Shows/Berkeley Folk Music Festival 1967


July 2-4, 1967

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City	Berkeley, CA
Tour
Event	Berkeley Folk Music Festival
Billing

Background

Mayo Thompson, 2015^[1]

We were invited to the Berkeley Folk Festival because I was standing around the University of St. Thomas one day outside the gallery there. [...] Kurt von Meier, professor of art history out here at UCLA at the time, he was in town and he was a friend of the de Menils. We met and he was writing a book of the history of rock-and-roll so naturally I got chatting with him, one thing and another and he said, “What are y’all doing?” By this time we had made our first album [The Parable of Arable Land]; we then made Coconut Hotel. I don’t know if you know this record, this is the abstract record, a hundred percent absolute music. He went, “Uh, if I got you in the Berkeley Folk Festival, would you play that? What would you play?” We said, “Oh, something like that, along those lines.” He went [clicks tongue] and he called his friend Barry [Olivier], the organizer of the festival at Berkeley. They tried to get us into Monterey [International Pop Festival, California] as well, but that was a business gig all the way. Lou Adler, record companies. Fair enough.
So we went to the top like a rocket and pow, exploded, and that was the end of it. We got to Berkeley, they asked us would there be anybody we’d like to meet in California. We were hanging around with [Eugene] Ed Denson and we said, “John Fahey.” So John showed up at Berkeley where we were. We had a freak-out conference and then he sat in with us and played, and that’s as close as I have to a hero as far as music is concerned. Amazing dude.

Frederick Barthelme, 2007^[2]

[...] We were the bad boys of Houston music for about half a minute then, and later, when we played in California in the Summer of Love, we were the evil, whack-job, what-the-fuck-are-they-doing? guys at the Berkeley Folk Festival, where the headliners were Richie Havens, Steve Miller Blues Band, Country Joe and the Fish, and the like.

The Red Crayola were paid $150.00 for their appearances at the festival.^[3]

Recordings of The Red Crayola's performances were released on Live 1967 in 1998.

Correspondence

Letter from Lelan Rogers to Barry Olivier
June 1, 1967^[4]
Record of a long distance call from Barry Olivier to Mayo Thompson
June 3, 1967^[5]
Notes by Barry Olivier on The Red Crayola^[6]

Brochure

^[7]

Friday, June 30, 1967

AM: Red Crayola arrive^[8]

Workshop: "The Aesthetics of Freakout Music"

4pm^[10]
Listed in the schedule as "Toward a Totally New Concept of Music"

Reviews

Ed Denson, 1967

Their workshop appearance was very pleasant. It was called, incorrectly "The Aesthetics of Freakout Music" and began with a long non-lecture by Dr. Kurt von Meier which was fascinating altho not to the point. I especially liked it when he denounced the educational system for destroying the creativity of people. He lectures very well, and I would certainly suggest that you see him if he comes up again.
The audience unfortunately didn't seem to comprehend much about what was going on, especially that part of it which was also in the avand garde.
John Fahey seemed quite bewildered about some of the things said and finally digressed into some definitional trips; the others there had not heard the Crayola's record which seems to be a prerequisite for hearing a lecture on it, and everything kept coming to those puzzled questions about "If it's true then why should we listen to the music" and the equally bewildered answer "You shouldn't."
No one really knew what was happening. Far out. Me too altho I followed everything and enjoyed it a great deal.
One of those Greek fellows said that the artist never knows what he is doing, and I tend to believe that more and more. So we critics are all set, if we can ever figure out what we are doing.

Remi Barclay, 1967^[11]

[...] A day of the Festival was long and full. Each morning at 10 am, I dragged to one of several small workshops to be stirred by such music-talk-topics as "The Aesthetics of Freakout Music" with Kurt Von Meier of UCLA and Houston's Red Crayola [...] It was obvious that few artists either like or are able to talk about their music. But surely it is blessed to try communication on the common level. The workshops and panels say the desperate attempts of non-artists to pull out explanations of why and how music comes to be through the individual musicians. [...]

Sunday, July 2, 1967

Concert

Pauley Ballroom
Evening
"Dust" (recording: 27:46)

Reviews

Barry Olivier, 1974^[12]

[...] at least one third of the Pauley Ballroom audience left the room, although many simply listened at a greater (safer) distance from the lobby. Their screeching, eerie music had something of the supernatural to it.

Mayo Thompson, 2015^[1]

[...] When we played the Berkeley Folk Festival, I came out and leaned my guitar against my amp and walked off, and it started feeding back and everything, and we went from there, down, and everybody said we killed a dog this night, that kind of stuff. [...]

Laurie Lewis, 2021^[13]

I saw a black lab in the audience for Red Crayola. The band was so loud that the dog was trembling and appeared frozen in place. That's mostly what I remember.

Monday, July 3, 1967

Panel: "Rock-and-Roll As a Means of Expression?"

