The C.A. Quintet

Without any one outdoors Minneapolis heard about the C.A. Quintet throughout their past due-’60s heyday. It had been their lot of money (or curse) to really reach a substantially bigger international target audience when their recording was reissued within the ’80s. Beginning as a fairly conventional pop-soul/garage area band, their only recording, Trip Thru Hell (1968), was a deserving cut of dark psychedelia. With spooky body organ and the casual trumpet of vocalist/songwriter Ken Erwin, the group’s murky and macabre eyesight — dotted with outings through hell, chilly spiders, Colorado mornings, and so on — was truly initial and chilling. Trip Thru Hell just offered 700-800 copies when it had been first released, but after getting position among hardcore ’60s psychedelic enthusiasts, it had been reissued in 1983. The group also released several non-LP singles in 1967 and 1968, most inside a very much poppier vein.