The contrast between light and darkness extended into the music, with the naive peace-and-love message of some of the songs sitting uneasily beside the ironic cynicism of tracks like 'A Child Of A Few Hours Is Burning To Death' ("We should have called Suzie and Bobby / They like to watch fires!" Bob cheerfully intoned). Once again, Shaun was distinctly unimpressed with Markley's ideas and he is at a loss to explain the meaning behind many of the song titles - let alone the lyrics. Take 'Our Drummer Always Plays In The Nude', for example: "That certainly wasn't true! It was just another of his contrived attempts to be hip". Or 'Until The Poorest People Have Money To Spend': "Rest assured that Markley would have been the last person in the world to give anyone a farthing!" Shaun had grown increasingly tired of the way in which his carefully crafted pop compositions were being highjacked by Markley's bizarre musical agenda: "There would be times when you would have a good melody and you would think: 'I don't want to waste it on this...'" Yet, arguably, it was precisely these contradictions which made the work so powerful and unnerving, the disparate words and music often entwining with remarkable effect. Nowhere were the group's internal conflicts better highlighted than on the album's title track. The song opened with Shaun's gorgeous riff and the harmonic fanfare of the wordless chorus before descending unexpectedly into another of Markley's extraordinary monologues:

"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. "After the doors of many strange rooms have been bolted and locked / When you come back dragging your day dreams behind you / I'll give you a new shiny face / And a yellow brick road / The rest of the world is wrong / Don't let anyone change you. "Evil doesn't exist anymore / Except for the war"

The mixture of the magical and the macabre was reminiscent of the 'fairy' tales of the brothers Grimm, Lewis Carroll's 'Alice In Wonderland' or 'The Wizard Of Oz', but set to music, as it was here, the unnerving contrast between verse and chorus made the song hauntingly effective.

Another highlight was the Markley / Morgan composition 'As The World Rises and Falls'. The song's irresistible guitar line evoked the chord progressions of 'Smell Of Incense' while the lyrics were some of Markley's most mysterious and poetic. Sung by Shaun, the dreamy, echoing vocals and lead guitar leant the song an eerie beauty:

"Your eyes have grown tired of / Hunting for the fox and the owl / For smooth stones / And a safe place to hide in the hills by your home / Now you walk with bare feet / Through the wet sand / And the boy sees you and comes running over / And stands about forty seashells away / Wanting to walk on water / To turn you on / But you don't pay any attention at all. "As the world rises and falls... "Now you have a woman's shape / Thunderbolts in your fingertips / He has his eyes pinned on you / Be careful he has whips and chains / And he plays ancient games / Without anyone standing in his way / He can change the colour of the sky / If he wants to / But it's only magic used (?) to him / Because you won't be easily taken / Or he won't remember you at all. "As the world rises and falls... "I tried to tell you not to love him / Strongly as you did / You'll go out again some day / But you won't forget him for a long time / He tore the mask off your face / And then put you down / And made you want him / More than anyone before / And then he walked away / And you don't hear from him at all..."

Ron Morgan - circa 1971

Once more, Ron Morgan's strident lead guitar dominated the record. For the first time electric sitar - the unmistakable sound of a Coral Electric - was much in evidence, featuring prominently on 'Ritual #1', 'Until The Poorest Of People...', 'A Child's Guide...' and 'Ritual #2'. As Morgan's younger brother, Bob, recalls: "Ron could really put on his guitar antics! He would use some very unusual effects. He had a Magnatone which Seers Roebuck made for accordions and it had a wild organ-type of sound. He would also use a Lesley speaker and a lot of Vox equipment - amps and 12-strings - because the group were sponsored by them for a while." The album also used some interesting tape effects. According to Shaun, the 3-note electric sitar line on 'Ritual #1' was pre-recorded and then looped. Even more bizarrely, 'As Kind As Summer' featured a speeded-up-and-slowed-down-tape sequence which sounded the same played both forwards and backwards but made no sense in either direction!

