"Not one bummer the whole beautiful summer."

Such words could be said of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and their mossy stepping stone path of albums stretched out across the latter half of this century's sixth decade. Had not a prepubescent Michael Lloyd and childhood pal Jimmy Greenspoon overheard the frothy sounds of a Ventures cover band emanating from a Hawaiian hotel lobby, the surfing lad might not made such a noticeable and important dent in the the showbiz world of those years.
The two formed bands called things like the New Dimensions, the Alley Kats and finally the Rogues, moving steadily away from surfer territory and into the modern harmonies that became so popular with the emergence of the beat groups from England. By 1964, Lloyd had dropped out of Beverly Hills High and enrolled at Hollywood Professional School where he fell in with two brothers by the names of Shaun and Danny Harris, spawn of classical composer Ray Harris. They soon formed a band and called it the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. Greenspoon would eventually move on to become the keyboardist for Hanna-Barbera recording artist Danny Hutton's new group, Three Dog Night.
After witnessing what must've been an infernal performance by the Yardbirds at a house party in the Hollywood Hills (if you've seen their sequence in "Blow Up" you'll know what I'm talking about), the trio was approached by the party's host, one Bob Markley. A thirty-something lawyer with a wad of cash and a desire to be a rock star, Markley offered to pay for the boys' recording session if he could be a part of their pop group. This, he figured, would garner him the attentions of the many young women frequenting the Strip teen scene. His instrument of choice onstage was the tambourine.
The result was the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Volume One, a sassy collection of now-generation covers and derivative originals released on the tiny Hollywood-based Fifo R&B imprint. Only a hundred or so copies were ever printed. Recently reissued on CD by Sundazed with bonus cuts and extensive liner notes, Volume One shows the West Coast as equal counterparts to the folk-rocking jet-set sound that fellow Angelenos the Byrds and the Leaves were dishing out on the Sunset Strip-Dylan covers, "experimental" guitar feedback, sugary harmonies and all. The band recorded the album in Lloyd's tiny Beverly Hills bedroom. Spooky and sparse early versions of "I Won't Hurt You" and "If You Want This Love," which would pop up again rerecorded on the first Reprise release, were first laid down here on two Ampex tape machines. Later, with the help of Lloyd's family, the boys rented a storefront studio on San Vicente near La Cienega Boulevard where they continued to create, eventually collecting enough tracks for the Fifo album. They were sure it was to be a smash.

From the age of twelve and his revelation in Hawaii, Michael Lloyd lived and breathed music. Sometime during his tenure with his teenage pop bands, Lloyd crossed paths with producer Kim Fowley, who was smitten with the youngster.  At age thirteen, Lloyd inked a publishing deal for his songs with Fowley. Shortly thereafter, Fowley introduced him to entertainment mogul and future California lieutenant governor Mike Curb with the hopes that Curb would use some of Lloyd's songs in his films. Instead, Curb handed the young musician the reins to produce a couple of projects he had going for his Tower imprint and its Sidewalk subsidiary-the Laughing Wind and The Rubber Band. At the same time, Epic Records sent Lloyd into Columbia Records Studio to produce a We Five-ish group called October Country. Impressed, Curb gave Lloyd free reign of Hollywood Boulevard Studios for six months where he and two other musicians composed, performed, and put to tape an entire album's worth of folky, psychedelic canyon music under the name The Smoke (Sidewalk/Tower ST 5912, 1968).
Lloyd's obsession with the Beatles peaks through on several of the songs on the 1968 album, glaringly on numbers like "Fogbound" wherein he chants "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" over and over again in the outro. The harpsichord-laden cover of "October Country" doesn't sound all that much different than the original, leading one to believe that Lloyd had more of his hands in their cookie jar than just those of a record producer. And apparently his witnessing of some of Brian Wilson's "Good Vibrations" recording sessions made quite an impression too, for the similarly-titled "Cowboys and Indians,' the album's opener, recalls the driving poetry of the Beach Boys' "Heroes and Villains." Complex, linear instrumental sections augur what Arizona transplants Alice Cooper would soon be doing for Frank Zappa's Straight records.
As a whole however, the album tends to lag, the sounds are often too homogenous and rarely does the even production vary enough to surprise or ignite the listener. It lacks the sparkly production and definition of a Saggitarius or even a Strawberry Alarm Clock, who both had well received albums from that time. Trippy song titles ("The Hobbit Symphony" is perhaps the first in the long line of pop numbers like Leonard Nimoy's "Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" and Led Zepplin's "Ramble On." paying homage to the Tolkein hero), the album's jacket, featuring Peter Max-inspired renderings of four faux Carnabey Street fluffs (the fourth being Lloyd's childhood friend and Three Dog Nighter Jimmy Greenspoon) and the cryptic message that this record is dedicated to the memory of Stuart Sutcliffe also failed to attract the masses of hungry beat buyers Tower had expected, and Lloyd's masterpiece quietly sank.
But Michael Lloyd's story doesn't end here, in fact it is just beginning. At age twenty he was appointed vice president of MGM Records by Curb and almost immediately won a Grammy for his production of Lou Rawls' "Natural Man." Hits by the Osmonds, Shaun Cassidy and Barry Manilow would follow. In recent years he has had success with the "Dirty Dancing" soundtrack as well as with ex-Go Go Belinda Carlisle and with Pat Boone's recent heavy metal crossover.

