The Parable of Arable Land

The Parable of Arable Land is the 1967 debut studio album by the Red Crayola (later known as Red Krayola). The album features experimental, confrontational rock songs interspersed with free improvised pieces featuring noise played by a group of over 50 people known as "the Familiar Ugly", including notable instrumental cameos by label mate and 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson.

Upon release, the album sold 50,000 copies, selling out its original pressing and receiving some minor attention in the music press. Its sound was retrospectively described by AllMusic as "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". It would influence artists during the punk-era, presaging styles such as new wave, post-punk, and art rock.

The Familiar Ugly was a group of 50 people who joined the Red Crayola on stage with music that was made on anything from industrial power tools to a revving motorcycle. They perform on the "Free Form Freak-Out" tracks that are present between each song on the album. Rick Barthelme later reflected. "At heart we were as elitist as could be, but these folks came to our shows and some we knew and most we did not know, but whenever we played, there they were, ready to mount the stage and screech until the last plug was pulled, and there we were, ready to invite them – the Familiar Ugly, we dubbed ’em."

After playing as a five-piece consisting of all three original members plus Bonnie Emerson and Danny Schacht, the group split back to the original trio and instead called every added member a part of the Familiar Ugly. "Free Form Freak-Out" was a term coined by record producer Lelan Rogers who proposed the idea of having the album intermingle songs with the Familiar Ugly, fading one into the other as well as having Rick Barthelme take up a tribal drumbeat instead of a standard rock beat for "War Sucks".

Mayo Thompson details the formation of the Familiar Ugly and the origin of "Free Form Freak-Out" in an interview conducted on December 26, 2011 "Conversation with Mayo Thompson: Part One"

"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. People liked it, liked the 'noise' we made." Free form means this ain't never gonna happen again. We're about to have an experience that will not be [had] ever again. I'm not making any claims about form. It's an oxymoron at best. 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."

The Familiar Ugly were recorded on April Fool's Day 1967 in a three-hour evening session on one master tape, it was done on eight tracks with eight microphones, one per channel. The other tracks were recorded during April–May. Mayo Thompson said, "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."

"Our first album was recorded mono. [The simulated stereo mix] is Walt Andrus' 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, speed fluctuations and sound effects).