by Roni Sarig
Thompson relocated to New York in the early ‘70s and, through an association with artist Robert Rauschenberg, met a radical collective based in New York and London called Art & Language. “They were the nastiest piece of work around as far as conceptual art was concerned,” Thompson recalls. “The hatchet boys, the hit men, with the fastest tongues and sharpest language.” Soon Mayo was writing songs to the group’s poetry, which was full of obscure philosophy and Marxist theory. “I gave them a copy of Corky’s Debt and asked them what they thought. ‘The lyrics are highly personal and don’t mean anything to anybody but you.’ And I said, That’s probably true. Do you have a better idea for lyrics?’ And they gave me the material for Corrected Slogans.”
Credited to Art & Language and the Red Crayola, 1976’s Corrected Slogans featured a cast of a dozen writers, singers, and musicians doing songs like The Mistakes of Trotsky, Thesmorphoriazusae, and Don’t Talk to Sociologists. Both philosophically and musically, the record had little to do with any rock tradition before it (though decades later, Stereolab’s lyrics come close).
Because Thompson was more closely aligned with the European branch of AGL, he moved to London in 1977 and made two more records with the group, ‘81’s Kangaroo? and ‘83’s Black Snakes. Thompson also got a job with influential indie label Rough Trade, for whom he produced records by the Raincoats, the Fall, and Pere Ubu (a band he would also join in the early ‘80s). And he continued making Red Crayola records with guest musicians such as Lora Logic (of X-Ray Spex), Gina Birch (of the Raincoats), Epic Soundtracks (of Swell Maps), and Allen Ravenstine (of Pere Ubu). Following 1984’s Three Songs on a Trip to the United States (which featured regular Crayolas Jesse Chamberlain and Ravenstine), Thompson put the group aside once more while he worked as an executive for Rough Trade (he marketed the Smiths’ Queen Is Dead). By the late ‘80s, Thompson found himself in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he worked as a jingle writer and made another Red Crayola album with German collaborators.
Mike Watt, Minutemen / fIREHOSE:
Like Beefheart, they were about having your own voice. They were a big influence on us. We used to listen to those records all the time. Mayo played with that wiry, trebly style too. It left more room for the bass, that’s why D. Boon dug it.
In the early ‘90s, Thompson met Gastr del Sol guitarist David Grubbs, who had been in Louisville’s Squirrel Bait (with members of Slint) and was heavily influenced by Mayo’s work. “Hearing Gastr del Sol’s music I thought, ‘Yeah, this has something to do with what I know, some tradition I understand,’” Thompson says. Soon, he was back in the U.S., teaching art at a college in California and collaborating with Grubbs on new music. In 1994, a re-formed Red Krayola – featuring Grubbs and his Gastr bandmate Jim O’Rourke, as well as Tortoise’s John McEntire, members of Slovenly, and Minutemen drummer George Hurley – began releasing new material. Though it undeniably retains Mayo’s distinct voice, the ‘90s Red Krayola, still out of bounds 30 years after, completes a circle that runs from Thompson’s early avant rock to today’s leading experimenters.
DISCOGRAPHY
The Parable of Arable Land (International Artists, 1967; Collectibles, 1993); the debut, featuring “free form freakouts” and psychedelic rock songs.
Coconut Hotel (unreleased, 1966/67; Drag City, 1995); an unreleased album of mostly instrumental experimentation.
God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail on Her (International Artists, 1968; Collectibles, 1993); the final recording of the original Houston-based band.
(Mayo Thompson) Corky’s Debt to His Father (unreleased, 1970; Drag City, 1994); Thompson’s only solo record, a great collection of songs by a mostly acoustic band.
(w/ Art & Language) Corrected Slogans (Music Language, 1976; Recommended, 1982); this eccentric batch of political songs is Thompson’s first collaboration with the artist collective.
Soldier-Talk (Radar, 1979).
Microchips & Fish (Rough Trade, 1979).
