{"id":11606,"date":"2016-10-14T05:30:49","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T09:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=11606"},"modified":"2025-10-23T08:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T12:32:09","slug":"album-review-c-a-quintet-a-trip-thru-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/14\/album-review-c-a-quintet-a-trip-thru-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: C.A. Quintet – A Trip Thru Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ca_quintet\"It\u2019s likely overstatement to assert that there\u2019s never been another album like C.A. Quintet<\/strong>\u2019s spooky psychedelic masterwork A Trip Thru Hell<\/em>, but it\u2019s fair to say that the hit parade has never featured anything similar. Released in 1969 on a tiny label called Candy Floss, A Trip Thru Hell<\/em> sold only locally; fewer than 1000 copies are thought to have been pressed, and those that did sell were bought locally by fans of the Minneapolis band. Original copies do occasionally change hands, but when they do, the prices range from $1500 and up.<\/p>\n

There have been several reissues of A Trip Thru Hell<\/em>, most on relatively small labels with limited distribution. A CD release in the mid 1990s added a dozen bonus tracks, including covers of \u201cMickey\u2019s Monkey\u201d and \u201cI Put a Spell on You\u201d plus some alternate mixes\/takes of album tracks. Eventually each of the reissues went out of print, too.<\/p>\n

In 2016 Sundazed Records reissued A Trip Thru Hell<\/em>, and in keeping with the revered archival label\u2019s approach, that vinyl release is as close to as possible a straight reissue of the LP as released in \u201969. Save for a stylized Sundazed logo and the UPC code, the 2016 release looks like a pristine copy of the original. Consider the translucent orange vinyl disc itself as an upgrade to the black-vinyl original.<\/p>\n

The music from this obscure group varies widely: The two tracks that bookend the record \u2013 the nine-minute \u201cA Trip Thru Hell (Part I)\u201d and a shorter reprise \u2013 feature wordless moaning from soprano Toni Crockett<\/strong>. The keyboard textures will be familiar to fans of the Doors<\/strong> and very early Pink Floyd<\/strong>. Doug Reynolds<\/strong>\u2019 organ (either a Vox or Farfisa) conjures no end of spookiness. The band\u2019s regular lead vocalist and songwriter Ken Erwin<\/strong> also turns in some melodic but eerie trumpet that\u2019s miles away from what Herb Alpert was doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cColorado Mourning\u201d bows toward pop convention with its conventional length (two minutes and change) but is otherwise pretty odd stuff, with Erwin\u2019s vocals buried in the mix. Strains of \u201cA Trip Thru Hell\u201d appear near the track\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

\u201cCold Spider\u201d shows the influences of Bob Dylan<\/strong> (lyrical phrasing) as well as something of a jazz sensibility, especially in the nimble, exploratory bass work of Jim Erwin<\/strong> and Rick Johnson<\/strong>\u2019s drumming. Some impassioned yowls add to the track\u2019s unsettling vibe, and when \u2013 two minutes in \u2013 Tom Pohling<\/strong> lets loose with a gonzo electric guitar solo, the sound veers between heavy psych and avant garde.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderground Music\u201d is a head-snapping musical left turn. Sounding a bit like a demented, druggy rethink of the Association<\/strong> with the Tijuana Brass<\/strong> helping out, the tune is all rubbery, reverbed guitar lines and impossibly catchy call-and-response choruses with vocals and trumpets in dialogue. The song\u2019s solo leans heavily on wah-wah pedaling and fuzztone, and the result is as freaky as pop music got in \u201969. In fact, by 1969 this kind of music was already pretty well out of vogue, having seen its period of popularity come and go a year or so earlier. But if one ignores the year of origin, it\u2019s a classic of psychedelia at its finest.<\/p>\n

\u201cSleepy Hollow Lane\u201d is as close as C.A. Quintet would ever come to a conventional pop song. But it\u2019s still not very close; while at times the vocal harmonies evoke mental visions of a quartet in turtleneck sweaters and blazers, the tune\u2019s constantly-shifting time signatures keep the listener delightfully off-balance.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmooth as Silk\u201d is anything but. An ambitious tune in which every instrumentalist and vocalist shines, it rocks aggressively. But the sonorous vocals and Ken Erwin\u2019s trumpet (here reminiscent of Love<\/strong>\u2019s Forever Changes<\/em>) give the song a pop sensibility that balances the darker tone of melody.<\/p>\n

The disc\u2019s reprise of \u201cA Trip Thru Hell\u201d closes the record, and starts out with a completely different melody than the opening track. Ken Erwin and Toni Crockett duet an octave apart, and Crockett adds more of her superb high-end wordless warbling. Pohling\u2019s guitar is made to sound a bit like a sitar, and when the main theme briefly appears, it ties things together nicely. A bit of ersatz lounge jazz is only the latest (and last) musical change-up on a wonderfully varied record. Some backwards guitar gives way to a final freakout\/noisefest that wraps the album.<\/p>\n

Rod Eaton<\/strong>\u2019s blood-toned cover art recalls Hieronymus Bosch<\/strong>, and it\u2019s expertly recreated on this flawless Sundazed reissue. Fans of psychedelia at its darkest likely have this rarity in their CD collections already; this new release allows them to add a faithful reproduction of the original LP to their shelves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s likely overstatement to assert that there\u2019s never been another album like C.A. Quintet\u2019s spooky psychedelic masterwork A Trip Thru Hell, but it\u2019s fair to say that the hit parade […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,62,64,65,73],"tags":[2855],"class_list":["post-11606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psych","category-rawk","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-c-a-quintet","cat-57-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11606"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30217,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11606\/revisions\/30217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}