The Psych Rock Lounge

 

Well, from a musical standpoint the Lee Oskar's were quite revolutionary. You see, like many players, I used to keep my harps in a tall glass of water on stage (to keep the reeds wet and free of gunk). With the old school Hohner blues harps (Marine Band, originally), soaking them in water would eventually warp the wood and you had to throw the damn things out, which got very expensive (because you had to have harps in every diatonic key). With the Lee Oskar's, you'd never get warpage and the reeds could be replaced.

 

Fortunately, the sound quality was not different, particularly since I used a Sure Green Bullet mic and a Fender Vibro-Champ tube amp (the first amp I ever bought when I was learning guitar) which was then mic'ed through the PA system. Wonderfully fuzzy distortion!

 

But hey, when Junior Wells died, he was buried with a tray of Lee Oskar harmonicas. Beat that. Blues harps with replaceable reeds and non-warping mylar bodies trump just about everything for us players.

 

 

Recorded at almost the same time as the Elevators' classic The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators, the Golden Dawns debut album was held up for release by International Artists Records until 1968 for reasons that were never really clear. With a vocalist that sounded remarkably like Roky Erickson, the band had a harder rock sound combined with their own brand of psychedelic rock that also employed psych styled studio trickery like backwards guitar leads, tape loops and an almost bizarre overuse of phasing in order to render the vocals with an near 3D effect. This extreme uss of phasing also resulted in a very shrill vocal sound at times.

 

But with an album titled Power Plant that featured a cover drawing of cannabis sprouting from a field of "magic' mushrooms, I suppose the producer thought this effect would only enhance the listener's altered state of mind.

 

The album was unjustly criticized as an Elevators rip off but it was actually more akin to Badfinger's close sound to the Beatles. Close but not quite. A great psychedelic garage rock album, IMHO.

 

For a better overview, I present this quote from Wikipedia:

 

 The Golden Dawn are an American psychedelic rock band formed in Austin, Texas, in 1966. The band released one album, titled Power Plant,^[1] before breaking up soon after the album's release in 1968. The record company, the infamous International Artists label out of Houston, had made a decision that seems to have "shafted" the career of the vibrant Golden Dawn. This is what happened: a few months after the release of the 13th Floor Elevators' "Psychedelic Sounds" debut, the Dawn had finished Power Plant in mid-1967 and were ready to let it fly; but, by that time, the Elevators were beginning to record their second album, Easter Everywhere, which the record company management thought, for unknown reasons, should come out first, much to the dismay of George Kinney (voc, guitar), Tom Ramsey (lead guitar), Jimmy Bird (rhythm guitar), Bill Hallmark (bass), and Bobby Rector (drums)--collectively, The Golden Dawn. When Power Plant was finally released in 1968, it was largely panned as the work of an Elevators knock-off band and was unjustly snubbed in a way that was big enough to discourage the development of the band. Through the years, Power Plant climbed in "cult" status to the point where recognition of its music drew out George Kinney once again to reform the band in 2002 and perform live all over the States. The Golden Dawn has performed at Austin Psych Fest three times to date, in 2009, 2012 and 2014.

 

 

 

Guess I'll find out when I go to Austin in May!