Meanwhile, in 1967 Frank Sinatra's Reprise Records signed up what they thought was one of the hottest psychedelic bands in Los Angeles, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band-West Coast because that's where they were from, Pop Art because Warhol's stuff was big at the time and Experimental because their style fluctuated so much. Although their Fifo LP had stiffed, the group was beginning to garner a following. Graduating from the teen discos of Beverly Hills and Hollywood like the Other Place (check the Seeds' song with that title on Fallin' Off The Edge for more details), the Stratford and It's Boss, West Coast began drawing huge crowds, headlining over the Seeds at the Los Angeles Sports Arena and the Mothers of Invention at the Shrine Auditorium. They even spread out across the nation, touring briefly with the Gentrys. They had their own light show, top notch. But record sales still eluded them.
Part One, released on Reprise in 1967 shows the West Coast tightening the grip on their folky past and squeezing out something new. Opening the album is "Shifting Sands" with it's undulating bassline and sporadic bursts of guitar surges reminiscent of Richard Thompson's early work with Fairport Convention (and not unrealistic that Thompson was a fan either, considering his band's homage to all things American folk rock and the fact that Fairport had already included West Coast contemporaries the Merry Go Round's "Time Will Show the Wiser" on their debut album). Revamped versions of "I Won't Hurt You" and "If You Want This Love" reappear here from the first album. Bringing in songwriters like P.F. Sloan and Van Dyke Parks (Lloyd will re-use his cover of Park's "High Coin" for an interlude on the Smoke record) the group apparently hoped to ride on the California songwriters trend with fellow Angelenos the Turtles and the Grassroots, but it's probably Dan Harris' self-penned "Will You Walk With Me" that is the highlight. Based on the "Morning Dew" theme, Harris spins a gentle tale of something apocalyptic-of being alone after everyone's gone. The creepy "Sunday Morning"-style organ and the bad vibes imagery show the group as edging closer to the Velvet Underground than in the direction of Southern California peers like the Association. Markley's influence rears its head here too, particularly on "1906," "Leiyla" and a cover of Zappa's "Help, I'm A Rock." He makes up for his lack of singing ability and musical knowledge with a freaky "Monster Mash" voice and the hyperactivity of Kim Fowley. Interestingly enough, this is probably what makes the West Coast so unique, the contrast of the sweet harmonies and songwriting of Lloyd and the Harris brothers with Markley's off-kilter sense of humor and grim outlook.
Volume Two, sometimes called Breaking Through, hit the stores towards the end of 1967. Markley here is in full force, co-writing all ten songs. More intense than it's predecessor, the album kicks off with an imaginary update of the Romans and their Christians-versus-lions thing, only this one takes place in the heated L.A. of 1967 with the Romans as thug-like pigs and their victims as "hippy freaks" "peace marchers" and "nigger losers." It is a strong and visionary comment on the establishment-considering how many families today spend their evenings watching real-life video of muscle-bound cops arresting, harassing and beating the poor. But while the first cut is the deepest, it is perhaps "Suppose They Give A War and No One Comes" that is most disturbing. "I hate war," Markley brays over an eerie, primitive Bo Diddley beat, "I have seen blood running in the street. I have seen small children starving."
"Smell of Incense" was to be the closest West Coast ever got to a hit. Similar in theme to Boyce and Hart's "For Baby" or the Association's "Rose Petals, Incense and a Kitten" in its hippy love-nest sort of way, "Incense" incidentally, got picked up by a Dallas outfit called the Southwest F.O.B. who actually placed the song at number 56 on the Billboard charts in 1968. Their album of the same name is a fairly mediocre stab at the peace and love vibe of the California singing groups.
Side two of Breaking Through is apparently Markley's tribute to the girls in his life from the hung-up one in "Unfree Child" to Trish, the rich runaway in "Carte Blanche" who Markley claims (in train-whistle falsetto nonetheless) "gave away a hotel chain and a stately reputation." And this all over a screaming fuzztone lead leaving no doubt that West Coast weren't afraid to play it heavy if need be. The album closes with the jazzy chords and conga rhythm of "Tracy Had a Hard Day Sunday," foreshadowing the areas they would later explore on Volume Three's "Watch Yourself." Session drummer Hal Blaine reportedly lent his talents to many of Breaking Through's songs.

