History

1960s

In 1966 the band signed to International Artists, home label to fellow psych-rockers The 13th Floor Elevators that was run by Lelan Rogers (brother of country musician Kenny Rogers). In 1967 the label released the psychedelic album, Parable of Arable Land, featuring six songs by the original three members interwoven with a cacophony generated by approximately 100 anonymous followers known as The Familiar Ugly who appear on a number of noise tracks called Free-Form Freak-Outs. The album's title track was a tape loop of electronic sounds with musical improvisations layered on top of it, a sound that foreshadowed the Red Crayola's second recording.

1970s–80s

Mayo Thompson continued to make music, both under his own name and as The Red Krayola. His collaborations in the 1970s and 1980s read like a roll call of the avant-garde and experimental artists and musicians of the era. The Red Krayola teamed up with the Conceptual Art collective Art & Language for three LPs: 1976's Corrected Slogans, 1981's Kangaroo? (also featuring The Raincoats' Gina Birch, Lora Logic and Swell Maps' Epic Soundtracks) and 1983's Black Snakes. Thompson joined Pere Ubu for a period in the early 1980s, performing on several releases, and provided soundtrack music for Derek Jarman. Throughout this time he was prolific as a producer for many other seminal experimental and alternative rock acts, including The Fall (1980's Grotesque (After the Gramme)), The Raincoats, Scritti Politti, Blue Orchids, Cabaret Voltaire, Stiff Little Fingers, Kleenex, The Chills and Primal Scream.

1990s–present

The 1990s found The Red Krayola with a new audience, who came to the group via musicians associated with Chicago's Post Rock scene and in particular the Drag City label, who had joined the band's ever-shifting line-up for a number of releases including the LPs Hazel (1996) and Fingerpainting (1999). These were, amongst others, Jim O'Rourke and David Grubbs of Gastr del Sol, the post-Conceptual visual artist Stephen Prina, German painter Albert Oehlen, George Hurley (formerly of The Minutemen and fIREHOSE), Tom Watson of Slovenly, and John McEntire of Tortoise. In 1995, Drag City finally released 1967's Coconut Hotel LP and in 1998 issued The Red Crayola Live 1967 with material from the Angry Arts Festival and Berkeley Folk Music Festival including their live collaboration with John Fahey.

Covers

British Space Rock group Spacemen 3 recorded a version of "Transparent Radiation" from the Red Crayola's Parable of Arable Land, and the same album's lead track "Hurricane Fighter Plane" was covered by UK deathrock group Alien Sex Fiend in 1986 and by Scottish act Future Pilot AKA in 1996.