDivided Lengthways by a Partition ofGold Sound Seven Violins of
Dynamite' are, like those from Coconut Hotel, accurately and deceptively descriptive
at the same time, and name which seem to include drum kits, trombones
compositions
?
and many, in a chaotic manner;
many other things mixed up cacophonie, others such
as 'BadMedicine' or 'There There BettyBetty' - titlemore orthodox compositions with
a folk-ish feeling thatrecalls some of theband's earlyworks. However, even though the
album's structure reworks that of theband's first album, The Parable ofArable Land

3 The Red Crayola and Art & Language have released a number of singles and albums together since 1976.
The albums are Corrected Slogans (1976), Kangaroo? (?981), Black Snakes (1983) and Sighs Trapped by
Liars (2007). For the first three albums the name of the band was spelt with a 'c\
4 Email to the editors, 16 June 2008.
5 1868 letter from Fyodor Dostoevsky to his niece, in Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (trans. Alan Myers),
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p.xv.

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 ? ?
(1967), there is no here nor any reconstruction an escape forward. Covers of
nostalgia just
The release ofFingerpointing? a version re-mastered by JimO'Rourke in 1999 that The Red Krayola,

theband decided not to release at the time? re-problematises Fingerpainting's escape Soldier-Talk, Radar, 1977
forward by offeringa new stylistic shiftwith some of the songs re-titled,and all of them (re-released by Drag City,

integrated in amore cohesive soundscape thatforegrounds thedigital sounds, mixing 2007)

and in a 35-minute mixdown, while at the same time questioning the
post-production

validity of strategicdecisions taken by Ihe Red Krayola themselves in thepast. The Red Krayola, Drag

City, 1994

Hazel, Drag City, 1996

There are limits to there are no 'substantial' ones.
formal myth;
-
RolandBarthes, Mythologies6 Amor and Language,

Drag City, 1995

'Listen to This' and the 'One-Second Pieces' were recorded months but released
apart
about The decision not to release 'One-Second Pieces' reflects a basic Fingerpainting,
thirty years apart.
economic concern of themusic industry:will this cultural product contribute toprofits? Drag City, 1999
Not in 1967. In the late 1970s and early 80s thepunk 'anyone can do it' ethos introduced
an expanded field of production, and some releases by Ihe Red Krayola figured promi Introduction, Drag City,

nently in this context, such as Kangaroo? and a series of singles released with Rough 2006

Trade, one of thekey post-punk labels. Later, in the late 1980s and early 90s, the advent
ofUS-based labels such as Rhino (specialising in re-releases of out-of-printrecordings)
and Drag City became part of thenecessary conditions for a wider reception of
The Red mid- to late-1990s releases, as well as a back of more obscure
Krayola's catalogue

recordings. The expansion (and subsequent conglomeration) of the independent record

labels (thenear-forgotten source of thepop-music category 'indie') provided a scale
and diversity inmusic publishing of an unprecedented level, partly because of the
more available means to distribute and music
widely technological produce, promote
outside of themainstream. Today, themusic industryprops up the categoryby pickling
itwith the cult of stardom, fattening themarketing with mythical romanticism and
glossing itup with individualist slogans.Working with music labels does not, however,
fullydetermine themusic produced within that system. The flirtation by The Red Krayola
with pop music styles since themid-1990s inworks such as TheRed Krayola, Amor
and Language (1995),Hazel (1996) and Introduction evinces an awareness of the free
floating detachment ofmusical quality from itsmeans of production, and acknowledges
the ever-presence of the business and entertainment end ofmusic
looming production.
The re-emergence ofThe Red Krayola also reflects other sub-cultural shifts.Since
the 1980s there has been a renewed art and cultural interest in collaborative production,
as illustrated by thisyear'sWhitney Biennial. It is partly an outgrowth of career-curator
culture,but is also nurtured by an academic interest in thepossibility of agency and
effectivepolitical means. Internal qualities of The Red Krayola, the aforementioned
formation residue and the presence of parallel as musicians
non-programmatic practices
and extended arts practitioners (thefoundingmembers of theband were aware
of contemporary art and culture),7 feeds and re-informs the band's
European reception
as a part of the art of their times. The connection to visual artists began in Houston,

and has never abated.