Somewhere around this time the tension between Lloyd, the Harris brothers and Markley became so great that the group stopped performing live altogether. Frustrated, Shaun and Danny threw the light show in the back of a station wagon and hit the road, touring as the California Spectrum. Back home they even released a single under that nomer in 1967, "Sassafras"/"Obviously Bad," which reappears on the Sundazed reissue of Part One. Bob Markley pursued a brief career behind the boards, producing a few singles by unknown groups who unfortunately remained that way. Michael Lloyd, meanwhile, took some time to appear on and produce Kim Fowley's Love is Alive and Well (Tower T5080, 1967), containing several diverse paeans to the flower power generation much in the vein of the Seeds' Future album. Lloyd's photo appears on the jacket and rumor has it that the rest of West Coast performed on many of the cuts of which "Reincarnation" and "Flower Drum Drum" stand out as the most focused. Lloyd also put together a group entitled the Fire Escape who put out one album on GNP-Crescendo (home of the Seeds and Orphan Egg, who had recently won a record contract after smashing competitors at a Vox-sponsored battle of the bands) Composed mainly of covers of then-popular "far-out" radio hits by the Seeds and the Count V, the Fire Escape's Psychotic Reaction (GNP 2034, 1967) also contained several conspicuous odes to illegal hallucinogens.
It was to be a year before the West Coast's  fourth album would hit the stores, but A Child's Guide to Good and Evil proved to be well worth the wait. It remains, by almost unanimous opinion, the high point of the band's career. The title track epitomizes the "if it happens, it's all good" ethos of the hippies in a way that only Bob Markley could.

Take my hand and run away with me through the forest until the leaves and trees slow us down. A vampire bat will suck blood from our hands. A dog with rabies will bite us. Rats will run up your legs, but nothing will matter.

Beginning where "Suppose They Give A War" left off, Markley's "A Child of a Few Hours is Burning To Death" is so shocking and offensive that its purpose can only have been to hip people to the extreme ugliness of war. No doubt inspired by the footage of burned and naked children fleeing American napalm bombings in Vietnam, Markley intersperses graphic scenes of suffering with the repeating childlike phrase, "We should have called Susie and Bobby, they like to watch fires."

