The Red Krayola with Art & Language - Baby and Child Care (2016)

Drag City presents a newly-unearthed artifact from the long history of The Red Krayola: 1984's previously-unheard Baby and Child Care. Every year, we discover in our society the injustices of history in many and myriad forms. Surely among the most profound realizations of 2016 will be that the heads of (record) industry circa 1984 did not hear a fantastic new release when the tapes for Baby and Child Care were played to them! Grooving sinuously in prime mid-80s form in a production redolent with funk, dub and new-wave inflections, Baby and Child Care is of a musical vintage whose dry complexity is even more appreciable today. The revolutionary advice found within The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care opened doors in the mid-40s that are widening still; at the time of this album project, it had influenced a generation or two of generally young parents. At that time, The Red Krayola were a band on a musical roll, having just recorded and released Black Snakes on the Swiss Rec Rec label. When presented with the lyric qualities of Dr. Spock's psychoanalytic texts, passages of which had been transposed by Art & Language's Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, Mayo Thompson immediately set them to music. The Red Krayola 'Black Snakes' band - Ben Annesley on bass, Chris White on drums and Allen Ravenstine on synthesizer and soprano sax - provided musical accompaniment in performances recorded by Eric Radcliffe at Blackwing Studios in London. Thirty-two years later, the conversant playing and production approach of Baby and Child Care comes across with an enduring completeness that belies its position on the shelf for the past several decades. Despite the initial lack of release, its pride of place can now be appreciated, an example of the Red Krayola's particular brand of collaboration. Standing tall next to the already-known classics of early-80s Red Krayola, from Kangaroo? through Three Songs on a Trip to the United States, Baby and Child Care is essential listening for parents and progeny alike.