Should have been one episode but there’s too much material to pack in to 30 minutes so it will be continued… The Red Krayola and their collaboration with conceptual Art collective; Art and Language. Tracks today from Red Crayola’s first LP (they became Krayola after being threatened with legal action if they retained Crayola); The Parable of Arable Land, with The Familiar Ugly 1967: Free form Freak Out 5 followed by the title track Parable of the Arable Land and then Hurricane Fighter Plane (stereo edition). Then, Listen to This and The Shirt from their second album issued in 1968: God Bless The Red Krayola And All Who Sail With It. Finally a couple of tracks from Corrected Slogans with Art and Language 1976.

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Today’s programme plunders the distinguished career of John Wynne, presenter of Up Country, and sound artist, otherwise known as Mr Speaker after his 300 speaker installation at the Saatchi Gallery, the recording of which is ruthlessly superimposed over the original soundtrack from The Big Country; John’s theme tune, cassette stuff from Material/Immaterial (1989), taking in Canadian Inuit music recorded in a Quebec hospital as well as other “Wynnonia” including early Stanley Brothers and Captain Richard Jonas.

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This week we continue the investigation into the liaison between the conceptual Art group “Art and Language” and The Red Krayola, naming the members of each outfit would take up the remaining 25 minutes of the programme. Previous programmes focussed on the Red Krayola and the Familiar Ugly up to 1976 when they combined with Art and Language to produce the LP Corrected Slogans. The following quote is by Charles Harrison, himself a one time member of Art and Language from the book Essays on Art and Language: “The artists who were to form Art and Language were among those who had an intuition of what a modern and non-provincial practice might be like, and who desired something of the kind. Yet to ask in the normal places what might be the price of achieving such a practice was to discover that one’s resources were in the wrong form of currency: that the prevailing medium of exchange was “pigges bones” (Chaucer). Though the supposedly magical significance of the objects in question was belied by the fraudulence of their provenance, this fraudulence was itself a function of the magic-authenticating system. As Benjamin said a propos the work of Brecht, the task was to get rid of the magic.” Today I’m leapfrogging a few decades to the latest release by The Red Krayola with Art and Language in association with Drag City Incorporated: “Five American Portraits” recorded in 2008, mixed in 2009 and released in 2010. Once again, I need a magnifying glass to read the ever diminishing texts on a CD cover unlike the easily legible LP covers of old. The personnel on this record are Gina Birch; vocals and bass, Alex Dower on drums, Jim O’Rourke, Tom Rogerson, Mayo Thompson, and Tom Watson. There is no explanation of why these five were chosen from all the Americans in the world: Wile E. Coyote; the cartoon character who never catches up with Road Runner, President George W. Bush, President Jimmy Carter, John Wayne and the artist Ad Reinhardt who started out as a political caricaturist and then turned to painting ever minimalist canvases of black on black squares. The lyrics of each portrait describe the details of each person’s face as though one were looking at the features whilst drawing them perhaps… for example the opening lines of Wile E. Coyote: “The lower region of the inner surface of the left ear. The iris of the left eye. A bit of fur at the extreme upper right of the cheek. A highlight on the nose. Of Wile E. Coyote.” This eccentric formula is repeated for each character. In each case, a bald presentation of the facial characteristics of each person is accompanied by music.

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Bob Parks and the Recreationals live in the studio performing a festive rendition of We Free Kings in the style of Roland Kirk (who I saw once at Ronnie Scott’s when he performed Blacknuss and had an acrimonious altercation with a white member of the audience about Black Power and the lyrics of Blacknuss causing aforementioned white person to walk out muttering about how it wasn’t jazz as he knew it…) followed by a diatribe by Bob and ending with a loud (and quiet) version of Silent Night.

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