Rare original 1976 U.S. private press progressive rock album in still sealed condition on Sky Queen
records out of Florida. This heavy progressive rock album is an important item among collectors. Originally recorded in Florida in 1976 and unearthed by the Italian Akarma label, this is a wonderful mixture of space and psychedelic rock, West Coast guitar solos and Gong-like female vocals which combine superbly to richochet around your brain. The 14 minute title track is awesome....
Galaxy was a space rock band that played their largest performances in Jacksonville, Florida. The first was in 1975 at the 4th of July street concert sponsored by the Jacksonville Beach chamber of
commerce. Galaxy was the only band performing that night, playing to a crowd the newspapers said was over 30 thousand strong. Galaxy performed 42 of their original rock songs that they had learned after being together only 3 months. They performed at the same venue the following year. Galaxy won WAPE radio's first "battle-of-the-bands" in 1976, winning the prize of a recording contract with Bang Records in Atlanta, Ga. that turned out only to be a midnight recording session.
Their winning year brought them to the concert stages to large audiences that included : Annhauser Busch Natural Light Beer debuton Jax. Beach to a crowd of over 250 thousand rock fans as thefinal
feature act following a country rock band called "Road Dust" and during Galaxy's concert Leif Garrette made a guest appearance. Galaxy also performed to a Daytona Beach crowd of more that 20 thousand fans at the city's famous band shell on the beach. They recorded only one album called Day Without The Sun which is still available to on line collectors and Space Rock enthusiasts.
When people describe this record with terms like "heavy psych," "progressive," and "space rock," they must be referring to the 15 minute title track, because otherwise this is distinctly mid-'70s trendy: funky
and danceable, vaguely hard guitars, lots of synths, radio friendly. It's more Stevie Wonder or Apostrophe-era Zappa than it is Hawkwind, let's say. But then the last track does make one think of an extended Hawkwind jam, and with someone who sounds like a dead ringer for Dagmar Krause on vocals, so, yeah. Nice indeed. Skip to side B if you're here for the psych.
Their style is an interesting mix of hard rock, space rock and progressive rock and I find the quality of the songwriting to be very solid. The female lead vocalist sounds very good and the
instrumental work is pretty strong as well. The A-side of the record includes shorter tracks which are all entertaining. The opening song "Space Mountain" is probably the highlight of the first side but the other tracks do their job very well too. The second side has one short song and one massive 14 minutes long closing track. "Sky Queen" is a nice one but the title track "Day Without the Sun" is designed as the climax of this LP and it does just that. It's maybe the ultimate highlight of this strong disc.
Galaxy now has a new Space Rock CD called Find Another World and an "author's edition reissue CD
of their first LP Day Without The Sun. The first reissue CD of Day w/o the Sun was produced and distributed by Akarma/Comet Records in Italy in 1999. Galaxy's own record label SKY QUEEN RECORDS has always been unsigned by any major label up to the present.
Galaxy – Day Without The Sun
Label: Akarma – AK 008
Format: CD, Album, Reissue, Digipak 1998
Country: Italy
Released: 1976
Genre: Rock
Style: Hard Rock, Prog Rock, Space Rock, Psychedelic Rock
TRACKS
01. Space Mountain 4:05
02. Green Stuff 4:35
03. Look What You Done 3:58
04. Galaxy 6:10
05. Sky Queen 3:58
06. Day Without The Sun 14:22
07. Everybody Down 4:27
08. Woman Of Love 4:20
LINE - UP
Bass – Pepper Leonardy
Drums – Miss Gunner Powell
Guitar, Producer, Music By – Frenzi Fabbri
Keyboards, Producer, Music By, Layout – Space Mama Geiger