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The Parable of Arable Land is the first studio album by Red Krayola (then known as The Red Crayola) which features improvised pieces dubbed "Free Form Freak-Out" as well as notable instrumental cameos by label mate and 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson. The album is mostly well known for being an avant-garde stepping stone in the history of rock music.

The Familiar Ugly

Mayo Thompson details the formation of their secondary auxiliary The Familiar Ugly: "It was an organization that accompanied, or enveloped, or just happened while we played. It was part of the phenomenon then. They were undirected. Open-numbered; any number above one. If you had the Red Crayola plus one person on stage, that person was the Familiar Ugly. If there were five, or fifty, up to an indefinitely large number. When we started the band, Barthelme and I and we looked around to see if we could put together a “band”, to take it to the level where we could actually see if it worked. People liked it, liked the “noise” we made. When we met Cunningham, we also met Bonnie Emerson and Danny Schacht, and we played as a five-piece. It was alright, it could have gone on, but we were becoming a regular band: doing covers, the things driving the formal expressions were idiomatic, and genre-ridden. That was getting problematic. We were trying to write material, and felt that the only forward was to generate fresh material, which had some sort of novelty to it so that we would be satisfied and remain interested in the problem, in the hopes that there would be some popular assonance there and see what would happen. And eventually this conversation led to somebody else joining the band, and then somebody else joining the band on one night, and we looked at each other and thought, “Hm.” So when you start a conversation, people who can participate will."

The Familiar Ugly played their music on industrial power tools, telephones, sheet metal, talking dolls, furniture, bells, bottles, sticks, flutes, whistles, kazoos, pots, pans, matchsticks, alarm clocks, a jug, rocks, piccolo, hammers, mouth bow, bells, balloons, a buzz saw and even a revving motorcycle.

Recording

The Familiar Ugly (the group of 50 friends who provide the Free Form Freak-Outs that appear between each song) were recorded on April Fools' Day 1967 in a 3 hour session. They were instructed by the band to play whatever they pleased. The band then recorded the rest of the album's material on the following days: 5 April 1967 (its unknown what was recorded at this session, on the 2014 Parable of Arable Land reissue it is stated it was: "possibly Former Reflections Enduring Doubt and or The Parable of Arable Land (title track)"; on 10 April they recorded "Pink Stainless Tail", "Hurricane Fighter Plane", "War Sucks" and lost recordings called "F.R.E.D" and "Water Vessel". Other unreleased songs from the era were "Vile Vile Grass" and "Mother", tracks which were later recorded properly on the original band's reunion album Fingerpainting. Another session was booked on 11 May, but it is also unknown what was recorded then.

Mayo Thompson describes the recording of the album: "Our first album was recorded mono. is Walt Andrus's studio wizardry. We made the mono version and then like two days later I was around the studio, and they said, 'Come here, what about this for a stereo album?' And I sat there and listened to it and I said, 'sounds okay to me, crazy, but sounds okay.' For the stereo mix the songs were processed through a stereo effects chamber with added psychedelic effects (such as loops, reversed tapes, sped up tapes and sound effects) for the stereo mix.

Music

The band was influenced by Frank Zappa, The Fugs, Albert Ayler and The Godz and while marketed as a "psychedelic" album, it also had a lot to do with modern 20th-century composers such as Harry Partch, John Cage and the avant-garde in general.

Mr. Thompson spoke shortly of their influences: "Albert Ayler was an influential figure. If you wanted to do something that had some intensity to it, you had to rise to the level of Bells. Or you had to rise to the level of Ascension, where it starts out with like 9 of the heaviest tenor players in the whole wide world". "When we heard Hendrix on the other hand, that put to any question of our pursuing virtuosity as something we had to have in place in order to be able to exchange ideas with people".

Free Form Freak-Out was a term coined by record producer Lelan Rogers he proposed the idea of having the album intermingle songs with the Familiar Ugly, fading one into the other. Mayo Thompson said of this: "Free form means “this ain't never gonna happen again. We're about to have an experience that will not be ever again. I'm not making any claims about form. It's an oxymoron at best. The guy was looking for an advertising slogan. That was his form; that was his description of what we did. I just clung to it because I'm a nominalist; So I'm just going with what we're calling it historically. What it winds up being called, I leave to posterity."

The most non-traditional and avant-garde of the six songs is the title track. An instrumental, it features nothing but a sparse and exotic-sounding percussion loop with minimal improvisation on top of it, building in intensity and then settling down over the course of about three minutes. This is not part of the "Free Form Freak-Outs", as it seems to be somewhat orchestrated. This track in particular foreshadows the blatantly minimalistic and non-commercial nature of their rejected second album, Coconut Hotel.

Each of the songs bears a lengthy subtitle on the track listing of vinyl and CD releases (listed in quotations instead of the typical parentheses) lifted directly from its own lyrics (except for the title track, which is an instrumental).

"And then over the next couple of days we went in and did the backing tracks — we played them live," with few overdubs. Vocal tracks on some songs, such as "War Sucks," were also recorded live. "When we had the backing tracks, Roky Erickson of the 13th Floor Elevators was invited in to play the organ part on 'Hurricane Fighter Plane' and played the mouth organ part on 'Transparent Radiation'."- Mayo talks about the recording of The Parable of Arable Land.

Production

The album cover was drawn by George Banks, the informal manager of the 13th Floor Elevators - he was also the illustrator behind the album cover for Easter Everywhere and other International Artist releases.

