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God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It (documentary)

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God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It is an unfinished documentary by Amy Scott. The film, described as "a feature documentary film following the history of musical outlaws The Red Krayola, a band spanning forty years of dadaist psychedelia"[1] began production in 2006. Several interviews were completed but the project was abandoned.

In 2010, Scott posted a nine minute excerpt of the film to Vimeo. Scott has gone on to direct documentaries on film director Hal Ashby (2018) and singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow (2022).

Watch excerpt on Vimeo

Personnel

  • Amy Scott - director

Interview subjects

Retrospectives

Amy Scott, 2010[2]

Once upon a time I wanted desperately to make a film about The Red Krayola and all the fascinating people orbiting in their galaxy. It didn’t pan out (probably because I didn’t know how to shoot, light, or edit a film), but I did manage to cobble together this almost 9 minute love letter to the band. If you haven’t heard of them, or their music, or art, or tangentially related acts—I urge you to run to the nearest record store or art gallery or digital music distribution service in search of their genius. God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It!

David Grubbs, 2019[3]

The filmmaker Amy Cargill Scott made a go at a Red Krayola documentary in the aughts; it was never finished, but someone recently pointed me toward her 2019 posting of footage from it in a c. "9 minute love letter to the band"

It's the only doc I know of that combines interviews with Mayo, Mike Kelley, and Guy Clark, as well as a whole bunch of other familiar faces.

