Released
in June of 1967, the debut LP from Texan trio, The Red Krayola
(initially spelt, “Crayola”), The Parable of Arable Land, turns 55 years
old this month. At the time of its release, it was labeled a
“psychedelic” album, but hindsight has revealed that it was more of a
progenitor of experimental musical styles which would surface nearly a
decade later. There are various aspects of the album which more closely
resembling “new wave” and “industrial” music from the late 1970s than
fuzzed out wah-wah psyche-rock from the late ‘60s.
The album is
idiosyncratically structured around alternating between two primary
recording sessions. The principal songs for the album were recorded by
the core band members on April 10th. This session featured Mayo
Thompson on guitar, Steve Cunningham on bass and Rick Barthelme on
drums. Roky Erickson of 13th Floor Elevators plays organ throughout as
well. Six songs resulted from these sessions and they form the musical
framework of the album. They are strung together by a series of
impromptu “freak out” jams by "The Familiar Ugly”, which was a
conglomerate of up to 50 friends of the band who were recorded doing
free-form improvising on April Fool’s day prior to the principal song
sessions. The band essentially instructed the “Family” to do whatever
they wanted and adhere to no formal structure. The resultant hours of
cacophonous chaos were then edited into introductions and bridges before
and between the proper “songs”.
The end results of this fusion
of relative “order” and “chaos” produced one of the most original and
radical pop music albums to come from the late 1960s. As previously
stated, it operated in an arena that may have been somewhat kin to
psychedelia, but had so much more visionary significance in terms of
predicting future directions in avant-garde music. To say it was ahead
of its time is an understatement and it stands next to Silver Apples in
terms of forecasting the course of modern music in the decade to come.