The Red now are referred to as 'avant-rock' (also, art rock or

Krayola occasionally
experimental rock). The term itself is confusing,with a dual correlation to a fetishised
mythology of the avant-garde. First, it links thevectors of rockmusic to the linearity
of art history's modernist strains, and it implies a intended towards
secondly project
re-emergence and delayed recognition.Much like the rediscovery of an Albert Pinkham
Ryder painting at a garage sale, thepromise of the return is fulfilled by The Red Krayola
? in
this case, by the release of Coconut Hotelin 1995 (with its 'One-Second Pieces')
and other buried treasures from decades past such as Live 1967(first released in 1998),
and Soldier-Talk (re-released in 2007). Ihe 'avant' credentials are
Fingerpointing
often cited inhistorical accounts ofThe Red Krayola. Primary to thispart of the story
is the rejection of Coconut Hotelhy International Artists. Additionally, there is the
KQED disc jockeywho spoke over a large part of theband's set in 1967 at theBerkeley
Folk Festival because he thought themusic was actually the result of some technical

6 Roland Barthes, Mythologies (trans. A. Lavers), London: Paladin, 1973, p.109.

7 See F. Barthelme, 'The Red Crayola', op. cit.

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THEREDCRAYOLA SOLDIER-TALK

flNGGRPAINTING

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difficultyand, finally, the storyof the time theband was paid $10 by themanager of
a venue to get off the stage at a same
gig that year.8

In Concerning theSpiritual inArt (1911),Wassily Kandinsky made a connection

between abstraction inmusic and art and the To approach the problem
'spiritual'.9
of devising an analytic description ofwhatever product amusician or band might
produce, Kandinsky's 'spiritual' could be replaced with the idea of thefloating signifier,
and the affecton thebody (theaesthetic) could be understood as theproduct of thebeat,
tone, duration, volume or silence. However, there would still be a problem to solve:

how to translate a subjective experience of listening into a general one, and how todo
so without sound. To address the challenge, music reviewers often rely on a kind
using
ofbodily or emotional metaphor touniversalise experiences: loud repetitivebeats
are violent or while is to a kind of intellectual reflection.
passionate, quiet equivalent
But these are subtle associations thatdo not hold for all individuals. This approach
could be called the 'Review Standard Semiotics ofMusical Affect'. It reflects a desire
todescribe the sound that causes pleasure (ordispleasure) and to link it to thevisual
or textual information that typically a context for music. Because of the variety
provides
and combination of sounds and in The Red music,
unexpected stylistics Krayola's
this standard is only effectivein descriptions of individual songs.
Kandinsky proposed freedom from the academy ofhis day, propelled by painted
shapes that he rearranged in a new order. His combinations of form and
symbolic
surface employed an array of spirituallyminted signifiers categorised under the
influence ofMadame Blavatsky, a Russian mystic who founded theTheosophical Society
and taught a holistic approach to religious symbolic imagery.By using fuzziness, spirals,
dots and lines, Kandinsky's work took on her vocabulary while forming its own stylistic
lexicon. the history and discourse around those and colours on canvas
Today, shapes
have a life in our textsand discussions. They have become symbols attached to a discourse
of history, and remain artefacts that testify to the radical intention of a reorganisation
of the formal and symbolic elements of painting.
In his model ofhistory,Kandinsky proposed a triangular shape forprogressive
production, where the artist sits at a central point leaving breadcrumbs behind toprovide
and fulfilment to the masses. The crumbs are the important matter.
meaning spiritual
Ifwe apply this scheme toThe Red Krayola, thegirth of the information contained
in theband's yeasty portion of the triangle is always expanding and blurring at the
edges. Throbbing stops and starts, revisions and omissions, additions and
changes,
ambivalences from a
network resist any monopolising thematic
emanating corpuscular
The process ensures that its strengths will reside in specificities.
analysis. always
Thismeans that the activation of thework is always conjunctural. And although
interest in The Red has increased in contexts favourable conditions,
Krayola offering
these were not foreseeable (i.e. necessary) conditions. Openness
to influence, confluence
and are not but rather accumulative in the case of The Red
interruption programmatic,
as the of a clash of opinions, a conversation of artists.
Krayola; they appear product
The contra-linearity frustrates theblurb writer and resists all (or at leastmost) ritualistic
aspects of themusic industry.Frederick Barthelme describes the earlyRed Crayola
effort as 'an act of will' and an an attempt tomake 'noises that
avant-garde project,
ever heard before'.10 But in an even more way, The Red
nobody expanded Krayola
embodies a readiness to re-engage with the ever-changing The band and its
present.
sound have come to symbolise a kind of elite inclusive practice, and works such as the
'One-Second Pieces' and 'Listen to This' now function as a of historical
compression
information embedded in the constant and movements in the oeuvre.
unpredictable
In a way, 'Listen toThis' is an order which took almost thirtyyears tobe followed
(1967?95), dates which bookend a rich catalogue ofmusic. In fact,The Red Krayola is a
beautiful example of a mess of avant-garde pleasure, intelligence and subtle information
about human relations. It is unstable, and worth to.
particular listening

8 The Berkeley Folk Festival concert was released as part of Live 1967.
9 Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning theSpiritual inArt (trans. Michael T. H. Sadler), New York: DAP, 2006.
10 F. Barthelme, 'The Red Crayola', op. cit.

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