The son of an Oklahoma oil tycoon, Robert Markley headed west in the early sixties, ending up in Hollywood where he followed both a career in show business and one in law. His "It Should've Been Me"/"Summer's Comin' On" single was released on Warner Bros in 1961, showing none of the sardonic wit that would later make West Coast songs so controversial. He was introduced to Lloyd and the Harrises by Kim Fowley and from the inception of the band began calling the shots.
"He's an attorney, I guess he should know," Lloyd recalls thinking when Markley omitted Lloyd's name from the albums' credits and eventually changed the name of the band to Markley, A Group. "Markley made Christopher Columbus look wrong," explains Shaun Harris. Regardless of the reasons, be they bad judgement, bad choices or bad luck, West Coast never garnered the record sales they deserved and after three releases on Reprise Records, they were dropped.
By 1969 the movement thing was in full force and West Coast were right there amongst the dirty, hairy throngs. With a cover photo showing a prepubescent waif sitting on the street next to an empty can of Coors and holding a Raggedy Ann doll (could it be "Annie, the beautiful orphan of ten" from "Coming of Age in L.A.?") and the group sporting some seriously messy hair and red eyes, West Coast delivered their fifth album, once again varied and once again full of unusual treats. Halfway between the flowery psych of Volume Three and the emerging chugalug sound of groups like the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival, Where's My Daddy? (Amos AA 7004, 1969) is an intriguing item, a souvenir of the times as they were a'changin.'
The brash Markley side of things is "Hup Two! Hup Two!," recalling the woes of being a member of the California penal system, queers and all, while the beauty and innocence of the coming of age in the age of aquarius bursts out of the stunning "Free As a Bird" and "Outside/Inside," which harken back to their summer of love masterpiece, Volume Three. Exploring the more guitar-rock territory begun last album with "Our Drummer Always Plays in the Nude," Danny Harris shows off his chops on the mondo-cock rock anthem "Give Me Your Love Thing" and it's strange plea to "let it sing"-something I did not know was possible. But perhaps the biggest treasure lies in the last four cuts of the album-a dizzying collage of Los Angeles hippydom, proto-scat singing and doo-wop backing, easing Lloyd and Harris (and old pal Greenspoon) right into their future gig playing with teen heart-throb Shaun Cassidy.

Disappointing sales again forced the group to change labels, this time to the tiny Forward label. Markley, A Group (Forward ST-F-1007, 1970) officially ended the difficult West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band title, as Markley deemed it in the band's best interest to release the new record under his egocentric new title.
Whatever they called it, Markley, A Group aimed for a looser vibe to match the times, and succeeded marvelously. The production, buzzing and minimal, suggests a bent towards situationalist theory. Hypnotic songs like "Elegant Ellen" recall a gentler, more melodic Red Krayola, while "Booker T and His Electric Shock" might have wooed fans of the gentler San Francisco sound if they could have gotten past the fatuous lyrics. The album ends magnificentally with another rendition of "Outside/Inside" from Vol. 4, superior in its stringed arrangement and natural tempo.
Here for the first time since the Fifo LP, Michael Lloyd's boyish face is pictured prominently on the album jacket. The previous three LPs presented the group as a trio of Markley and the two Harrises. Depending on who you hear it from, Lloyd's absence was due to either contractual obligations having to do with Reprise, some odd reasoning on Markley's part, or perhaps he was not even involved on those projects, as some would insist. The first we see of his name in the credits since 1966 is after the group moved to Amos and then, on the Where's Your Daddy? LP, he listed as only a co-writer on a few of the album's cuts.
Markley, A Group spelled the end for the decidely uncommercial team that had lasted just four short years. As Brigadoon, some members of West Coast, probably the Harris Brothers, released a 1971 single on the Verve label. "I'll Cry Out From My Grave (God I'm Sorry)" is a bright-eyed tale of wanting to die for messing up so bad. It is easily as strong as much of the group's best material. Apparently another single was released under the title Rocket but I've yet to hear it. In 1973, Shaun Harris released a solo album on Capitol ("Shaun Harris," Capitol ST11168) that also featured brother Danny "in a more country-rock setting" (anyone with information on obtaining these later releases, please contact GGP). Bob Markley dropped from sight soon after the group parted ways. He hasn't been heard from since.

Since their premature demise, West Coast's influence continues to spread. The title track to Where's My Daddy, which had the group pioneering a laid back, "truckin'" sound, foreshadowed territory that the Grateful Dead and Little Feat would soon explore. In the early eighties, UCLA art student Bruce Licher  so worshipped the neo-tribal essence of West Coast's "Suppose They Gave A War and No One Comes" that he started a band, Savage Republic, in its image. The B-52s ripped off some lyrics from Volume Two's "Buddha"-but whereas the B-52s offered something icky ("I'll give you fish"), West Coast were more tasteful, saying "I'll give you avocados." And the Beastie Boys copped West Coast's silver  fish-eye bathroom picture from Volume Two for their Love American Style ep back in 1989.

In summary:
Songs about underage girls: 13
Songs about war or mass destruction: 7
Songs about getting beaten up by the cops: 4
Songs about dogs with rabies: 1
Songs about dogs without rabies: 1
Songs mentioning avocados: 1
Songs mentioning radiation risks in freshwater lakes": 1

Written by Erik R. Bluhm
First published in the Great God Pan magazine 1998.

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