Pauley Ballroom^[10]
12:00 to 1:30pm (scheduled for 3pm)
Interviewer: Ralph J. Gleason
Panelists:
- Country Joe & The Fish
- Kaleidoscope
- Crome Syrcus
- Red Crayola

Reviews

Mayo Thompson, 2015^[1]

[...] The next day there was Ralph [J.] Gleason and we had a press conference. [Joseph Allen] Joe [McDonald] of Country Joe and the Fish and all of us were sitting on the stage and Ralph Gleason says, “Well, I guess we have to start with what happened last night. What was that you were doing?” I went, “I don’t know. We’re just doing what we’re doing.” They went, “Oh, okay,” and then they all tried to explain it.

Faren Miller, 1967^[14]

Today Mom and I went to a panel discussion at the Berkeley Folk Festival and got a surprise treat as well. In the panel discussion were Country Joe McDonald, David (head of The Kaleidoscope), Mayo (leader of Red Crayola), and Ron (leader of Crome Syrcus). All four of these groups are electric bands, and the discussion was called 'Rock Music as a Means of Expression?'. This topic was soon discarded, after Joe had said it was an insult because of the question mark.
Joe was very sleepy at first (it was only noon) and sat with the blank stare of a child awakened from its nap. Dave of Kaleidoscope looked a lot like Paul McCartney—same eyes, nose mouth, chin! He was also quite intelligent and lucid. He and Joe were both excellent speakers, and moderator Ralph Gleason was left far behind, trapped in his preconceptions of proper group behavior. Joe said he thought of himself as an artist not an entertainer, and neither he nor the other group leaders felt obliged to conform to restrictions if they played 'at an Elks' Club Easter Dance' (Ralph's idea). Joe told the story of a gig at the San Francisco Hilton where he was stopped in the middle of 'Grace' because it 'wasn't a dance tune.' He said people first tried to twist, then waltz; then they tried to laugh. The group only took the gig because they were starving and needed the $50 promised. Joe was quite serious about his music and said of course he loved it—all groups dig their own music (or if they didn't, 'they should be playing something else!').
Dave said he liked both Turkish and Bluegrass music and added that C&W was 'the coming thing'. This led to a long discussion of whether there could be hippie C&W, climaxed by a record man's revelation that Flatt & Scruggs's next album would be folk rock. Joe looked delighted. He had been astonished when Mayo (from Houston) told him that the Country Joe & the Fish album was selling in Texas.
Joe commented on seeing Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival, demonstrating how he had been grooving along and then, when Jimi burned his guitar, his jaw dropped and his eyes bugged out. I'm not sure he really approved of the action, though afterward he said he did like having his mind blown ('my friends do it all the time'). Other bits from Joe: he's 25 and he has a 15 year old brother who is, at the moment, even less ready to compromise his ideals than Joe is. The panel discussion lasted from 12 to 1:30 and was great (except for Gleason inanities)

Barry Olivier took the following note:^[15]

"It's like building a large object that is very strange" Rick 7/3/67

Concert with John Fahey

Afternoon (~3:00pm)^[16]
"'Electric Bands Session with Festival and Guest Bands"
Scheduled for 20-30 minutes^[17]^[18] (recording: 22:53)

Reviews

Faren Miller, 1967^[19]

[...] As for Red Crayola, some of the panel members had warned us about their 'awfulness' [tongue in cheek, I presume] but I enjoyed them. They are wildly electronic-music, but not the aimless noodling sort (despite their leader's nebulous non-philosophy). They created walls of organ/feedback/drums that sounded like music turned inside-out. They worked together beautifully, aided by John Fahey (of all people!).

John Fahey in a letter to Barry Olivier, 1967

[...] Thank you so much for the comps you gave to my wife + I. We enjoyed the festival very much. It was great fun playing w/ the Red Crayola.

Tuesday, July 4, 1967

Jubilee Concert

Hearst Greek Theatre
Scheduled for 12-15 minutes^[20] (recording 14:08)

Filmed by KQED who "missed about 12 minutes of the Red Crayola's 15 minute set, because the television people thought they were still setting up for their music!"^[21]

—bring you now from Houston, Texas, Red Crayola.
Just in case you're wondering what's going on, KQED Channel 9 in San Francisco is bringing you, in its entirety, this Fourth of July afternoon, the Jubilee Concert. One of the culminating events of the 10th annual Berkeley Folk Music Festival. The host artist for this program is, of course, ?. ? and produced, and you're hearing—I think if you're hearing me, you're hearing them for sure!—some sounds ? made by the rock group from Houston, Texas—which engages in a good deal of improvisation—the Red Crayola. I think the Red Crayola's just about got the blackboard wiped clean here and I think maybe we're gonna have some music in just a moment from the Red Crayola. As I'm sure you understand it takes a while to get the amplifiers adjusted, to get yourself plugged in. The Red Crayola, by the way, is the second of six electronic bands appearing on this folk festival. Tremendous variety; ? pointed out we had a country fiddler just a while ago and now we've got a rock band from Houston, Texas. Later on we're gonna have ? right here the singer Janice Ian and a good many others.
Incidentally, speaking of folk music, it's gonna be a good deal on KQED tonight. We're starting at eight o'clock tonight that new series with Pete Seeger called "Rainbow Quest". It's going to be on every Tuesday night from eight to nine o'clock. The first program tonight is eight o'clock. Pete's guest will be Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. By the way, one week from tonight on the second program, the Reverend Gary Davis, whom started today's program, will be Pete's guest.
Well, I suspect you're hearing more of the amplifiers than you are of me, so let's get up to the platform and the Red Crayola.

