Red Krayola with Art & Language - Gross and Conspicuous Error #8

Corrected Slogans was the first LP to be produced and was worked on by Art & Language and Red Crayola founder member Mayo Thompson between 1973 and its release date in 1976. The albums artwork, musical scores and other ephemera were shown in the room next door to the two videos And Now for Something Completely Different and Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors (both 1976), which have a similar lyrical content to the album and which both contain ironic posturing that thinly masks an awkward energy brought about by the mixture of political anthems and rock and roll. Of the two videos, Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors best represents this experimental vitality. Unrehearsed songs are performed by groups of unsuspecting participants as well as the knowing core collaborators Art & Languages Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, with Thompson on guitar and Jesse Chamberlain on drums. Activist slogans, such as we must ferociously attack so called institutionalized egalitarianism it is a smokescreen, which attempts to replace activist content with liberal structures, are chanted en masse and played out as theoretical quotations and self-mocking mantras. At one point Ramsden sings the line Marxs old chestnut the philosophers know how to interpret the world, the point is to change it is embedded in the nexus of dialectics and Thompson makes a dedication to Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said you cannot be a philosopher and a Communist at the same time.

Andrew Hunt

~ http://lix.in/-7189d0

Category:

Music

Tags:

• rock
• psychedelia
• wittgenstein

[ianmilliss1]

That is Ian Burn on the mike, Terry Smith and Nigel Lendon in the background. I can't actually see Mel Ramsden anywhere there although I think Burn told me that he was an accomplice.

[diskochimp]

*More, not move. ACK!

[diskochimp]

The older I get, the more The Red Krayola make sense & the move I fucking love them. Terrific clip btw!

[darrenfinizio]

"Nonsensuous transformation transports insidiously into tourists"....brilliant........­i like this guy. Btw, speaking of language, have you noticed that spell-check keeps our global utilization of the English language correct? Yes, they are two words ('spell' and 'check'), hyphen optional.

[darrenfinizio]

This is more relevant now than then.