Transcript

Description
0:00 Interview: Bill Bentley - Senior Vice President, Warner Brothers Records: Really can't describe it. There's really nothing even remotely like it you've ever heard. To me, I wouldn't even say it was a rock & roll band. I don't know what kind of band you'd call it but it was definitely not what we thought of as rock & roll.
0:11 Music: "Horses" (1970)
0:11 Animation: God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It title and cover art drawing
0:18 Clip: Mayo Thompson and Christine Kozlov performing "Plekhanov" in And Now for Something Completely Different (1976)
0:20 Clip: George Hurley playing bongos in Free Form Freak Out sessions (August 2005)
0:21 Clips from The Red Krayola in Tokyo (1994)
0:24 Clip of Mayo Thompson performing "Gross and Conspicuous Error No. 4" / "Born to Win" in Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors (1976)
0:26 Clips from The Red Krayola in Tokyo (1994)
0:27 Clip of Tom Watson performing (Getty?)
0:30 Clip from Free Form Freak Out sessions (August 2005)
0:31 Photo: Allen Ravenstine, ?, ?, Mayo Thompson (80s)
0:32 Photo: Lora Logic (early 80s?)
0:33 Cover and page 21 of Howdy from Texas the Lone Star State (1978)
0:35 Clip of ? performing (outside)
0:37 Clip of Christine Kozlov, Kathryn Bigelow, Paula Ramsden performing "Gross and Conspicuous Error No. 5" in Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors (1976)
0:38 Photo: Mayo Thompson, Lora Logic, Jesse Chamberlain, others (late 70s)
0:39 Photo: Jesse Chamberlain and Mayo Thompson (1978)
0:40 Clip of Mayo Thompson performing (outside)
0:43 Clip of Japan in Paris in L.A. (1996)
0:49 Album cover: Japan in Paris in L.A. (soundtrack) (2004)
0:50 Animation: Wives in Orbit cover art
0:51 Photo: Mayo Thompson seated (early 80s)
0:53 Photo: Lora Logic(?) (late 70s?)
0:54 Photo: Epic Soundtracks?, Mayo Thompson, Lora Logic, ? (1980)
0:56 Photo: Mayo Thompson in doorway (early 70s?)
0:57 Interview: Jim O'Rourke - Gastr Del Sol, Sonic Youth, Loose Fur: My first impression of the Red Krayola was kind of different than what it later would be, because I saw it as this sort of, like, anomaly.
1:04 Album cover: Hazel (1996)
1:06 Animation: God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It cover art drawing and sailing
1:07 Clip: Ian Burn, Jesse Chamberlain, Mel Ramsden performing "Gross and Conspicuous Error No. 2" in Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors (1976)
1:21 Music: "Ravi Shankar: Parachutist" (1968)
1:21 Photo: Mayo Thompson and Jesse Chamberlain performing on October 13-14, 1978
1:22 Album covers: Singles (2004), Black Snakes (1983), Blues, Hollers and Hellos (2000), Malefactor, Ade (1989), Old Tom Clark (1970)
1:26 Interview: Rian Murphy - Producer, Drag City: You think about people responding to your music when you make it and, y'know, he's no exception to that, but I do believe that there's a deeply ingrained desire to outrage, y'know.
1:38 Clip from Free Form Freakout sessions (August 2005)
1:46 Clip performing "Dairymaid's Lament" from The Red Krayola in Tokyo (1994)
1:53 Interview: David Grubbs - Squirrel Bait, Bastro, Gastr Del Sol: The Red Krayola shows were, by my experience, relatively chaotic, and I was fearful of this at first, fearful of what was happening. It took me a little bit of time to, I don't know, participate fully?
2:01 Clip: (outside) Getty?
2:03 Clip: Grubbs 2005?
2:11 Interview: Bill Bentley: So we went over there one day and the band was practicing — we didn't know their name at the time — and it was just the most ungodly sound I'd ever heard in my life. It was so loud, it was arrhythmic. I believe Rick was playing a drum set, I can't remember. There's all this other stuff they're beating on. They were just playing anything that they could find in the garage, basically. It was absolutely out of control. Screaming these long songs. I mean you really couldn't understand the lyrics at that point.
2:34 Photo: Mayo Thompson performing at the Chislehurst Caves on November 16, 1978
2:40 Interview: Guy Clark - Songwriter, Luthier: One of them had a [laughs] personalized license plate that said LSD25. I remember that was before it was illegal [laughs] Nobody knew what it was [laughs]
2:47 Photo: Mayo Thompson, Epic Soundtracks(?), ?, Allen Ravenstine (early 80s)
2:55 Clip: Christine Kozlov, Mel Ramsden, Ian Burn, Paula Ramsden performing "Gross and Conspicuous Error No. 6" in Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors (1976)
3:02 Music: "Sherlock Holmes" (1968)
3:06 Interview: Mike Kelley - Multimedia Artist: When I met Mayo, and to find out that he'd been involved with all this kind of art activity was very unusual for people coming out of music. Kind of two worlds that are usually very, very separate. So when I discovered the records he'd done with Art & Language, I was very interested to that. And then when he joined Pere Ubu, thought that just shows also that he knows what he's doing [laughs] I that that it was one of the most interesting bands of that period.
3:39 Interview: Allen Ravenstine - Founding Member of Pere Ubu: We played a gig someplace in England, Pere Ubu, might have even been the first tour. At that point Mayo had a reputation of being a J.D. Salinger sort of character where he had created this stuff and then dropped off the map; nobody knew where he was. At least that's the way it seemed to me. And we played the show and when it was over there was this guy standing there in a three-piece twee suit, brown polished Oxford shoes. Looked like a banker. Lo and behold, it's Mayo Thompson.

And there came a point when Ubu broke up, for various reasons, and there was a night when David [Thomas] and I were watching a show someplace in Cleveland, I don't remember who was playing, but all of a sudden it just occurred to both of us that if we could get Mayo Thompson in the band we could restart it and it would be interesting. So we asked him and he said yes.

4:13 Photo: Mayo Thompson (early 80s)
4:39 Photo: Mayo Thompson and David Thomas in Pere Ubu (early 80s)
4:45 Interview: Jim O'Rourke: But a funny thing is, if I remember correctly, I didn't put two — at first — this is going back to the original record — I don't think I ever told Tom [Watson] this. And I think, y'know, David [Grubbs] was so excited about the whole thing with Mayo happening and then there was this news that Mayo was bringing this guitarist out from L.A. and we're like "What the hell! Why's he need some L.A. guitarist for!" [laughs] I remember we were like, "Ahh!" y'know, stupid, youthful, like, "Hey! Why do you need that loser for!" And I remember David coming in like "You know, he's really good!" "Really?" 'Cause I wasn't there for the recording. Then I was like oh, it's the dude from Slovenly! [laughs]
5:25 Interview: O.J. and Eileen Watson - Tom Watson's Parents:

