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Rating: While in California, the flower power was exploding, and Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane provided the soundtrack to the lysergic parties organized by Ken Kesey and his Merry Prunksters, featuring LSD and marijuana; while in New York, Lou Reed and John Cale were showing America its more metropolitan, dirty, and wild side, and in London, Syd Barrett and Roger Waters were having fun amid strobe lights and psychedelic slides, in the legendary UFO, a cult venue of the late '60s London counterculture, there were those in Texas, specifically Houston, putting together one of the most important and influential groups of the American underground scene of all time.
The group in question is known as Red Krayola, the mind behind it being Mayo Thompson, singer, freak-visionary, and somewhat hallucinated, in short, a genius. The Red Krayola represented the other psychedelic path, the true avant-garde rock, the "cultured" alternative to the Californian flower children, with their endless sessions.
Their second album, with a vaguely mystical title, "God Bless the Red Krayola & All Who Sail With It," is, in my opinion, the highest point reached by the group; it is a genuine gem of experimental rock, psychedelic blues, and crooked acid-folk ballads, worthy of the best Syd Barrett. It is a record that certainly precedes and anticipates the times, each track indicative of a musical genre that would be explored by other groups in the future, especially on the American indie scene.
Not only the aforementioned genres, but also paradoxically free-jazz, industrial, folk-rock, proto-punk, and kraut-rock find space in the melting pot of Red Krayola; all always mixed with a deep knowledge and visceral devotion to the experimentalism and minimalism of the early century: Varese and Cage above all.
A vision of total music and of approach to experimentation in general, which often, in my opinion rightly, had the name of Red Krayola, and of Thompson in particular, be associated with that of Frank Zappa. The songs of the album in question, all very short, almost illuminating fragments, are alternated with pieces that are solely instrumental, condensing an infinity of emotions and brilliant ideas in a short time, forming genuine psychedelic suites, sketched frescoes. The entire album is permeated by a wild creativity: original melodies, percussive frenzies, and pure jazz-noise improvisation that unsettle from the very first listen.
I highly recommend it to you, then make your own judgment.
Tracklist Samples and Videos
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