psychedelia | The Che Underground

Hi everyone! Dave Wallflower here again. Underground culture is a worldwide phenomenon. It is everywhere. It is all around us. It is like the air we breathe, the water we swim in (assuming that we are fish). In this the third edition of This We Dug, you will learn about Red Krayola, a band that helped form the collective Che Underground consciousness. They were like some of the water we fish swam in. This issue of This We Dug was supplied by Che alumni Paul Kaufman and Dave Fleminger, two guys who in turn provided more than a little of the underground air we breathed.

Austin, Texas, made some very high-profile contributions to the psychedelic scene, notably Roky Erikson’s 13th Floor Elevators. But there were other bands in that scene you should check out. The Bubble Puppy album is cool. But my all-time favorite album from this time and place is the second LP by Red Krayola, “God Bless the Red Krayola and all who Sail with It.” This came after their half-song, half-“free form freak-out” debut LP “The Parable of Arable Land,” which provided the immortal “Hurricane Fighter Plane” (notably covered by Boo in the mid-’90s).

Read moreThis We Dug: The Red Krayola

The Answers’ busy gigging schedule (at the Headquarters and other venues) between 1981 and 1984 generated myriad flyers by a variety of artists, many of them masterworks of psychedelic imagery. Much of the art was created by two towering figures: Jerry Cornelius and Answers guitarist/vocalist Dave Fleminger.

Of Jerry, Tom Ward writes, “Sooner or later, one way or another, we’ll have all of Jeremiah’s flyer illustrations. My junk is in storage on the other side of the country, but I made a point at the time of saving all the Cornelius flyers. You could see that each was an effort to top the previous one, and it was good work. I had the feeling a day would come when they’d be needed in an archival sense. … To me they were, after awhile, like the expressions of a local Aubrey Beardsley. … [T]hey added a real measure of class to the events they heralded, and were a distinct part of the flowering of our particular underground.