Effective period / Period of releases: 1974

Seventies American Rock Band. Black Orchids hailed from Charleston, West Virginia and consisted of John Wehde, Rob Hamer and Paul Bennington. In 1974 they pressed "AWOL", their sole output, on their own Black Orchids Records label in a tiny edition of 200 copies. The album came in a plain white sleeve, shrinkwrapped with the title and band info written on the outside of the shrink with a marker pen. You can imagine how many of these survived intact! The album consists of one track "AWOL" which was recorded live and being 29 minutes long was spread over the two sides of the LP.

Black Orchids were a power trio and 'AWOL' is an instrumental only journey of psychedelic hard rock that is more Cream than Hendrix. For the most part the music is a heavy Blues jam with many tempo changes and plenty of feedback.