(w/ Art & Language) Kangaroo? (Rough Trade, 1981; Drag City, 1995); a more accessible collaboration, with an all-star underground line up.
(w/ Art & Language) Black Snakes (Rec-Rec / Pure Freude, 1983).
Three Songs on a Trip to the United States (Recommended, 1984); a mini-album, partially live.
The Malefactor (Glass, 1989); a record made by Thompson and musical collaborators in Germany.
The Red Krayola (Drag City, 1994); the first record of Krayola’s ‘90s incarnation, featuring members of Gastr del Sol, Tortoise, and other bands.
Amor & Language (Drag City, 1995); a mini-album with model Rachel Williams on the cover.
Hazel (Drag City, 1996).
NAIVE ROCK
In the world of classic art, qualifications such as discipline, training, and mastery of form have been used to identify the masters. Classical music, for instance, generally requires a certain level of virtuosity to perform successfully, and the best musicians are usually among the most technically accomplished. With folk art, though, such determinations are less important, since most folk artists are self-trained. While technique is still prized in folk traditions, creative vision and expressiveness are valued more.
In recent decades, as American folk traditions have dwindled – many being relegated to museums and preservationists – a specific type of folk art has emerged. Variously called outsider art, visionary art, or naive art, it describes current work made by people with no connection whatsoever to the mainstream or academic art world. These artists – often poor and uneducated, from rural areas – make art simply to fulfill their natural need to express themselves. The most impressive works of naive art, predictably, are those that come out of a natural gift and a truly eccentric vision.
In music, there is an analogous genre that could be called naive rock. As with outsider art, makers of naive rock are eccentrics and visionaries whose talents of expression more than overcome their limited training. With naive rock, not only are technical considerations not important, they can be a disadvantage. Primitive and innocent, the music is free of self-conscious creative restrictions and post-modern cynicism.
Amy Rigby:
If you’re just looking at someone like Madonna or the big stars, you can’t really see yourself in that same place, doing it the same way. But the more outside people make it seem more possible, to someone like me, anyway.
Hearing the naive rock music of groups like the Shaggs or Half Japanese, it’s natural for experienced ears to perceive it as noisy, inept, or just plain worthless. And those who champion such music above more easily digestible fare can easily be seen as praising “the emperor’s new clothes.” But at its best, this music challenges listeners to allow themselves to hear completely foreign sounds with unprejudiced ears. To even try to compare these groups to more accomplished rock bands is to miss the point; these are truly alternative artists that demand a complete reappraisal of what makes music valuable.
It should be noted that Jonathan Richman is included in this chapter, despite his mastery as a songwriter and performer, on the basis of his success in capturing an undistilled innocence in his music. Though he’s hardly an outsider from mainstream pop music in intellectual terms, Richman’s music overcomes the “disadvantages” of his technical capabilities with an eccentric charm that makes it fundamentally naive.
THE SHAGGS
Ira Kaplan, Yo La Tengo:
I find the Shaggs inspirational, just listening to them express themselves, without fear of being wrong or being bad, just doing something with the confidence that if you’re true to yourself then something good will come out. A lot of young bands have a fearlessness to just do things and not really care, but our band has gone through a bizarre evolution. We get more fearless as we get older, which is kind of backwards. The Shaggs are inspirational in our approach to playing guitar and organ and drums: You don’t have to know what you’re doing. And the things you know are not by definition better than the things you don’t know. Just be brave.
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��s hard to prove that the Shaggs have musically influenced anyone, since it’s impossible to consciously recreate what they innocently captured on record. However, with their example of absolute purity of expression and integrity, the Shaggs have taught a valuable lesson to many bands that, in rock, heart is always more important than technical ability. What’s more, the Shaggs’ example has encouraged more capable rock bands to see that approaching their music unselfconsciously is a way to keep the sounds fresh and the feelings honest.