The Familiar Ugly was recorded in one evening session on one master tape, it was done on eight tracks - with eight microphones set up that all led down to one channel as said by Mayo Thompson: "We went back and pieced it together so that it would have a flow to it and all the while we were naïve. We went in the studio, if we'd had our druthers, we would have multitracked the free form stuff, because we could have done more of our own thing. As it was, it was just frozen. It was a documentary relation, documenting the recording."

Although all of the songs are credited as being written by the whole band, the truth is - "Hurricane Fighter Plane" was written by Thompson, the music to "Transparent Radiation" was written by Barthelme whilst the lyrics were written by Thompson, Barthelme and Thompson wrote the lyrics to "War Sucks" whilst the music was written by the whole band, Barthelme also wrote the music to "Pink Stainless Tail" whilst the lyrics were written by Thompson, the title track was written by the whole band while "Former Reflections Enduring Doubt" was written by Cunningham.

Reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Pitchfork	9.3/10
Spin Alternative Record Guide	9/10
Uncut

In a retrospective review, Pitchfork critic Alex Linhardt praised The Parable of Arable Land as "one of the most visionary album" of 1967. Trouser Press wrote that the album "boasts a more engaged intelligence than most of the era's aural acid baths". Mark Deming of AllMusic remarked that "The Parable of Arable Land exists on a plane all its own; if art-damaged noise rock began anywhere, it was on this album."

In 2011, The Parable of Arable Land was selected by Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT for inclusion in NME's list of "The 100 Greatest Albums You've Never Heard".

Jimi Hendrix owned a copy of The Parable of Arable Land - Kathy Etchingham believes that Hendrix picked up the album on an impulse because the cover artwork was similar in style to his own drawings.

Covers

Numerous bands have covered Hurricane Fighter Plane throughout the years including Sort Sol and Alien Sex Fiend.

The Cramps covered Hurricane Fighter Plane Live at The Venue in London on the 19th of April 1980 (this might be the very first Red Krayola cover).

Spacemen 3 covered Transparent Radiation in 1987 which also became a regularly performed live song for the band.

Really Red covered "War Sucks" for their 1984 Rest in Pain LP and followed it with a soundscape piece entitled "Just the Facts Ma'am", which is an obvious tribute to the free-form freakouts on "Parable of Arable Land".

Barkmarket covered Pink Stainless Tail in 1989 for their "Easy Listening" album.

Track listing

The songs on side a and side b are the same for both mono and stereo versions; however, some releases mark the Free Form Freak-Outs as part of the songs and because of this they only list all 6 songs.

In the 2011 Sonic Boom remaster Vile Vile Grass might have been tagged as a War Sucks demo by accident, as it bares no resemblance to the aforementioned song.

All tracks are written by Frederick Barthelme, Steve Cunningham and Mayo Thompson

Personnel

The Red Crayola

• Frederick Barthelme – drums
• Steve Cunningham – bass guitar
• Mayo Thompson – guitar, vocals

The Familiar Ugly (known members)

• Haydn Larson - spoons
• Roger Hamilton AKA William West
• Butch Caraban
• Pat Pritchett
• Pat Conley
• Danny Schwartz
• Barbara Metyko
• Alicia Garza
• Linda Linda
• Donald Pick
• Elaine Banks
• Sara Quigles
• David Potter's Wife
• Joe Pritchett
• Dennis Glomm
• Ian Glennie
• Larry Frost
• Skip Gerson
• Mike Metyko (F.R.B Rapho)
• Jamie Jones
• George Farrar (Red)
• Bill Smith

Additional personnel

• Roky Erickson – organ ("Hurricane Fighter Plane"), harmonica ("Transparent Radiation")
• Bonnie Emerson – guitar
• Danny Schacht – harmonica

Technical

• Lelan Rogers – production
• Walt Andrus – engineering
• George Banks – cover design

References

1. "The Familiar Ugly (Parable of Arable Land Gatefold 1967)". Imgur.com.
2. ^ "Mayo Thompson: Red Krayola recording history". Tapeop.com.
3. "The Red Krayola". Frederickbarthelme.com.
4. ^ Deming, Mark. "The Parable of Arable Land – The Red Crayola / The Red Krayola". AllMusic. Retrieved June 3, 2013.
5. ^ Linhardt, Alex (February 9, 2004). "The Red Krayola: The Parable of Arable Land / God Bless The Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It". Pitchfork. Retrieved December 10, 2014.
6. Coley, Byron (1995). "Red Crayola/Krayola". In Weisbard, Eric; Marks, Craig (eds.). Spin Alternative Record Guide. Vintage Books. pp. 322–23. ISBN 0-679-75574-8.
7. "The Red Krayola: The Parable of Arable Land". Uncut. p. 97. hey deepened the relationship between rock and noise, submerged in musical garage freakouts from which they emerged coherent...
8. Grant, Steven; Robbins, Ira; Kenny, Glenn. "Red Crayola (Red Krayola)". Trouser Press. Retrieved December 10, 2014.
9. "100 cult albums to hear before you die, chosen by your favourite rockstars". NME. August 30, 2018. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
10. "Inside Jimi Hendrix's blood-spattered record collection". NME. 4 April 2018.
11. "The Familiar Ugly (Parable of Arable Land Gatefold 1967)". Imgur.com. Retrieved 5 June 2022.
12. "Haydn Larson Spoons". Imgur.com. Retrieved 5 June 2022.
13. "The Story So Far of The Red Crayola and The Ref Krayola" (PDF). White-rose.net. Retrieved 5 June 2022.

External links

• The Parable of Arable Land at Discogs (list of releases)

• Radar Records albums
• Red Krayola albums
• 1967 debut albums
• International Artists albums