Like many classic albums (and, no doubt, many more deservedly forgotten) 'A Child's Guide To Good And Evil' was recorded by a group in a state of crisis. Effectively, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band had now been reduced to a trio. The same newspaper article quoted above listed the personnel for the LP as: "Ron Morgan on lead guitar, Shaun Harris on bass, and Markley on percussion instruments - all sing". Danny's involvement was either minimal or non-existent. As Shaun recalls: "By this time Danny had become ill. He had a sort of manic depressive illness". The photo on the reverse of the album reflected the same line-up, showing (from front to back) Shaun, Markley and - at last - the elusive Ron, in apparently heavy disguise. According to his brother, after moving to LA from Denver in 1965 Morgan had swiftly immersed himself in the local music scene, recording a demo with two future members of the Iron Butterfly and playing with the early incarnation of Moby Grape, Peter and the Wolves. It was probably through his studio work that he became involved with the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. "After the first Reprise album he flew back to Denver and he was real happy with that. But he wasn't very happy with the singing. He wasn't a solo singer himself - he just did a little back up - but he was always disenchanted with the vocals. Ron kept coming back and forth from LA and Denver and that was how he missed the photo shoot for the second album. It seemed like the band wasn't organized at all - it was just a case of throwing stuff together whenever they could - and Ron was always out of time. When he got disenchanted with something, he got flaky. I remember that bit about him not getting out of bed to catch a flight. He didn't want to go back to LA because he knew what he was going into. I think he really wasn't into it at that time and just wanted to stay in Denver. He said that he would go into the studio where they would have laid down a lot of stuff and he would try and over-dub, but it would have just been awful - it almost had to be done again. To him the musicianship just wasn't up to snuff. A lot of people had trouble keeping up with Ron - it was quite funny to watch some times. But by the time of the third Reprise album, he told me that the whole thing was just a total embarrassment - it was pieced together so haphazardly. By this time Ron was heavily involved with Three Dog Night so when it came to the photo for the back of the LP he shaved differently and wore these silly glasses and hat in order not to be recognized. And I think he pulled it off!"

Closer investigation of the label credits suggested that, besides Bob Markley, Shaun and Ron, others also had a hand in shaping the album. The fake 'live' track 'Watch Yourself', with its over-dubbed crowd noises and some very tasty guitar playing, was solely credited to one R. Yeazel. Later a member of Denver outfit Beast, Yeazel's name would appear on that band's 1970 single 'Communication' b/w 'Move Mountain (You Got It)' alongside a familiar cast of characters: Ron Morgan, Jimmy Greenspoon and Roger Bryant. The plot thickened since Bryant, who had shared a credit with Markley on 'Suppose They Give A War And No One Comes', now turned up again on the track 'As Kind As Summer'. An interesting story related by Morgan's brother may shed some light on this: "According to Ron, Markley was a rare bird. He was off the wall, definitely. One time the band were rehearsing for a Santa Monica gig and they rented this studio at ABC. They were really killing on this one song 'Watch Yourself'. That was by Bob Yeazel, a local guy. He's in a bad way right now - got busted for drugs - music really took a toll on him! He was in the band for a short stint during that third album and so was the bass player Roger Bryant, who I also ran into not so long ago. An actor called Joey Bishop had his own TV talk show on the West Coast back then and he invited the band to come on that evening. They set up in the studio and all of a sudden Markley said: 'Let's do 'Help I'm A Rock'. We've got to promote the first album!' Ron couldn't believe it. Of course the band completely bombed and they didn't use it. Ron was really livid."

It was amidst this atmosphere of increasing disillusionment that the California Spectrum was born. Ever since the 'Legendary Unreleased Album!' (Raspberry Sawfly SAW8001) was released in 1980 by Lloyd and the Harris brothers - apparently in an attempt to kick-start the reissue of all of the albums - this group and its connections with the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band have been the source of much confusion. According to Shaun the origins of the California Spectrum lay in his own growing frustration with Markley's domination of the group, stemming not only from his antics in the studio, but also his reluctance to promote the band seriously by touring. "Markley would sit there hyping everything and telling you 'This is great!' about the songs, but I was disenchanted. I would have been more prepared to believe that his way was right if the albums had sold zillions of copies and we had been really successful, but we weren't. I think it took some effort to have three albums on Reprise - the same label as Jimi Hendrix - and never really see the light of day. We were never represented by a major booking agency and I don't think Reprise ever really promoted the band so no one ever got a chance to hear us. I was always unhappy with the situation with Markley - I thought his ultimate aim was just to have an album to show some girl in LA and bring them up to his house. He wasn't prepared to go out of town and play gigs, for example. Occasionally we would get a deal to play in places like Alabama, but that would have been a highlight - for the most part Markley didn't aspire to anything other than playing in LA. He thought the Sunset Strip was the coolest place on earth and he was fixated with hustling girls. Twice a year he would get interest on his inheritance and so there were times when he had phenomenal amounts of money and times when he didn't. He had his nice house up in Beverly Hills and he simply would not have done a hundred-day tour.

