[2] The group were part of the 1960s Texas psychedelic music scene and were signed to independent record label International Artists, subsequently becoming labelmates with the 13th Floor Elevators.

They also formed a secondary group of shifting membership of about 50 people called "the Familiar Ugly", which consisted of active fans who performed with the band on or near the stage, using unconventional techniques and instruments.

[16] After the original pressing for The Parable of Arable Land sold out, promoters were attracted to the band and they were invited to perform in the Berkeley Folk Music Festival where instead of playing songs that they had written before, they generated feedback and drones via a guitar amp.

[17][18] In a 1978 interview, producer Lelan Rogers mentions that the reason the band never released a single was due in part to the controversy surrounding the sentimental lyrics in "War Sucks".

Red Crayola also performed with guitarist John Fahey and recorded a studio album of music in collaboration with him, but International Artists demanded possession of the tapes, they were then subsequently lost.

Mark Deming of AllMusic wrote that the album "bears precious little resemblance to anything else that appeared at the time; it would take a few decades of post-punk experimentalism before Mayo Thompson's vision would have a truly suitable context".

[28] Upon their return in the late 70s, English post-punk group Gang of Four invited the Crayola to open for them due to the band liking their music as well as their shared left-wing political beliefs.

The two recorded the single "Wives in Orbit" and the album Soldier Talk, with the latter featuring cameos by Lora Logic and members of Pere Ubu,[30] both of which could be seen as musical responses to punk rock.

[2] Thompson joined Pere Ubu for a period in the early 1980s, performing on their albums The Art of Walking and Song of the Bailing Man, and provided soundtrack music for Derek Jarman.

Throughout this time he worked with Geoff Travis, the founder of Rough Trade Records, as a producer for many other seminal experimental and alternative rock acts, including the Fall (1980's Grotesque (After the Gramme)), the Raincoats, Scritti Politti, Blue Orchids, Cabaret Voltaire, Stiff Little Fingers, Kleenex/LiLiPUT, the Chills, the Monochrome Set and Primal Scream.

These were, among others, Jim O'Rourke and David Grubbs of Gastr del Sol, the post-conceptual visual artist Stephen Prina, German painter Albert Oehlen, George Hurley (formerly of Minutemen and Firehose), Tom Watson of Slovenly, Sandy Yang, Elisa Randazzo and John McEntire of Tortoise.