Reviews

Barry Olivier, 1974^[12]

[... The Red Crayola] played deafeningly loud music with no discernible structure (at the Greek Theatre, one of their 'instruments' was a block of ice suspended from a rope, which dripped upon another surface and caused electric impulses to be transmitted to the audience).

Barry Olivier^[22]

Dev Singh, Festival Committee member, reported to me 5/23/68 several facts which had not previously come to my attention about the 1967 Jubilee Concert:
During the Red Crayola's portion, somebody yelled aloud, quite audibly to the audience: "Barry Olivier is a punk!" and also there was profuse booing of the Crayola and also someone(s) threw cabbage(s) onto the stage at the Crayola. Groovy!
Exactly what we wanted—a reaction.

Ed Denson, 1967

[...] To range from the Kaleidescope's middle east, and Anglo-acid songs, thru James Cotton's nice Chicago blues the Fish's contemporary protest; to the Red Crayola's hard push at the boundaries of the believable; during two days, let's you know what is happening all over.
If the critic is supposed to explain, and I think he is, as well as evaluate, then I should talk about the Red Crayola. They met with mixed reactions but I think it is clear that for the most part they were received with a mixture of bewilderment and some hostility. Almost no one knew what they were doing, or what point there was in their being at the festival.
The group is from Houston, Texas. At one time there were a rock band but they tired of that and began to work experimentally. They are quite serious about what they do, altho they harbor some misconceptions about how large the audience is for their music, and they were a little disappointed in their reception here because this area is supposed to be the most sophisticated musically in the country. [...]
Here their stage performances consisted primarily of feedback. Every one got up on stage and did their thing with little prearrangement, and anything is alright. Mostly it was loud feedback which drove the audiences out and the vocabularies in.
I liked their Greek Theater performance best, because it was shortest. This quite naturally is not what the band has in mind. They spent most of the 15 minutes setting up. which is part of the thing, anyway, and hardly got into it before they got out again. I think that this kind of experimental music is more for listening to on record than in person, primarily because it does not change much from minute to minute, and because editing is a primary part of the process. [...]

Kurt von Meier, 1967^[23]

[...] In music itself, there are the impressive statements by a group from Houston that so far has played and recorded under the name "The Red Crayola". At this last summer's Berkeley Folk Music Festival, the three young musicians, Steve Cunningham, Mayo Thompson, and the artist Rick Barthelme performed several one-second pieces. [...]

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

[:1-1] 1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/sites/default/files/ThompsonMayo_FINAL.pdf#page=26

[2] ttps://www.frederickbarthelme.com/nonfiction/the-red-crayola/

[3] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/f98962ad-980b-44b0-920d-5fde901d2b4a

[4] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/b092cdee-40bd-44d7-a2f1-98214eeb0528

[5] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/d3c92dce-b3f7-488a-b3e4-3360a503cabc

[6] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/90be7769-1970-4612-a560-b3f17127aed2

[7] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/9fbf99af-8dea-4b5b-92b0-848be8c3cba2

[8] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/5de7546f-90a3-4716-82c5-d9c0bb1db26e

[9] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/26d24a0b-0575-4671-9bbc-4e70d3ea0350

[:0-10] 10.0 ^10.1 https://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/fb309302-5e63-4ec6-abbb-3c1c8e28f1a7

[11] ttps://collections.lib.utexas.edu/catalog/utlmisc:36e441b3-5f6a-4182-b4a2-01d57c61ebac

[:2-12] 12.0 ^12.1 https://archive.org/details/historyoffolkmus00cohe/page/67/mode/1up

[13] ttps://www.instagram.com/p/CNSnF29reGu/

[14] ttp://brunoceriotti.weebly.com/kaleidoscope.html

[15] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/72e4e94b-52f0-46b2-8a16-e99177a9ab2f

[16] ttp://brunoceriotti.weebly.com/kaleidoscope.html

[17] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/957f62bf-ebda-4c0b-815a-b0039b649cae

[18] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/e75effcf-68e7-4037-b2e0-14a69cffec90

[19] ttp://brunoceriotti.weebly.com/kaleidoscope.html

[20] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/38131bb2-44e9-4105-902b-470bc7e341ce

[21] ttps://archive.org/details/rainbowquestfolk00cohe/page/272/mode/1up

[22] ttps://dc.library.northwestern.edu/items/e87f6449-598c-4b14-aa92-d7fa83a46531

[23] ttps://archive.org/details/sim_art-international_1967-10-20_11_8/page/58/mode/1up

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