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God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It

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God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It
Studio album by The Red Krayola
Released May 1968
Recorded 1968
Studio

Houston, Texas

Label International Artists
/

Track listing

Side A
No.TitleLength
1."Say Hello to Jamie Jones"2:30
2."Music"1:00
3."The Shirt"2:30
4."Listen to This"0:04
5."Save the House"1:24
6."Victory Garden"1:48
7."Coconut Hotel"1:22
8."Sheriff Jack"2:12
9."Free Piece"2:18
10."Ravi Shankar: Parachutist"2:09
11."Piece for Piano and Electric Bass Guitar"0:45
12."Dairymaid's Lament"2:30
Side B
No.TitleLength
1."Big"1:37
2."Leejol"2:40
3."Sherlock Holmes"2:55
4."Dirth of Tilth"1:26
5."Tina's Gone to Have a Baby"1:49
6."The Jewels of the Madonna"1:29
7."Green of My Pants"3:00
8."Night Song"1:52
Total length:37:20

Background

Recorded ~February 1968

Released May 1968

Radio ads

8-track released in 1969 (announced Sept[1][2], released ~Oct[3])

[4]

Late in 1967 [International Artists] contacted [Mayo] Thompson to make a new album. He contacted [Steve] Cunningham and early in 1968 they recorded twenty pieces, mostly songs, for the album, God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It with the drummer, Tommy Smith – in the meantime they had been obliged to change from Crayola to Krayola following a letter from lawyers representing the manufacturers of the famous crayons ordering them to desist from using the name ‘crayola.’ God Bless did not do as well as Parable. IA did not invite them further, and, as Smith was in demand elsewhere, there was no question of performing live. They disbanded again.

Further reading: Paul Drummond's booklet for the 2011 remaster

  • 1968 ad
    1968 ad

First reissued in June 1979 by Radar Records.[5]

Personnel

The Red Krayola

Additional musicians

Holly Pritchett (additional vocals), Pat Pritchett, Barbara Metyko, Elaine Banks, Carolyn Heinman, Mary Sue, Dotty, and Candy (additional vocals)

Technical

Cover art

The cover drawing is by Mayo Thompson[6].

Retrospectives

Mayo Thompson, 2023[7]

The band was dead but 'The Parable Of Arable Land' LP made money. Lelan Rogers told me it’s an evergreen—meaning it will always make money. That it had done business got the label thinking it would be nice to have a follow-up. We parted company with [International Artists] after [the Berkeley Folk Music Festival]. I was living in Venice [California] [...]. The things I was working on weren’t looking like coming together anyway. So, when they got in touch I thought, why not, and went back to Houston. I got in touch with Steve Cunningham—Rick [Barthelme] had moved to New York. By then Lelan had been fired and the label had acquired a studio [...] We worked there with Jim Duff engineering—producing ourselves. The label gave us a free hand. Some of the stuff was written, some made up in the studio. We developed songs and "pieces" in a variety of forms. There was no pressure from the label. It’s a set of singular pieces meant to be heard as a kind of whole. When it came out we got a call from a DJ at the radio station that had run the [KNUZ battle of the bands]. He wanted us to do things for him to use, funny slugs to break up his show. We declined—stupidly. It didn’t do business, though the label liked it. It is a funny enough record.

Mayo Thompson, 2023[8]

[...] We didn't work everything out. We had some ideas and we would start playing. A lot of that record [...] was made up on the fly.

[...] We also had the idea, [on] that record we made, we didn't want to use reverb. So there's no reverb on the record until the end of "Night Song". No reverb at all. What you hear is room sound and the sound of musical instruments in the room.

Ronnie "U-Ron" Bond of Really Red, 2015[9]

[...] One of our buddy’s older brother was Steve Cunningham who played bass in another really weird Texas band, The Red Crayola. I never saw them play a club but once I did get to go watch them practice in a gutted store on Tuam Street. We smoked weed and they played stuff that was going to end up on their 2nd LP, God Bless The Red Krayola. They also were one of the strangest bands I’ve ever seen. Really whacked. [...]

Reviews

Chicago Seed

July 1, 1968[10]

Unfortunately, the Crayola has fallen prey to the exhaustion that seems to have hit to many other interesting groups. Their second album "God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It", is creepy and repetitive. The handball noises in "The Shirt" are poor compensation for the absence of the Familiar Ugly, who probably discorporated in the mountains of Northern Cal immediately after their recording debut.

Rolling Stone

December 7, 1968[11]

Larry Sepulvado and John Burks

Probably one of the most unusual groups under contract anywhere is the Red Krayola (the “C” was dropped after the Crayola Co. filed suit) who have recorded two albums for the International Artists label. The original freak-out group, they are renowned for having never been asked to play the same place twice. Sparked by Rick Barthelme’s flare for brilliance on their first album, the second album focuses on the acute cleverness of Mayo and Steve. Though the album is self-indulgent at times, the 22 songs express a wit judged on its own terms to be as direct as a B.C. comic strip.

The Wire

May 1999[12]

The latest reissues of two heady, early examples of Mayo Thompson's psychedelic improvisational unit, The Red Crayola, in full flight this time come on fashionable 180 gram pure virgin vinyl. [...] Their third album, God Bless The Red Krayola And All Who Sail With It (Get Back GET534 LP), focused more on short, fragmented songs. Partly acoustic, it is worth hearing, but fails to eclipse the frothing madness and energy that was poured into Parable...

Pitchfork

February 9, 2004[13]

Alex Linhardt

Title misquotes

  • God Bless The Red Crayola And All Who Sail With Her - 1994[14], 2020[15]
  • God Bless The Red Crayola And All Who Sail Upon Her - 1995[16]

References

  1. ↑ Record-World 1969-09-06 pg.54
  2. ↑ https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Cash-Box/60s/1969/CB-1969-09-06a.pdf#page=31
  3. ↑ Billboard 1969-10-04 pg.20
  4. ↑ http://white-rose.net/redcrayola/dc257bio2.pdf
  5. ↑ https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Music-Week/1979/Music-Week-1979-06-02.pdf#page=46
  6. ↑ https://www.galeriebuchholz.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Cosmic-Communities-Checklist.pdf
  7. ↑ https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2023/10/red-krayola-interview-mayo-thompson.html
  8. ↑ Interview on Fallout Podcast, 2023
  9. ↑ https://ia801607.us.archive.org/27/items/cd_teaching-you-the-fear-the-complete-collect_really-red/cd_teaching-you-the-fear-the-complete-collect_really-red.pdf#page=4
  10. ↑ https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28044469?seq=15
  11. ↑ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tribute-to-the-lone-star-state-dispossessed-men-and-mothers-of-texas-242153/
  12. ↑ The Wire, May 1999, pg.62
  13. ↑ https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11813-the-parable-of-arable-land-god-bless-the-red-krayola-and-all-who-sail-with-it/
  14. ↑ https://groups.google.com/g/alt.music.alternative/c/DzEtSsDr9B8/m/b-faOdhk3ZYJ
  15. ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04lp3b9/p06cy588
  16. ↑ https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/CMJ/1995/CMJ-New-Music-Report-1995-07-03.pdf#page=19
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