The Parable of Arable Land is the debut studio album by the American rock band Red Crayola released in June 1967 by International Artists. The album features notable instrumental cameos by label mate and 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson, as well as collaborative pieces with their secondary group "The Familiar Ugly". It was produced by Lelan Rogers and audio engineered by Walt Andrus and Frank Davis.
The album was ranked number 18 on the NME's list "Top 100 Cult Albums to Hear Before You Die", number 57 on Spin's "Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s", and number 169 on Uncut's "the 500 Greatest Albums of the 1960s".
In 2011, The Parable of Arable Land was reissued on Charly Records and remastered by Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3 who had previously covered Transparent Radiation.
Background In March 1967, the Red Crayola which consisted of guitarist and vocalist Mayo Thompson, drummer Frederick Barthelme and bassist Steve Cunningham, performed with the Familiar Ugly at the Gulfgate Mall for local radio station KNUZ's "Battle of the Bands", where they were discovered by International Artists producer, Lelan Rogers, the brother of Kenny Rogers. Thompson remarked:
Rogers later remarked on discovering the band, "There was this group of kids, three of them, up on a stage that had four or five different kinds of instruments and they could not play a note. They were just making noise and they were really putting the people on. I figured anybody that was able to put on a crowd like that -- there's got to be a market. I went over and I said, 'Hey guys, give me a call". Thompson stated, "Lelan'd obviously thought about what we were up to, how to get it down, and exploit it". That same month, the band were signed by Rogers and invited for a demo session at Walt Andrus studio. Thompson stated "they wanted to know what the songs were, and I didn't want to tell them everything. So I played some tunes for them. Went in and made a demo".
Additionally, Thompson stated that Rogers was the one to refer to their improvisations as "freak-outs," the band themselves originally referred to them as "free pieces". Adding, "The guy [Rogers] was looking for an advertising slogan. That was his form; that was his description of what we did. I just clung onto it because I'm a nominalist; So I'm just going with what we're calling it historically".
Recording
Tracks The Familiar Ugly were recorded on April Fool's Day 1967 in one hour evening session, done on eight tracks with eight microphones, one per channel. The album's other tracks were recorded on 3 different sessions from April–May, the first session began on April 10 for "Hurricane Fighter Plane" (originally Golden Chalice) and "Pink Stainless Tail", with Roky Erickson of the 13th Floor Elevators being invited in to play the organ part for the former, he was later invited to play harmonica on "Transparent Radiation". Allegedly, due to his heavy use of psychedelics, Erickson was already "out there", prompting Tommy Hall to step in as a translator, guiding Thompson to show Erickson the chord changes. The lyrics to "Hurricane Fighter Plane" and "War Sucks" were improvised on the day of recording and were the only songs lyrically written by Thompson, he later described the recording process of "War Sucks":
Additionally, Thompson stated that Lelan Rogers contributed a lot to the album's production, even though the main engineers were Frank Davis and Walt Andrus: "We profited from his suggestions. He egged us on during the Familiar Ugly sessions; during the recording of the songs, he suggested this or that [...] Lelan’s liner notes reflect his speech and attitudes in general, the kind of talk, the level of hype, hip, spin and buzz that informed everything he was and did, at least around us…". Rogers also claimed the Familiar Ugly brought their "trips" to the recording session.
Thompson stated that before the recording session, a motorcyclist drove by the studio to question the band and was later persuaded to be a part of the album:
The April 10th sessions contained lost unreleased recordings titled "F.R.E.D" and "Water Vessel". The bonus track "Vile Vile Grass" (an early demo of "War Sucks") was recorded in a March 1967 demo session, and later released on the compilation album Epitaph For a Legend (1980), the song "Nickle Niceness" was re-written in 1968 as "Green of My Pants".
Stereo and mono mix According to Lelan Rogers, producer Walt Andrus had mistakenly folded the Familiar Ugly session to mono, leading to Andrus creating an artificial stereo mix for the "Free Form Freak-Out" tracks, he stated, "Well, unfortunately I made the master in mono, and the stereo version I did by doing what we called “miracle sound” where you make a copy of it and flange and get it a little out of phase, swoosh it around some". However, the album's songs were multitracked and recorded in stereo, though Andrus decided to apply various psychedelic effects (such as loops, reverb, reversed tapes and speed fluctuations). Mayo Thompson later stated:
Barthelme was unhappy with the stereo mix, he remarked: "The first LP, The Parable of Arable Land is a wonder if you are wasted, and a poor example otherwise, as the nice guy who recorded it did it on two tracks instead of thirty-two, thus flattening the thing out somewhat." Thompson described the record's mono and stereo mix as essentially "two different albums", the stereo mix was made completely without any input from the band members.
