The Red Krayola in Tokyo
The Red Krayola in Tokyo is a 1995 Japanese TV documentary about the Red Krayola produced for NHK.
Background
The documentary was filmed in October 1994 during the Red Krayola's first Japanese tour. The band was supporting their first album on Drag City, The Red Krayola. The performances shown in the documentary were filmed at Shimokitazawa Shelter on October 4[1][2] and P3 Art and Environment's symposium on music and art on October 7.
The documentary aired on Japanese television in 1995.
Credits
| Role | Person |
|---|---|
| The Red Krayola | Mayo Thompson |
| David Grubbs | |
| Tom Watson | |
| John McEntire | |
| Director / Cameraman | Takeshi Kimi |
| Cameraman | Yuji Kanazawa |
| Hideyuki Tanaka | |
| Sound Recordist | Eiji Mori |
| Video Engineer | Manabu Sato |
| Grip | Tomoko Itakura |
| On-line Editor | Masahiro Watanabe |
| Sound Engineer | Tomomi Yamauchi |
| Production Assistant | Tomomi Fujiyama |
| Seiichi Kaisaka | |
| Asako Kai | |
| Taro Shiokawa | |
| Hisashi Kanke | |
| Special Thanks to | Timothy Blum |
| Klaas Glenewinkel | |
| Shimokitazawa SHELTER | |
| P3 art and environment | |
| Tokyo Art Speak | |
| Drag City Records | |
| Producer | Toshihiko Kawaguchi |
| Produced by | MASTERMIND Productions Inc. |
| Documentary Japan Inc. |
Reviews
Chicago Tribune
March 3, 1995[3]
[...] the group spent ample time touring over the last year, and a recent visit to Japan resulted in a national broadcast on prime-time TV of a documentary on the Red Krayola. While in Tokyo, the group also did an installation at an art bookstore and performed scenes from Thompson's opera, "Victorine," which has a libretto co-written with Art & Language.
Transcript
| Time | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| 00:04 | October 1994, Tokyo | |
| 00:10 | "Rapspierre" live clip 1 of 3 | |
| 00:29 |  |
imported / 輸入された |
| 00:33 | Thompson: And I think that a lot of the things that we saw beginning to develop in pop music and in popular culture in the sixties are now very widespread. We see, for example, a general fragmentation of the very idea of art. I mean, everything is wide open; you can do pretty much anything that you can get away with, in fact. The question is being able to justify things, of course. Of course we aspire to justified practice. | |
| 00:57 | "Pride" live clip | |
| 01:04 | |
Title card: 伝説のロック・バンド The Red Krayola (ザ・レッド・クラヨラ) in 東京 |
| 01:18 | Thompson (on phone): ...Doo-dah... Racetrack five miles long. Oh, the doo-dah day. Oh, to run all night! ..To run all day... | |
| 01:37 | Thompson: I don't know if you know what it was like; in 1965, the Beatles were, y'know, like the top of the world and everything looked possible. Absolutely everything looked possible. It seemed even that you might be able to import into popular music some — what would you call them? — artistic ideas or some quasi-serious ideas. It didn't have to be about bubblegum and all that sort of stuff. And I took this seriously. I took bourgeois ideology seriously. | |
| 02:04 | "Pride" clip / Japanese voiceover | |
| 03:09 | Vending machine | |
| 03:31 | "I Knew It" clip / Japanese voiceover / Thompson getting street footage | |
| 04:47 | 下北沢シェルター (Shimokitazawa Shelter) | |
| 04:53 | "Old Tom Clark" live clip / Japanese voiceover | |
| 05:14 | Thompson: Now it's an interesting time because there's not a — for example, in '78 there was punk ideology, right, and this whole independent idea — which was, of course, a complete — everything was so contradictory all the time. On the one hand you had The Clash, or these people, y'know — people are talking about 'honesty to the kids in the street' who are signed to CBS. And the Pistols have signed three recording contracts with three of the biggest record companies in the world. The independent scene was always a stepping stone to the majors in those days. | |
| 05:43 | "Dairymaid's Lament" live clip | |
| 07:44 | Thompson: I took piano lesson when I was eleven. When I was in the first band I was ever in, I was twelve with a guy when I was in boarding school. I don't know when this was, '58, '59? Then, went to college and got very interested in jazz. I learned an awful lot from jazz. But technically, it was just not the thing I was interested in; I was really more interested in composing new material. I did not want to interpret; more than anything I wanted to generate new material. | |
| 08:12 | "14" live clip | |
| 10:35 | Thompson: The Red Krayola is fun, partly, for me, because it hasn't — somehow I had the luck never to be so successful that I got trapped. It would get together and it was just that ephemeral that it would come apart. And then it would come together again with new people and different ideas and new blood. And, y'know, being an old vampire, I love new blood, y'know [chuckles] | |