Amy Rigby:
They definitely moved me, the way they sang in real voices instead of thinking, “I’m a singer, so I have to sing like a singer.” It was like they were talking amongst themselves, and the naïveté was charming. The name of the Shams [Rigby’s former band] was taken from mixing the Shaggs and the Tams [‘60s R&B group]. The Tams were so smooth and soulful and really had it together. And the Shaggs were kind of the opposite. We took a lot of inspiration from the Shaggs.
Before the Shaggs were a band, they were three sisters in the Wiggin family of Fremont, New Hampshire, who had been raised to be music lovers by their dad, Austin Wiggin Jr. By the late ‘60s the teenage Wiggin girls had developed a love for pop groups like Dino, Desi & Billy, and Herman’s Hermits, and when they expressed an interest in playing music, Austin was happy to help. He bought electric guitars for his eldest daughters, Dorothy (Dot) and Betty, and a drum set for the younger Helen, then enrolled the girls in voice and instrumental lessons.
To speed along their transition from musical novices to pop stars, the three girls stopped going to school. They took home courses through the mail in order to dedicate as much time and energy as possible to music lessons. Within a year, Dot had written a dozen songs and the sisters were hard at work learning to play them as a band. Though the girls hardly considered themselves ready, Austin – determined to “get them while they’re hot” – booked time in a recording studio.
On March 9, 1969, the Wiggins girls and their dad drove over to the studio in Revere, Massachusetts, and in a matter of hours the Shaggs, as the sisters were calling themselves, had put all 12 songs on tape. Austin Wiggins had made a deal with a local entrepreneur to press an album from the tapes, and as simple as that, The Shaggs were a recording group. Before their debut, Philosophy of the World, was released, however, the businessman skipped town with the Wiggins’ money. Still, the family managed to come away with a single box of albums, and Austin set about distributing the record wherever he could.
Listening to Philosophy of the World, it’s clear that although the Shaggs may have been a lot of things in 1969, “hot” was certainly not one of them. However, Austin’s misjudgment was responsible for capturing a truly remarkable moment on record. Philosophy is a masterpiece of American primitivism, a one-of-a-kind artifact of outsider music. Song after song, the girls flatly murmur deadpan odes to the radio, sports cars, boys, lost pets, parents, Halloween, and God, while they delineate their philosophy of the world. They’d yet to learn chord progressions or how to tune their guitars – and Helen’s drums pound away oblivious to tempo or rhythm – but the sheer ineptitude of the playing only works to enhance the record’s disarming intimacy and complete innocence. The three girls, completely removed from the rules and conventions of music, had created their own take on pop music, one that was unlike anything else.
Lou Barlow, Sebadoh / Folk Implosion:
I heard Philosophy of the World and was like, “Oh my God!” That record is totally damaged, it’s so perfect. The lyrics are so complete, the playing is so determined, but so off. I loved to play it for people to see the look that crossed their faces. I played it for my mother and she loved them, she said, “It’s so cute!” And my mom has very little patience for stuff that’s willfully obscure. It was cool to see someone like my mother hearing the Shaggs and just realizing the human part of it. That’s really what the Shaggs are about. It’s really emotional, not novelty.
Of course, few ever heard the record when it came out. And most who did simply laughed. The Wiggin sisters, though, continued to practice and eventually they were good enough to earn a steady gig Saturday nights at Fremont Town Hall. They even returned to the studio in 1975 and recorded a new batch of songs they called Shaggs’ Own Thing. By then, the young women had improved considerably, and a younger sister, Rachel, had joined on bass. The album, not released until 1982, includes covers of the Carpenters’ Yesterday Once More, as well as a remake of My Pal Foot Foot, a favorite track from Philosophy. The highlight of Shagg’s Own Thing, though, is undoubtedly the title track, on which the four Wiggins sisters accompany their dad and brother Robert, who playfully trade off vocals. And it’s clear where the girls have inherited their (lack of) musical abilities.
King Coffey, Butthole Surfers:
I first thought “what in the hell is this trash?” But when I looked upon it in the sense that these were simply people encouraged by a loving father to make music for the love of playing, it’s really touching. It’s really a beautiful record. Really experimental in a way. I don’t think they were trying to be, but they were pursuing a path of music that had no formal basis, it just made sense to them.
