The Red Crayola Remasters! Also: Da Residents vs. Da Surfers! By Tom Kipp and Marc Marshall

From: Marc Marshall
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 11:53 AM
To: Bob Burnett; Kipp, Thomas J
Subject: Red Crayola remaster

I know Tom is familiar with Red Crayola, not so sure if you are Bob, it was/is Mayo Thompson’s band that goes all the way back to 1965/66.

The remaster of Parable of Arable Land has both the stereo and never before released mono version. It is perhaps the most idiosyncratic music from that era, at least in the “rock” field.

Subject: RE: Red Crayola remaster
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:22:46 -0700

Hi Marc:

Your description of RC as idiosyncratic gets right to the heart of the matter. Boy, are they ever!

I’ve never played the Sixties Red Crayola albums all that much (though I do love “Hurricane Fighter Plane”), preferring the pointy-headed, Lora Logic-fueled, Marxist “Theory Whore”-isms of their supple Postpunk revival, especially 1981’s astonishing KANGAROO?, which certainly merits its own fully-laden cd reissue right about now!

But Mayo Thompson remains an inspirational eccentric, not unlike his one-time Pere Ubu employer, David Thomas, so I’m delighted that his roots are being celebrated with these marvelous International Artists packages. They sounded like no one and nothing before them, and made The Elevators seem like Mainstream Rock by comparison! LOL

Which can’t have been easy….

P.S. I’ve been far less enamored of the “Post-Rock” era of Red Krayola, which commenced around 1994. Seems like little more than an excuse to diddle about with members of Tortoise and the ever-tedious Jim O’Rourke, alas. But Mayo can do whatever he likes, as far as I’m concerned, like any other true visionary!

From: Marc Marshall

Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 1:38 PM
To: Kipp, Thomas J; Bob Burnett
Subject: RE: Red Crayola remaster

Yeah, I don’t play the Residents or Butthole Surfers very often for the same reasons but I need to have all of them in my collection for the times I want/need to hear them. The new remasters of both the first and second Red Crayola are REALLY nice packages with excellent notes and period photos. Remastered by Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3 fame.

From: Kipp, Thomas J
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 3:31 PM
To: ‘Marc Marshall’
Cc: Kipp, Thomas J; Howard Brown
Subject: Re: The Red Crayola remasters! Also: Da Residents vs. Da Surfers!

It’s quite true, Marc, that lots of very good and/or unique Rock music doesn’t demand/can’t withstand our constant attention. But what magic for just the right moment!

As it happens, and although I probably “like” them less, I play The Residents far more than The Surfers, mostly because I still don’t entirely understand what the hell they’re doing! LOL And also because THIRD REICH ’N ROLL is far more listenable and endlessly entertaining than any of Gibby Haynes’ full-length albums, especially for “The Avatar of Sludge”, as John Kappes once called me.

Whereas, I came up with The Surfers, and now perceive their fantastic early work to be something of a fluke that they experienced along the way to becoming a rather odd but surprisingly successful and generally kinda dull Alt Rock Money Machine! Not only do I think that they can’t explain what they did, I also don’t think they have all that much idea which parts worked out best! LOL

On the other hand, very few artists or bands have created an entire (if short) record as visionary or just plain addictive as their first ep from 1983 (self-titled, aka BROWN REASON TO LIVE), or two masterpiece “songs” as overwhelmingly anthemic, demented, and utterly/permanently hilarious as “Moving to Florida” and “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave”.

Not many triumphant fusions of gross-out humor, Punk Minimalism, No Wave viciousness, and chant-along Aural Surrealism in the world, sadly! If only my pal Andy’s beloved Joke Rock had produced ANYTHING on this level, I’d be a devotee and a proselytizer for that whole sad sack genre! LOL

Anyhow, Marc, I look very forward to eventually acquiring these Red Crayola reissues, which must be splendid if they’re anything close to the mindboggling 13^th Floor Elevators cd box set of a few years back!

And I also plan to buy some more of the later Crayola, while carefully avoiding the Chicago-tainted, post-1994 Post-Rock stuff!

By the way, do you own their SINGLES: 1968-2002 collection? It fills a lot of gaps across 21 tracks, needless to say, as it covers the (largely) non-LP material of their first 35 years or so, which varies widely in quality but is quite rare and unaffordable otherwise!