| 10:58 | "Worried Worried" live clip | |
| 15:28 |  |
miso / 味噌 |
| 15:31 | Thompson: The acoustic sensations pretty much coincide; they seem fairly international to me. I'm such a nomad, y'know, I go every-bloody-where on Earth and it sounds quite like most cities I know. The unique things that you don't hear — you don't hear pachinko parlors everywhere, umm... you don't hear Japanese everywhere. | |
| 15:49 | Reiko A. - "Untitled" live clip / Reiko A. interview in Japanese | |
| 17:08 | Thompson: And I think that that was one of the main ideas behind pop music to begin with was that you didn't have to be bloody Beethoven, y'know, anybody can stand up and have a go and put something out. | |
| 17:20 | Masaya Nakahara interview in Japanese / Violent Onsen Geisha - "Untitled" live clip | |
| 19:20 | ? interview in Japanese / Tairikuotoko vs. Sanmyakuonna - "Planaria" live clip | |
| 20:27 | Thompson: | |
| 20:45 | ? interview in Japanese / Jun Kurosawa - "Sunshine of Your Love" live clip | |
| 21:20 | Thompson: And I think that the transformations that are | |
| 21:39 | "Free Form Freak-Out" live clip / Japanese voiceover | |
| 23:06 |  |
coming apart / 分解 |
| 23:10 | "People Get Ready (The Train's Not Coming)" live clip | |
| 24:31 |  |
art / 芸術、技術、人工 |
| 24:36 | "Art-Dog" clip / Japanese voiceover / Thompson at Gallery 360° | |
| 24:51 |  |
diachronic / 通時的な |
| 24:55 | "Art-Dog" clip / Japanese voiceover / Thompson at Gallery 360° | |
| 25:03 |  |
semifunctional / 半機能的な |
| 25:07 | "Art-Dog" clip / Japanese voiceover | |
| 25:23 |  |
sensational / 扇情的な |
| 25:28 | P3 art and environment | |
| 25:38 | "Rapspierre" live clip 2 of 3 | |
| 25:56 | P3 2 | |
| 26:31 | Critic Atsushi Sasaki speaks at P3 | |
| 26:56 | Thompson speaks at P3 | |
| 27:19 | Critic Gen Hirai speaks at P3 | |
| 27:37 | "Ergastulum" live clip | |
| 28:14 | Thompson at P3: You can put anything to music | |
| 28:37 | "Rapspierre" live clip 3 of 3 | |
| 29:01 |  |
heuristic violence / |
| 29:07 | "The Big Macumba" clip / Japanese voiceover / Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors clip | |
| 29:47 | Thompson: They pursued a visual art course | |
| 30:04 | "The Big Macumba" clip / Japanese voiceover / Victorine | |
| 30:20 | Thompson: When we have made abstract music we have | |
| 30:34 | "Victorine Act I Scene 1" live clip
Inspector Denis (Thompson): A crumpled sheet encroaches on her waistBlocking the concave curve. No sense of harmIs signified — no consciousness of fear.Her right knee rests, foreshortened more than fat,Against the lower inside partOf her unnaturally reduced left thigh. | |
| 31:04 | Thompson: The finished one will be — my wish is to make it on video | |
| 31:15 | "Victorine Act I Scene 1" live clip
First policeman (Tom Watson): Was she caught flagrante with a lover?Crime passionnel: we're sure to discoverSome dolorous "husband" wandering nearby.Inspector Denis: There'd be two figures, that's what you imply. Or the marks of a struggle, suggestions of flight;Nothing I see suggests that you're right.Why the drapery, the amputation,Why the lack of perturbation?First policeman: Why the window removed from its casement? Inspector Denis: Why does she seem so calm and complacent? Sergeant Nozière (David Grubbs): She has not so far been identified, Though my officers have tried and tried.One person to whom her name's unknownWhen casually questioned rents a roomIn lodging house on the left bankHe knows her by sight, her and her rankAnd he is sure he saw her in a barThe night she was killedThis must take us far awayThere's light at least upon the sceneInspector Denis: We know the café at least where she'd been Alone but awaiting a rendezvous.First policeman: We have a tenuous lead we can now pursue. We should visit the Café Vingt-et-un.And start to root out some likely suspects. | |
| 32:20 | Otomo Yoshihide - "Solo with Corky's Debt to His Father record" live clip / interview in Japanese | |
| 33:46 | Thompson: And I think that music will be | |
| 34:12 | "Around the Home" clip | |
| 34:57 | Thompson (on phone): Thank you! | |
| 34:58 | "Wives in Orbit" live clip / Otomo Yoshihide at P3 / ? at P3 | |
| 38:50 |  |
lacuna / 論理の隙間 |
| 38:55 | Thompson: I think that there's also the | |
| 39:40 | "101st" live clip | |
| 41:58 | Thompson: I think that on a personal level | |
| 42:37 | "Suddenly" clip / muted live clip of "Portrait of V. I. Lenin in the Style of Jackson Pollock, Part I" featuring Hanayo | |
| 43:16 | Japanese voiceover | |
| 44:06 | Credits | |
| 44:44 |  |
over / おわり |
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 | |||||||||