Mayo Thompson

Mayo Joseph Thompson Jr. (born February 26, 1944) is an American musician and visual artist best known as the leader of the experimental rock band Red Krayola. He released his only solo album Corky's Debt to His Father in 1970, and later collaborated with the English conceptual art collective Art & Language. He formed the band Saddlesore with Rick Barthelme, Frank Davis and Cassell Webb in 1971, and the Rockin' Blue Diamonds in 1972 with Barthelme, Rock Romano and Tucker Bradley. He later worked with Greek composer Manos Hatzidakis and artist Robert Rauschenberg.

By the late 1970s, he moved to England and began working with Rough Trade where he co-produced releases with Geoff Travis for groups such as the Monochrome Set, Stiff Little Fingers, the Raincoats, the Fall, Scritti Politti, Blue Orchids, LiLiPUT and Cabaret Voltaire. Thompson briefly joined the band Pere Ubu and was credited as an associate producer for the Smiths' "The Queen Is Dead" music video. He contributed to film soundtracks for Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames and Derek Jarman's The Last of England. He later produced the Chills, Felt, Shop Assistants and Primal Scream in the mid-to late 1980s. Thompson would move to Germany and collaborate with artists and musicians such as Albert Oehlen, Dieter Moebius and Conny Plank.

During the 1990s, Thompson moved back to the United States, signed to the label Drag City and briefly joined the German free improvisation group COWWS Quintet. In 1994, he taught at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena until 2008. His paintings and visual artwork were later exhibited at Galerie Buchholz. He released two novels Art & Mystery (2018) and After Math: Art, Mystery - Part II (2023).

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