Recorded live in Venice Beach, California and at the Berkeley Folk Festival, Berkeley, California in June and July 1967.
A two-CD set of live 1967 performances, some at the Angry Arts Festival in Los Angeles on June 29 of that year, the others from the Berkeley Folk Festival over the next few days. Like the other archival Red Krayola (or Red Crayola, as it was spelled then) release on Drag City, Coconut Hotel, this is far more avant-garde than what the group did on their pair of late-'60s albums. Since those albums were themselves among the weirdest things recorded by a rock group in the period, you know this is way out-there stuff. In fact, it's not rock music at all -- it has no conventional songs as such, or singing. It's six pieces of experimental, instrumental, contemporary composition, largely comprised of extended dissonant drones, plucks, electronic bursts, and feedback. At times it's similar to those instrumental drones that take up space on some early Velvet Underground bootlegs, or the very weirdest parts of late-'60s Pink Floyd pieces (like the shrieking guitar scrapes of "Interstellar Overdrive"). The Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd, however, rarely stuck with this kind of inaccessible freakiness for more than a few minutes at a time on record, even at their most willfully obscure. This is all inaccessible freakiness, with John Fahey helping out on one of the six pieces. You have to admire the guts (or perhaps it was just obstinacy) of a group playing their most far-out material for audiences that were probably expecting songs or psychedelic rock. Do not, however, expect anything on the order of their two International Artists albums, or any evidence of Mayo Thompson's vocals or songwriting (indeed, none of his songs-with-lyrics from the early Red Krayola days are reprised here). The fidelity is fairly good considering that these seem to be taken from unprofessional recordings (you can hear lots of audience chatter and extended patter from a radio announcer at points). ~ Richie Unterberger
A strange archival release of '60s maverick psychedelic band Red Crayola. This double CD represents a vital missing link in the group's three-decade history. On its first album, THE PARABLE OF ARABLE LAND, Red Crayola linked rock songs with bursts of frenzied group improvisations called "Free Form Freak Outs." Their live sets were said to have consisted solely of noise, and this set provides the proof.
On both the concert tracks, the band indulges in earsplitting feedback for its own sake, even more abrasive and austere than anything the Velvet Underground, The Mothers of Invention, or The Grateful Dead did in concert at the time. The radio broadcast included here of their Berkeley Folk Festival appearance finds a bewildered broadcaster assuming that the band is tuning up and will be starting their set momentarily. The audience response is predictably chaotic. The tracks recorded in hotel rooms and with John Fahey are considerably more sedate, similar to the instrumentals on the lost COCONUT HOTEL album (also issued by Drag City). Any lover of experimental music should appreciate LIVE 1967, and hardy Red Crayola devotees will not be disappointed.

The Wire (02/99, p.56) - "...LIVE 1967 is a confrontational document to set alongside BOB DYLAN 1966 and The Stooges' METALLIC KO..."