The Red Krayola: the kolor of musik

Mayo Thompson holds no grudge against Binney & Smith. Forty years ago, the manufacturer of Crayola crayons sent Thompson and his band mates, Steve Cunningham and Frederick Barthelme, a cease-and-desist order, insisting the Texas psychedelic rockers change the name of their group, The Red Crayola.

"We didn't know anything about trademark infringement or intellectual property then," says Thompson by cellphone from New York.

"We were so keen to make a record at that point that if someone told us to paint ourselves green, we probably would have done it."

So thanks to Binney & Smith, the band became The Red Krayola. "I have tremendous admiration for that trademark," says Thompson. "And red still is the color."

Though the first edition of the band broke up in the late '60s, The Red Krayola's reputation has done nothing but grow in the intervening years, thanks to its noisy experimentalism, acerbic humor and Thompson's guiding hand.

The band's most recent disc, "Introduction," was released in April, and though it presents a relatively kinder, gentler, even accessible Red Krayola, the antic spirit is alive and well.

For example, "Psy Ops" wryly comments on the psychological warfare used against Branch Davidian leader David Koresh and Thompson being, as he puts it, "blamed for post-punk" music.

The moody "It Will Be (Delivered)," which Thompson says is "a song about karma and guilt," at first sounds a bit cracked, but by the end, with Thompson singing in a near falsetto over piano and chimes about suspicious government endeavors and the dignity of human activity, it achieves a certain grandeur.

Then there's "Greasy Street," a playful, mesmerizing take on the oil business full of synth atmospherics.

Told it should be on the radio, Thompson replies, "I wouldn't mind being part of the conversation. ... Ten minutes a day there should be room for some crackpot [expletive]."