Singles (compilation)

Front

Back

2004 compilation album

Track list

	Song	Date	Single
1.	"Woof"	1970	Corky's Debt to His Father outtake
2.	"Old Tom Clark"	1970	Old Tom Clark
3.	"Pig Ankle Strut"	1970
4.	"Wives in Orbit"	1978	Wives in Orbit
5.	"Yik Yak"	1978
6.	"Micro-Chips & Fish"	1979	Micro-Chips & Fish
7.	"The Story so Far"	1979
8.	"Born in Flames"	1980	Born in Flames
9.	"The Sword of God"	1980
10.	"An Old Man's Dream"	1981	An Old Man's Dream
11.	"The Milkmaid"	1981
12.	"Rattenmensch: Gewichtswächter"	1981	Rattenmensch/Gewichtswächter
13.	"Zukunftsfleiger"	1981
14.	"The Red Crayola on Forty-Five"	1993	The Red Crayola on Forty-Five
15.	"Your Body is Hot"	1993
16.	"14"	1994	14
17.	"Stink Program"	1994
18.	"Chemistry"	1996	Chemistry
19.	"Farewell to Arms"	1996
20.	"Come on Down"	1999	Come on Down
21.	"Stil De Grain Brun (Radio Edit)"	2002	Free Logo

Background

"Modern Movement" by Glenn Brown, 2003

Cover art

The cover art is a 2003 painting by Glenn Brown titled "Modern Movement".

Retrospectives

Albert Oehlen, 2003

Important news in music: Auf DRAG CITY erscheint demnächst eine Kompilation aller Singles von Red Krayola. Mit insgesamt 29 Tracks ist endlich ein guter Überblick über deren Schaffen möglich!

Mayo Thompson, 2005

[...] It’s got twenty-one tracks on it. It started in ’68. There’s a lot of stuff in it and it’s kind of strange to hear it. I characterized it to somebody. I said Dead letters to lost worlds. And so I feel slightly sad when I listen to these tunes because I begin to see them in time in that way. And there’s a certain sense of loss or something like that, but then on the other hand. I think to myself, hmmmm, turn on that record, there’s still a radio. Who knows? It’s never too late. Something could come back and catch the public ear and it could work, so I hold out hope that out of that stuff, some of those singles will catch some ears somewhere and get into the conversation.

[...] I mean, I condone the compilation on the grounds that a lot of that stuff is just completely lost. There’s no way that I could make those available as a single or something like that, because there are commercial constraints and it’s pointless to make singles if you can’t distribute them.

[...] All of them had small distribution. I mean some of them didn’t even get pressed. Some of the things that are on that record were never intended to be singles and therefore I feel vindicated in putting them out. But some of those things never even saw the light of day. So this is the end of the rubric of singles compilations. I can put some songs out there that nobody’s ever had any access to. I hope in the long run that, I mean, I had fantasies, of course, that somebody’s gonna hear this song or that song and then maybe market it all around the world and then there’d be one of those songs off that record that would hit. That they would connect in some way.

SL: What kind of connection do you want to make?

MT: Listen. I’m playing for all the marbles. Should we get a hit? Gimme. Gimme. Gimme.

SL: So you’re not averse to the idea of a hit.

MT: Hell-no. I live for the day. I mean that’s not why I play but I live on the hope that they will do their job.

Reviews

Sunday Times

August 22, 2004

Stewart Lee

The Texan auteur Mayo Thompson is the Red Krayola. In the 1960s, he shared a label with acid-rock legends the 13th Floor Elevators, and in the 1970s and 1980s impressed punk's smarter, artier elements. He produced the Fall and reconvened Krayola with members of Pere Ubu and the Raincoats. Today, Krayola comprises Thompson and collaborators from Tortoise, Gastr del Sol and Sonic Youth. Singles provides more than three decades' worth of snapshots of Thompson's determinedly childlike genius. There's a vaudeville streak, filtered through a frazzled mind, to much of the earlier work, and recent recordings see Thompson, a generous facilitator, allowing new colleagues to make their own voices heard. The reinvigorated Hazel, from 1996, and the double CD of both 1960s albums remain the easiest entry points.

Shredding Paper

Fall 2004

David

Might seem a bit contradictory for a comparatively outré outfit like RK to have actually released singles, but release them they did, and this collection features almost all the tracks from same, including those very rare and unreleased. The band’s sound went through many a change over the years, thanks in no little part to a fluid lineup (mainman Mayo Thompson has been the only consistent throughout its almost-four-decade history) though for the most part he’s stayed most comfortably at the outskirts of what usually gets termed “conventional” music. (One would think there'd be a sense of knowing irony over having “radio edits”). The early 80s material - stuff that was recorded concurrent with and fit comfortably alongside (if not overshadowing) the better post-punk works of the era (some of the musicians responsible for same appearing here as well) and the stuff that was recorded with Art & Language hold up the best. Overall worth investigating, especially if your RoughTrade waxings are getting worn.

Spin

November 2010

Proving Americans (Texans, even!) can be just as pretentious as any Old Worlder, this conglomeration (basically, singer-guitarist Mayo Thompson plus whomever else) began by out-freaking psychedelia in '60s Houston, took a lengthy hiatus, then by the '80s were enlisting Raincoats and Essential Logic gals to help conflate Lenin and Jackson Pollock. They didn't stop there, spilling lots of 45s — compiled here — along the way.