Austin Wiggins died not long after the second album was made, and the Shaggs faded from view At some point in the late ‘70s, the Shaggs’ first record caught the attention of the band NRBQ, who turned fellow musicians from Bonnie Rait to Frank Zappa on to their discovery. In 1980, NRBQ reissued Philosophy of the World on their Red Rooster label. That year, to the astonishment of the Wiggins sisters and the entire town of Fremont, Rolling Stone magazine voted the Shaggs “Comeback of the Year.”
DISCOGRAPHY
Philosophy of the World (Third World, 1969; Rounder, 1980); the ultra-rare debut album that was heralded as “comeback of the year” when it was reissued.
Shaggs’ Own Thing (Rounder, 1982); a second album of songs recorded in 1975, when the Wiggin sisters had become more polished.
The Shaggs (Rounder, 1988); a CD compilation of all known recordings of the Shaggs, including the two albums and some home tapes.
HALF JAPANESE
I used to listen to [Half Japanese] on my walkman while strolling round the supermarket, right there at the heart of American culture. I though if other people got into listening to this music, they’d start to melt, to go crazy, to jump right out of their skins. So then I’d turn it up full, and imagine the music was coming from the store’s loudspeakers.
Kurt Cobain, Nirvana [from French zine Inrockuptible]:
Sometimes it’s the folks that don’t know anything who can teach us the most. That’s certainly the case with Half Japanese. Armed with only their hyperactive creativity and natural enthusiasm, brothers David and Jad Fair – two nerdy punk savants – created some of the most liberating rock music ever put to tape. Though few musicians could hope to capture the unschooled innocence of Half Japanese, hearing them has given other bands a glimpse of a world that operates on completely different rules than most rock, if indeed it has any rules at all. Experiencing Half Japanese’s inspiring freedom, even vicariously, has allowed groups such as Sonic Youth and Nirvana to expand the limits of their own music as well.
David Fair and his younger brother Jad grew up in southern Michigan in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. Though they listened to the Beatles and Motown groups on the radio, they also loved little-known garage bands that were making noise over in Detroit, such as the Stooges and MC5. During college, the brothers moved together into a house, where they found a guitar and amp someone apparently left behind. Though they’d never played music before, they decided to get a drum set as well, and before they could bother taking lessons David and Jad had formed a band.
Half Japanese, as the brothers called their band, immediately set on their quest to become the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world. Though they didn’t know how to play chords, keep a proper beat, or sing on key, they managed to rock quite well on irrepressible energy alone. Though they made noise like free jazz skronkers, H
alf Japanese were not pursuing any particular musical concepts. “I thought it sounded great,” Jad remembers. “I didn’t think of it as noise, it was what came most natural to me, like folk music in a way. Only after the record came out, listening to it in a record store between two other records kind of brought to light for me that it was very different.”
Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:
In retrospect they were highly crucial. It was just these two Half Japanese brothers, banging on pots and pans and screaming out their love for Patti Smith. It was something I could relate to, like “Wow, this is like me if I didn’t control myself!” When I first saw Half Japanese in the ‘80s I was convened by the complete originality, and a certain bizarro quality that was really authentic. It wasn’t a put-on or a show, this guy was just a kind of strange cat who really wore his heart on his sleeve. Jad Fair and Half Japanese were a major influence on the whole K Records scene and I remember Kurt [Cobain] was really into them.
Their first release in 1977, a nine-song 7-inch EP titled Calling All Girls, was a burst of rock primitivism and physicality that took familiar rock themes – hating school, feeling misunderstood, failing with girls – to a nearly psychotic, but disarmingly raw, level. By then, David and Jad had finished school and moved with their parents to Maryland. Their familiarity with underground music had led them to the Residents and the Los Angeles Free Music Society, groups who were producing independent music sold through the mail. Following suit, Half Japanese began making tapes of themselves.
