The Red Krayola – God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It

God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It

The Red KrayolaGod Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It International Artists IA LP 7 (1968)


Of all the inventive rock music of the tail end of the 1960s, God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It has the distinction of being one that still sounds revolutionary almost 50 years later.  The songs (some can barely be called “songs” as such) mock contemporary rock and pop trends.  Sometimes typical 1960s vocal pop choruses are presented, but a cappella (“Music,” “Sherlock Holmes”).  The drums occasionally react to the other instruments rather than provide a propulsive, syncopated beat (“Say Hello to Jamie Jones”).  Other songs are self-consciously disorganized, with the musicians playing at different tempos, completely out of sync (“Save the House,” “Sheriff Jack,” “The Jewels of the Madonna”).  “Listen to This” consists of the spoken announcement, “Listen to this,” followed by a staccato plunking of a single key on the piano, totaling all of eight seconds.  The shameless insolence of Diogenes does come to mind.  There are some vaguely catchy, if abstract and angular, riffs and melodies here and there (“Dairarymaid’s Lament,” “Leejol,” “Dirth of Tilth,” “Tina’s Gone to Have a Baby”).  They end up being yet another unpredictable facet of the album, confounding expectations that can’t even categorically deny “conventional” rock.  None of the varied, strange devices dominates the album.  While that factor might explain while opinions are mixed, and why this has never really been assimilated into mainstream rock aside from a few punk and post-rock outfits, it also suggests why the movement of the late 1960s counterculture as a whole failed, because stuff like this never caught on.  People tended to cling to the stuff that was more salable, collapsing the movement back into those discrete aspects that fit best within the pre-existing paradigm.  But God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It didn’t fit that paradigm.  It still is a remarkably fresh and inventive album.  While the power centers of society may have pushed back against the 1960s counterculture, trying to prove that consumerism and nuclear families are the only viable options, The Red Krayola left behind artifacts like this, a surviving rebuttal that couldn’t quite be absorbed and co-opted.  Texan acts like labelmates The 13th Floor Elevators, but also the likes of Jandek and Ornette Coleman, seemed to have a way of not just taking chances, but trying to casually either make the Earth move or take leave of it entirely.  They reframed the concept of what a safe and secure life meant, placing within a collaborative dialog the possibility of chance, variation, and individuality.  But few were as irreverently funny as The Red Krayola.

Public Enemy – It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Public EnemyIt Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back Def Jam BFW 44303 (1988)


No one could have expected It Takes A Nation of Millions. It was too much of an album to expect.  Chuck D packs thought provoking messages into a bomb he detonates before you. It Takes A Nation of Millions wakes listeners to a whole new level of consciousness.

Flavor Flav was out there. Complete with clock (though Chuck D still wore one too), he was the wild card that made Public Enemy work. His crazy rhymes kept coming. He injected a different sense of rhythm into the whole. It was an attack from many sides as long as Flavor Flav was there.

Terminator X, Professor Griff and the others tend to be forgotten, as they aren’t even on the album cover. They were critical. Terminator X’s (and Johnny Juice‘s) aggressive scratches and the hard beats of The Bomb Squad were relentless. Looping again and again, the most powerful elements were isolated. The push was overpowering. Public Enemy had a sound that might have been a lot of things, but it certainly could not be ignored. It Takes A Nation of Millions dominates as long as it is playing.

The density of what is on a Public Enemy record had roots, but this was a new kind of concentration. Miles DavisOn the Corner provided the layered street funk attitude. The harsh beats and fondness for raw noise resembled industrial music too (for instance, Mark Stewart‘s As the Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade, Ministry).  As Michael Denning wrote in Noise Uprising about early sound recordings just before the Great Depression, “If noise is unwanted sound, interference, sound out of place, it is also a powerful human weapon, a violent breaking of the sonic order. *** In this frame, these musics represented the refusal of deference, the assertion of noise for noise’s sake, the singing of the subaltern . . . .”  This revolutionary attitude also — even if by chance — echoed punks like The Pop Group. Public Enemy sorted through every possibility to direct their efforts. They created chaos as needed, and could cut through it at will. Chuck D and his crew had control. That was the difference. They weren’t held back by the ordinary expectations of continuing to build on the past. It was more about striking out in the proper direction. Working with exactly the same sounds other musicians used, Public Enemy used them as ammunition to make sure their path was clear.

There is definitely a surplus of ideas here.  There is more in a single song here than in many artists’ whole careers.  Public Enemy works very hard to put so much across in every song.  It helped, perhaps, that the band was so large. There were many talents to draw on.