"I wanted to move ahead and start playing live more, so around 1968 I decided to take off with the California Spectrum. A guy named Bob Williams, who was this wannabe actor friend of Markley's, approached us about going out on the road as a band and touring the mid-West, but we weren't touring because Markley was keeping us in LA. I didn't know what to do. Should I leave the band? I asked my father and he said he thought we should do it. So my brother and I bought this trailer and we used this drummer called Russ Olmstead. I forget who the guitar player was, but we went through a series of them. For eight months we toured around the central part of the US with a light show and played some West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band stuff, but it was really awful and we made no money. The highlight was playing in Chicago with the Animals in front of about 5,000 people, but we would also have to play beer bars in Illinois from nine 'til four in the morning. One time the Beach Boys were playing at a college nearby and Bruce Johnston, who was a friend of mine, joined us on stage, but no one knew who he was. That's when I realised that I had made the wrong decision. On that trip I met a few people in the mid-West, bought a house and some offices in Denver and put out some records under the name of the California Spectrum on which I would sing. 'She May Call You Up Tonight' was done in just a few minutes at the end of a session Michael had, using musicians like Carol Kaye and Hal Blaine. I would go in and throw the music down and they would play it and later we would add vocals. I sang all the parts on that and I think I speeded it up. The B-side 'Rainbo' was just some electronic thing. It was released on Shana records [Shana 7915]. 'Sassafras' [later released as Raspberry Sawfly 9735, the B-side 'Obviously Bad' was a leftover from the Fifo period] came about in the same way. I would write columns in Teen Beat and Tiger Beat and promote the songs and get them played on record, but there was no band to hire!" Intriguingly, a publicity photo for the California Spectrum gave an address in Hays, Kansas and showed the Harris brothers, Lloyd and someone looking very much like Morgan - everyone, that is, except Markley.

Somehow, despite all this upheaval, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band managed to record 'Where's My Daddy?' (Amos AAS7004 1969), their fifth album and the last to be released under that six-word moniker. If their previous label had finally lost faith in the group then it appeared that Jimmy Bowen, at least, had not: the Amos label belonged to him. Nevertheless, after the consistently high standard of the trio of Reprise LPs, the new album was something of a disappointment. Quite apart from the quality of the songs and performance, the record simply sounded different. Whether or not the change of studio and engineer had anything to do with it (recorded at Wally Heider, Warner's Joe Sidore, who had mastered the previous two albums, was replaced by Bill Halverson, engineer on the first Crosby, Stills & Nash sessions), the warm, echoing depth of its predecessors had disappeared and in its place was a crisp and closely-miked sound which appeared unsuited to the band's style. Perhaps it was nothing more complicated than the absence of reverb, but although the record had its moments - particularly melodic songs like 'My Dog Back Home' and 'Free As A Bird' - much of the material simply sounded unrehearsed or even unfinished. Several of the songs - 'Give Me Your Lovething' and 'Not One Bummer' for example - were barely more than laboured riffs. The latter, in particular, suggested that this was a group running short of fresh ideas - if that guitar line sounded familiar that was because it had simply been lifted from Markley's old single, 'Summer's Comin' On'. Shaun offers a possible explanation: "On the first album we had been playing the songs live and working out arrangements beforehand, whereas later on the songs were just worked out in the studio whilst we were recording the albums."

Lyrically, in place of the magic and mysticism of the previous album there was madness; instead of dreams, stark social reality. Many of the themes were familiar: the evil's of wealth ('Where Money Rules Everything'), conflicts with authority ('Have You Met My Pet Pig') and, of course, young girls. Although at first glance the album cover appeared innocuous, closer inspection revealed a distinctly unsettling image. A lonely, barefooted girl, clutching a doll and sitting beside a crumpled beer can, gazed straight into the eyes of the viewer, of whom she seemed to ask the question which was the album's title. She was, most likely, the same girl whose shrill voice could be heard introducing the album's second side with the words: "Part IV - The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band"; to be immediately followed by the song 'Everyone's innocent daughter': "Licking her lollipop fingers / Soft is this girl / Wise is this child / Down below in the city / Faces as grim as granite / I want to run tell the world / How much fun you are..." Another track, 'Coming Of Age In LA', had even more questionable motivation. After a spoken opening which appeared to have something to do with puberty, Markley exhorted the listener with the cry: "Step right up folks and get your ticket to LA - the greatest freak show on earth!" Appropriately enough, the rest of the song ran through a bizarre list of lowlife characters, but the narrative began and ended with the tale of "Poor Patty, a beautiful orphan of ten in army surplus clothes" who finished up in court before a drunken judge having been beaten, raped and robbed. It ended abruptly with the voice of the same little girl as before exclaiming: "Judge! Not one bummer the whole beautiful summer!"

Against this backdrop the bare-chested photographs of the band on the album's rear sleeve made an uncomfortable contrast - a return to the line-up of Bob, Shaun and Danny which had last appeared on the back of the second Reprise LP. The younger Harris brother, in particular, looked in a bad way. Shaun: "Dan was not in good shape. I look at that picture and I think that it was exploitative of Markley to allow him to have his picture taken at that time." What is slightly puzzling, however, is the absence of Lloyd, despite the fact that he shared credits with Markley on three of the songs and could be heard singing on several tracks - 'My Dog Back Home' for instance. Likewise, Ron Morgan's name was nowhere to be seen even though his spidery lead guitar could still be heard throughout the album. Perhaps he was still trying to remain anonymous.

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