Coconut Hotel
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| Coconut Hotel | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | March 25, 1995 | |||
| Recorded | 1967 at Andrus Studio, Texas, US | |||
| Genre | Experimental rock | |||
| Length | 33:22 | |||
| Label | Drag City[1] | |||
| Producer | Red Krayola | |||
| The Red Krayola chronology | ||||
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Coconut Hotel is an album originally recorded in 1967 by the American experimental rock band Red Krayola. The intent was for it to be the band's second album after the release of The Parable of Arable Land, but it was rejected and shelved indefinitely by International Artists.[2][3] Coconut Hotel would not hit stores till 1995 when it was finally issued by Drag City.[4][5]
Additionally, it was also intended to be part of a double album release with "Coconut Hotel" on the A-side and God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It on the B-side; however, due to the album being withheld for being way too experimental, this never came to be.
Background
Frederick Barthelme said: "Coconut Hotel is what the Crayola was about in ’67. This is what we played in the clubs in Houston, and in concerts in California, and what we recorded when we recorded a (possibly still unreleased) LP with the late John Fahey in Berkeley in 1967 (Live 1967).[6] We started with House of the Rising Sun and a year later were taping contact microphones to our throats, and putting big copper wires in the place as guitar strings, miking ice (Steve Cunningham’s great moment), and trying out small electric motors. The idea was that pure, saintly sound could save you from certain death and that rock & roll was—dare I say it?—fundamentally compromised. We were not entirely wrong, as history has demonstrated."
Recording
For Coconut Hotel, Mayo Thompson, Steve Cunningham and Frederick Barthelme returned to Walt Andrus' studio for another album - Mayo had this to say about the recording "We recorded all live in stereo, a pair of matched condenser microphones. They were set up in stereo in this room. It had a lot of space, it had a lot of natural acoustic depth and space, so you don't need a lot of reverb. The first piece, the idea is that we want to play these keyboards. There's no plan, we're gonna play 'em, we're gonna play 'em for awhile until we get tired and see what this piece does and see how long it goes on. The development of it is not in the usual musical way — there's not a melodic development, there's not a rhythmic development, there's not an intensifying of the dynamic strategy or anything. It's just always more or less the same. And then the next piece was built around the idea of an improvisation which had some kind of "kitschy" poetic elements. Like clarinets and playing into the water. It had a lot of atmospheric, koto going 'wunnh', strange, exotic instruments. And also the agreement on being abstract. The decision was taken to make an album that was obviously 180 degrees out from Parable of Arable Land. No drums, no songs, no rock, no rhythm. A hard-ass record, an experimental record in the sense of is there anything possible? Is there anything left to play? Is there anything to do with pop music at the time? Yeah."
Music
The album contains a transgressive one second piece suite that explores melody, rhythm, timbre, texture and harmony all in the space of a single second - a far cry from the extremely short songs bands like Bull of Heaven and Napalm Death would later produce. Additionally, "one second piece" might have been the shortest song ever made before the recording of You Suffer in 1987.
This is what Steve Cunningham said of the suite: "We came upon these pieces when we were trying the experiments in sound. They are compression of time with sound. They are just moments of different duration, all very short and of different composition than the longer pieces. These pieces can be conceived of as part of another piece, part of the last thing you heard, or as the beginning of the next piece, or as an island in the middle of no sound. It'll come out with a position that could be changed and put into another position. It works from the outside in and its environment will depend upon where you want to put it."
Most would see this album as a big jump from the Krayola's previous work but Cunningham saw it as a natural progression, he said "We feel that we are now doing the right thing, having in the past done likewise."
The second track "Water Pour" consists of a 2 minute piece that is played twice, Mayo Thompson said this was in reference to how Mozart would play the same piece twice.
The band explores vast changes in volume and droning organ lines on opening track "Boards", "Organ Buildup", "Vocal".
Reception
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [7] |
| The Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [8] |
Richie Unterberger of AllMusic, wrote: "It's totally uncompromising, and rather wearisome, to be honest. It's like nothing else that nominally 'rock' groups were doing in 1967."[7]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Steve Cunningham and Mayo Thompson
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Boards" | 6:28 |
| 2. | "Water Pour" | 4:40 |
| 3. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 4. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:06 |
| 5. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 6. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 7. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 8. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:07 |
| 9. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:08 |
| 10. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:05 |
| 11. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:05 |
| 12. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:05 |
| 13. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:07 |
| 14. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 15. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:11 |
| 16. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 17. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 18. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:11 |
| 19. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 20. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 21. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:06 |
| 22. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 23. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:05 |
| 24. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 25. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 26. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 27. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 28. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 29. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:07 |
| 30. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:05 |
| 31. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 32. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 33. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:06 |
| 34. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 35. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 36. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 37. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:04 |
| 38. | "One-Second Piece" | 0:10 |
| 39. | "Organ Buildup" | 1:05 |
| 40. | "Vocal" | 6:29 |
| 41. | "Free Guitar" | 6:27 |
| 42. | "One-Minute Imposition" | 1:09 |
| 43. | "Piano" | 2:11 |
| 44. | "Guitar" | 1:29 |
Personnel
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References
- ^ "The Red Crayola - Coconut Hotel | Drag City". www.dragcity.com.
- ^ Miller, Eric T. (June 2, 2006). "The Red Krayola: Outside The Lines".
- ^ Reynolds, Simon (August 14, 2006). Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. Penguin. ISBN 9780143036722 – via Google Books.
- ^ Kenny, Glenn; Grant, Steven; Robbins, Ira (2007). "Red Crayola". Trouser Press. Retrieved May 26, 2016.
- ^ Jasinski, Laurie E. (February 22, 2012). Handbook of Texas Music. Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 9780876112977 – via Google Books.
- ^ "The Red Krayola – Frederick Barthelme".
- ^ a b Unterberger, Richie. "Coconut Hotel – The Red Crayola,The Red Krayola | Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards | AllMusic". AllMusic. Retrieved December 10, 2014.
- ^ Larkin, Colin (May 27, 2011). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Omnibus Press. ISBN 9780857125958 – via Google Books.
External links
- Coconut Hotel at Discogs (list of releases)