Music and production The Red Crayola were originally part of the Texas psychedelic rock scene and drew influences from experimental rock artists such as Frank Zappa and the Fugs, along with avant-garde music composers John Cage and Harry Partch. Other influences included free jazz albums such as Albert Ayler's Bells and John Coltrane's Ascension. Lelan Rogers proposed having the record intermingle songs with the Familiar Ugly, which the band agreed was also their original idea. The album's title was coined by Steve Cunningham, while the cover art was drawn by George Banks (under the pseudonym "Flash Graphics"), the informal manager of the 13th Floor Elevators. It was the first of many other IA releases he would illustrate such as the Elevator's Easter Everywhere (1967), the Golden Dawn's Power Plant (1968) and the Lost & Found's Forever Lasting Plastic Words (1968).
Although all of the songs are credited as being written by the whole band, an interview in Mother: Houston's Rock Magazine (1968) stated, "Hurricane Fighter Plane" was written by Thompson, the lyrics to "Transparent Radiation" were written by Barthelme whilst the music was 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 lyrics to "Pink Stainless Tail" whilst the music was written by Thompson; "Parable of Arable Land" was written by the whole band while "Former Reflections Enduring Doubt" was entirely written by Cunningham.
Tracks recorded before their debut album in a March 1967 demo session were released on the International Artists archive compilation Epitaph For A Legend (1980), and subsequently re-released on the 2011 reissue of The Parable of Arable Land. In a review, Unterberger wrote, "The five Red Krayola demos are prime acid folk". Thompson later stated, "Those tunes on there are stuff that they had lying around in the can from the demo days. I don't know why. They never were meant as releasable material, in the usual sense. Those are archival tapes, I would say. The performances are what they are".
Lelan Rogers later mentioned that the reason there was no single to promote the record was due in part to the song "War Sucks", which he described as "controversial to say the least". Rogers remarked, "Murray the K, the DJ in New York City at W-NEW got a copy from my promotion man and he said, ‘This is what’s happening’. And he got promptly fired. He then started at W-NEW FM and they had figured they didn’t want that on AM and they were starting that station so they put it on FM."
Remasters and remix In 1978, Andrew Lauder of Radar Records acquired the rights to the International Artists catalog and reissued The Parable of Arable Land, which was mastered by George Peckham (aka Porky). In 2008, Charly Records acquired the rights and later reissued the album. Thompson stated in 2010 that the record had never been properly reissued: "We have not authorized that stuff, and we’re in dispute with Charly over them". He also later stated "[...] the versions that are out now, I don’t hold that those are the real deal at all. They’re just like a generation off of a generation off of a generation off of a generation. It’s been licensed a number of times and there has never been a proper master of the record released. . . it’s a mess, it’s a mess".
Additionally, a re-recorded version of "Hurricane Fighter Plane" with drummer Jesse Chamberlain would be released as a flexi disc in 1978 to promote Radar's reissue. In 1999, Red Krayola's studio album Fingerpainting was centered around the same "Free Form Freak-Out" structure as their debut, with the intention that both albums could be played simultaneously. It also included outtakes written in the 1960s that originally were not featured on The Parable of Arable Land such as "Mother", "Vile Vile Grass", "There There Betty Betty" and "In My Baby's Ruth". An alternate mix of the album was made by musician Jim O'Rourke, who was a member of the band at the time, though it was rejected, until its release as Fingerpointing in 2006.
In 2011, a Sonic Boom remix of "Hurricane Fighter Plane" b/w "Pink Stainless Tail" was released in the United Kingdom on Record Store Day by Charly Records, in a limited edition of 2,000 copies.
Critical reception Contemporaneous According to Lelan Rogers, The Parable of Arable Land originally sold 50,000 copies when it was first released and sold out its original pressing. At the time, the album was made on 600 dollars. Mayo Thompson remarked that they accomplished this with no advertising or promotion: "We sold 8-10,000 records in New York, and we sold some records in L.A., some in Frisco. Major urban centers, obviously. International Artists did not advertise. There were no band photographs. There was no promotion. This was making a virtue of your shortcomings. This was the beginnings of alternative rock". The album has been credited with predating styles such as noise rock, new wave, post-punk, art rock, punk rock, krautrock, proto-punk, garage punk, garage-psych, industrial, industrial rock, and post-rock. While the "Free Form Freak-Out" recordings have been described as free improvisation.
At the time, the Red Crayola were invited by UCLA artist Kurt Von Meier to perform at the Berkeley Folk Festival after he heard demo tapes of their cancelled follow-up album Coconut Hotel. Red Crayola would perform with guitarist John Fahey at the festival (which was later released as Live 1967). Rogers sent a stereo and mono copy of their debut album to the festival's organizer, Barry Olivier, while stating in a note that the stereo album was "better". Upon the success of the album, he stated: "The record’s an evergreen. It will always make money". However, the label had already spent the band’s share of the revenue on flying them out to Berkeley.