Red Crayola With The Familiar Ugly / The Parable Of Arable Land (2 x CD)

Description

2xCD + Hardbound Book / Reissue – Limited Edition / Remastered

“The Ground-Breaking 1966 album. Re-mastered by SONIC BOOM. 2CD edition with both the Stereo & the first re-issue of the Mono version. 16 Page Booklet with previously unseen images. Deluxe Media Book – Limited Edition.”

1967-USA

Format: 2 x CD

#Ref: SNAX621 CD

Release date: 2011

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Release notes

On their 1967 debut album, the Red Crayola themselves conjure up a sound that’s part psychedelia, part garage punk, and partly some sort of experimental rock that would not truly make itself known until many years down the road, and they generate an impressively freaked-out energy on deliberately primitive numbers like ‘War Sucks’ and ‘Hurricane Fighter Plane.’ Six of the twelve tracks on The Parable of Arable Land are devoted to the Red Crayola; the rest find the three members of the group collaborating with friends, acquaintances, and fellow travelers credited as “the Familiar Ugly.” Pitchfork gave it a 9.3 and said: “In March 1967, The Red Crayola walked into the studio and spent a day making one of the most visionary album of the year, The Parable of Arable Land. It’s a band that has no idea how to play its instruments. In fact, they don’t even know what instruments are, or if the guitarist has the ability to remain conscious long enough to play whatever it is a “note” might be. Shattered psalms, wobbling percussion courtesy of poet Frederick Barthelme, patently overused echo chambers, and the clumsiest staircase bassline in garage history smashes into a bunch of clopping machine men as Mayo Thompson croons out the only serious line in his entire career: “I have in my pocket a hurricane fighter plane.” After Houston-based International Artists Records enjoyed unexpected commercial success with one of the most eccentric bands to emerge from the State of Texas, the 13th Floor Elevators, the label’s proprietors presumably set out to find some folks who were even weirder, and they found a band that fit the bill in the Red Crayola. Media book packaging is very nice.

After Houston-based International Artists Records enjoyed unexpected commercial success with one of the most eccentric bands to emerge from the State of Texas, the 13th Floor Elevators, the label’s proprietors presumably set out to find some folks who were even weirder, and they found a band that fit the bill in the Red Crayola. The group’s 1967 debut album, The Parable of Arable Land, actually documents the work of two different groups; the Red Crayola themselves conjure up a sound that’s part psychedelia, part garage punk, and partly some sort of experimental rock that would not truly make itself known until many years down the road, and they generate an impressively freaked-out energy on deliberately primitive numbers like “War Sucks” and “Hurricane Fighter Plane.” Six of the 12 tracks on The Parable of Arable Land are devoted to the Red Crayola; the rest find the three members of the group collaborating with 45 friends, acquaintances, and fellow travelers credited as “the Familiar Ugly.” The Familiar Ugly tracks are each credited as “Free Form Freak-Out,” an inarguably apt description, and they feature the various participants making all manner of chaotic noise on musical instruments both real and imagined as well as various household objects, and though the roiling mass of sound occasionally threatens to cohere into something, within moments it invariably descends back into the sound of several dozen hippies trying to navigate their way out of a trap of their own lysergic imagination. The album allows the songs to rise in and out of the “Freak-Out” segments, a bit like an overheard conversation, and the Red Crayola seem to be having great fun making audio manipulation part of their music, particularly on the bent and noisy title track in which they descend into a familiar ugly of their own. However, compared to their later work, guitarist and vocalist Mayo Thompson, bassist Steve Cunningham, and drummer Rick Barthelme actually deliver relatively straightforward and coherent performances on the band tracks, which generate a spaced-out but potent groove. While the truly bent Texas psychedelic scene of the 1960s provided a context in which the Red Crayola could thrive, The Parable of Arable Land exists on a plane all its own; if art-damaged noise rock began anywhere, it was on this album. (The group changed its name to the Red Krayola to avoid a lawsuit after the release of this album, and it has appeared under both group names in various issues.) [For Snapper/Charly’s 2011 reissue of The Parable of Arable Land, the label pulled out all the stops, presenting a remastered two-disc edition of the album in both stereo and mono mixes. Disc one, the stereo version, includes six bonus tracks, featuring demos and outtakes from the Parable sessions, while disc two contains the mono mix, and repeats the Red Crayola tracks without the Familiar Ugly sections for those who want to hear the songs on their own. Add a 16-page booklet with excellent liner notes from Paul Drummond, and you get the best-sounding and most attractive release of this album to date.]

Tracklisting

DISC 1 Stereo Edition

LP Side 1

1-1 Free Form Freak-Out #1 1:29

1-2 Hurricane Fighter Plane 3:35

1-3 Free Form Freak-Out #2 2:23

1-4 Transparent Radiation 2:33

1-5 Free Form Freak-Out #3 4:18

1-6 War Sucks 6:31

LP Side 2

1-7 Free Form Freak-Out #4 1:48

1-8 Pink Stainless Tail 3:15

1-9 Free Form Freak-Out #5 3:02

1-10 Parable Of Arable Land 3:00

1-11 Free Form Freak-Out #6 4:09

1-12 Former Reflections Enduring Doubt 4:56

Extra Material

1-13 Nickel Niceness (Demo = Green Of My Pants On 2nd LP) 2:56

1-14 Vile Vile Grass (Demo = War Sucks) 2:13

1-15 Transparent Radiation (Demo) 2:44

1-16 Pink Stainless Tail (Alternate Take, Guitar & Vocal Only) 3:24

1-17 Hurricane Fighter Plane (Alternate Stereo Mix) 3:47

1-18 Former Reflections Enduring Doubt (Unreleased Alt Stereo Edit & Mix) 2:06

 

DISC 2 Mono Edition

LP Side 1 (Mono)

2-1 Free Form Freak-Out #1 1:29

2-2 Hurricane Fighter Plane 3:35

2-3 Free Form Freak-Out #2 2:23

2-4 Transparent Radiation 2:31

2-5 Free Form Freak-Out #3 4:20

2-6 War Sucks 6:34

LP Side 2 (Mono)

2-7 Free Form Freak-Out #4 1:51

2-8 Pink Stainless Tail 3:15

2-9 Free Form Freak-Out #5 3:00

2-10 Parable Of The Arable Land 2:59

2-11 Free Form Freak-Out #6 4:10

2-12 Former Reflections Enduring Doubt 4:56

Repeat Tracks # 2, 4, 6, 8, 12

2-13 Hurricane Fighter Plane 3:49

2-14 Transparent Radiation 2:37

2-15 War Sucks 6:33

2-16 Pink Stainless Tail 3:29

2-17 Former Reflections Enduring Doubt 4:55

 

DISC 1

Tracks 1-6 LP Side 1 (Stereo)

Tracks 7-12 LP Side 2 (Stereo)

Tracks 13-18 Extra material

DISC 2

Tracks 1-6 LP Side 1 (Mono)

Tracks 7-12 LP Side 2 (Mono)

Notes for Disc 1: “Tracks 13-17 Previously released 1980 on the International Artists retrospective ‘Epitaph For A Legend’. Track 18 previously unreleased.”

Notes for Disc 2: “Tracks #2,4,6,8,12 are repeated at the end of the disc so that the songs can be listened to collectively.”

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