How a dead parakeet changed the course of rock

VIENNA (Reuters) – Few rock bands have been accused of killing a dog with sound alone. Probably fewer still would claim the death of a parakeet got them their first break in the music business. Not so Mayo Thompson's Red Krayola.

Though the band initially folded decades ago after the manager of a venue begged, then paid them to stop playing, they survived to become one of the world's most enduring underground acts thanks to a career built on a record made for $600 in 1967.

Dismissed by most critics upon its release according to Thompson, "The Parable of Arable Land" has since been hailed as one of the groundbreaking records of the 1960s.

"We crawled out on a limb and found ourselves alone," Thompson told Reuters. "The origin of the whole thing is that record. Knowing what I know now about music, I'm not sure I'm capable of conceiving something like that again."

The trio initially known as Red Crayola, with Thompson on guitar and vocals, bassist Steve Cunningham and Rick Barthelme on drums, set out to stretch the limits of music on their debut, Thompson said after a concert in Vienna this week.

Their album featured a handful of songs interwoven with the band's signature sound called Free Form Freak-Outs -- random blasts of sound cut with the aid of the Familiar Ugly, a motley troupe of followers that included bikers and college students.

"A lot of people talked about Freakout. Then (Frank) Zappa came out with his Freak Out! record. But from what I now know about Zappa I'm sure he composed every note. Ours wasn't an image of chaos, it was chaos," said Thompson, 65, laughing.

The Texans' unusual approach was not confined to the studio.

Live, they were abetted by a "rhythm machine" made of an ice block suspended over a hot grill that dripped a beat down onto tin foil rigged to a speaker. A turntable cranked up to the max with the needle gouging the rubber was another favorite.

PAID TO STOP

The internet has exposed the band to a new generation of followers and critics, and "Parable" is increasingly seen as a unique statement in experimental rock.

Modern reviews of the LP that was "recorded in a night and maybe two days" Thompson said, show why it remains an enigma 40 years on.

"It's a mind-milkshake where everyone's friends are dead in abscesses of lunatic incompetence at an epic pitch of stoner rock doom," online music site Pitchfork Media said, awarding the psychedelic opus one of its top ratings.

The eerie mix of garage rock, abstract lyrics and Freak-Outs was not recorded "under the influence," Thompson said. But it was inspired by everything from Frank Sinatra and saxophonist Albert Ayler to buckets hanging on the studio wall that Thompson sang about after running out of words for the opening track.

The album also came to the attention of The Beatles, and was so unorthodox even John Peel, the late British DJ renowned for his eclectic taste, couldn't wait to turn it off, Thompson added.

"Peel didn't like us," he said. "His contribution to popular music is boundless. But I always wore it as a badge of honor

Despite its detractors, the original pressing sold out, attracting the attention of promoters in California, who invited the band to play in the 1967 Berkeley Folk Festival.

By then the group -- which became 'Krayola' when the makers of Crayola crayons sued over the name -- had given up playing songs and was devoting its energy to ear-splitting feedback.

This did not prove a recipe for commercial success.

"I played sounds in those days I never heard. I could feel them going through my eyelids but I have no idea what they sounded like," said Thompson, who now lives in California, but spent much of the past 30 years in Europe, latterly Edinburgh.

In Berkeley, a man told the band "that noise you're making killed a dog," before guitarist John Fahey landed them a gig at the New Orleans House, "a sort of supper club," Thompson said.

"We cleared the joint in about three minutes. The manager came wringing his hands saying, 'please, please, I'll pay you to stop,'" he added. "We hadn't done it for the money anyway."

This proved the end of the initial combo's live career -- just a year after they were discovered at a "battle of the bands" in a Houston shopping mall by local record producer Lelan Rogers, brother of U.S. country music star Kenny Rogers.

"He told us he'd gone to buy a parakeet for his wife because 'the parakeet had died,'" Thompson said.

Thompson and Cunningham released a second album of stripped down, minimalist songs in 1968 before the band called it quits. A decade later, Thompson resurrected the Red Krayola, which has continued in a variety of line-ups up to the present day.

"The band has always been a sort of project: tentative, tenuous and trouble. It comes together when it can," Thompson said. "We have a career by cumulative default."

(Editing by Steve Addison)