Eileen: We lived in New York City during the sixties, lucky us, and — O.J.: I think, I was taking some guitar lessons and, uh, strumming "Beautiful, Beautiful Brown Eyes" or whatever and I, I did not continue, but Tom really appreciated the sound, I guess. So, Christmas, he got his little plastic electric guitar. Eileen: — yellow and red guitar. But that was it, it was the guitar from then on. Always.

5:49 Clip: Tom Watson receiving his first guitar
5:58 Clip: performing "Magnificence as Such"
6:06 Music: "I Knew It" (1994)
6:07 Interview: Steve Albini - Big Black, Rapeman, Shellac, Electrical Audio: I was introduced to Mayo by David Grubbs. I think David had met him in England at some point and then. I was only sort of glancingly familiar with the Red Krayola. I'd heard some of their seventies stuff. And I remember for a while there was kind of a thing where bands would cover "Hurricane Fighter Plane" — like a lot of bands would cover that song, it was kind of a... So that was sort of my exposure to the Red Krayola before I actually met Mayo and started working on the record.
6:25 Photo: ?, ?, Mayo Thompson, Allen Ravenstine (80s)
6:27 Photo: images from Howdy from Texas the Lone Star State (1978)
6:43 Music: "Victory Garden" (1968)
6:43 Interview: Dean Wareham - Galaxie 500, Luna: Yes, Galaxie 500 did "Victory Garden". Well, we were trying to do a Red Krayola song and... a lot of them would be extremely difficult to cover. I think there's really only a few Red Krayola songs that are candidates for covering... And "Victory Garden", it's one of their more melodic efforts.
7:17 Interview: Jim O'Rourke: I think the thing that fascinated me about Mayo was this bizarre mix of, like, extreme... y'know, post- [laughs], "post-Frankfurt School," y'know, [laughs] Mayo's always, sort of, like the bong-hitting socialist [laughs]
7:38 Interview: Mayo Thompson - The Red Krayola: There was always this question, y'know, people would say, "oh, people don't understand what you're doing and that accounts for your lack of distributive, y'know, assonance, uh, resonance or whatever you want to put it in those kinds of terms. Sales in other words. And I always thought to myself, no it can't be that people are wrong. It's that they just don't like it. The way it makes them feel is somehow uncomfortable and somehow in some slightly awkward relationship to conventional expressions and the things that you don't quote unquote "have to think about" in order to consume them in some sort of way. Y'know, not that our stuff can't be consumed, I believe it can be, but it's that stuff that passes itself off as — that needs to be thought about in some sort of way. And pass in that language in those kind of lumpen contextual relationships which one cannot control so much because there are a lot of people out there volunteering for this crap at the same time that I'm trying to avoid it.
8:00 Photo: Mayo Thompson, Lora Logic, Gina Birch, Epic Soundtracks (1980?)
8:07 Album covers: Amor and Language (1995), The Red Krayola (1994)
8:12 Photo: Tom Watson, David Grubbs, ?, John McEntire?, Stephen Prina?, Mayo Thompson performing live (90s)
8:13 Photo: Tom Watson, George Hurley, ?, ?, ?, ?, Mayo Thompson, ?, ? (90s)
8:18 Album covers: Kangaroo? (1981), Chemistry (1996), Coconut Hotel (1995)
8:36 Clip: Mayo Thompson in And Now for Something Completely Different (1976)
8:41 www.theredkrayolamovie.com
8:41 Animation: God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It cover art sailing

References

  1. ↑ https://www.nicebombs.com/bio.html
  2. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20220930115229/http://amyescott.squarespace.com/blog/2019/5/30/when-my-obsession-for-the-red-krayola-happened
  3. ↑ https://twitter.com/blackfaurest/status/1575815784202240001
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