It is also obligatory to mention that this was a record made before the advent of sample clearing.  So no one makes them this way anymore.  Not that anyone really did at the time either.  When jazz pianist Cecil Taylor got started he did something unique, but it wasn’t long before he ratcheted up the speed and complexity by a factor of ten.  It is like that here.  Run-D.M.C. and the early hip-hop pioneers were no doubt influences and precedents, but It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back took all that and delivered it at hyperspeed.  If that weren’t enough, all the samples come at the listener in a barrage of noise, squawking repetition and booming thuds.  The samples draw on history, allusion and implied meaning, but also refuse to simply restate existing meaning, instead insisting on imposing further meaning.  Put another way, PE and the Bomb Squad didn’t just appropriate the proven appeal of the material they sampled, but took that as merely a starting point, a contextual reference point, to fashion something of their own that had significance beyond that of the sample.

The band uses the samples in a way that really creates a platform for the political messages.  Although the harshness and aggression of the beats seems like a way to frighten listeners, it was also a way to draw in the willing.  Like heavy metal?  Well, PE threw out some metal samples, but just shards and slivers, enough to make a listener who is into it find some common ground, but only enough to catch her attention and propose a deeper connection.  It is the same for the vintage soul and funk samples.  They provided some basis for their stance too.  There is rapping about not believing the hype, but they also include a snippet of a radio DJ calling them “suckers”.  And when building momentum, they play a live recording from a London show.  This wasn’t just a bunch of conclusory opinions.  This is an album that makes the effort to provide some evidence to contextualize its stances.  But what really made this band — and this album in particular — so special was that they built everything from very elemental concepts.  Chuck D and the Bomb Squad didn’t just present political programs, they built them up from more fundamental positions.  They get into deeper, abstract philosophical questions, and their political stance unfolds from them.

Public Enemy was self-aware of their own controversial status in the music industry.  This comes to a head on songs like “Don’t Believe the Hype.”  They engage this controversy, without defining themselves entirely by it or dismissing it outright.  They don’t get caught up in merely self-referential excess either.

One of the great albums of its day, or any, It Takes A Nation of Millions raised the bar. Public Enemy were an exceedingly intelligent group. It was the minds behind the music that made the album. They still focused all their attention on being levelheaded champions of their people. Fuck the finer points, it’s just good to listen to.

Barbara and Karen Fields – How Race is Conjured

Link to an interview with Barbara and Karen Fields by Jason Farbman:

“How Race is Conjured”

Very interesting comments on “racecraft”.  Though the comparisons to non-causality are a little tenuous in the interview, and the gap between psychology and sociology is not so big if one compares, say, Lacan and Bourdieu.  Still, the distinction between identity and identification seems crucial.

Otis Redding – Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul

Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul

Otis ReddingOtis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul Volt S-412 (1965)


“When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.” – George Washington Carver

Otis Redding sang songs about the common things of life. He called up many sorts of feelings, but he always sang in response to common things and shared human experiences. What set Otis apart was his deep sympathy for all the good there could be in the world. His stuff, even with hard-times blues feelings, had positive emotion behind it. The context was familiar but Otis’ soul feeling had a romantic precision — quite the same exceptional insight found in the portraits Vermeer painted. He always located an incorruptible goodness at the foundation of every one of his songs.

Only three originals make the album, but they are each classics. “Ole Man Trouble” has the plodding organ of Booker T. Jones in the background with Steve Cropper’s guitar lacing its way around the melody. Aretha may have later taken “Respect” for her own, but Otis still belted out the original nicely.

Otis really grew out of the frenetic Little Richard school of R&B, but was a also great admirer of the smooth crooning of Sam Cooke. Here Otis unleashes three songs from his Cooke repertoire. “Change Gonna Come” has a muggy intimacy that swells around every aching hope. Al Jackson, Jr.’s drums add heart to the song’s soul. It’s a rendition that would have made Cooke proud.

The other covers Otis includes make sure the album is solid throughout. “My Girl” is a tough song to pull off with less than five Temptations, but Otis was up to the challenge. The Stones’ “Satisfaction” is a song practically written for Otis to sing. This gritty, driving take is one of the best on wax. Otis sings in a fervor that perfectly compliments the rumble from “Duck” Dunn’s bass. Solomon Burke’s “Down In the Valley” has The Memphis Horns dishing their whimsical best through some taught harmonies.

Southern soul out of Stax records in Memphis (Volt was a Stax imprint) had the do-it-yourself charm of letting the performers’ personalities come through. The point was to reach for what mattered. Few, if any, other soul singers could reach as deep as Otis. He knew how to pull out an exasperated cry whenever needed. Otis had instincts that can’t be taught. Being from an uncommon kind of talent, his singing on records like Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul still commands attention.