West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band Pt 1 MONO LP Psych

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West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band "Part One" LP on US issue 1967 Reprise Records MONO #6247...    Vinyl has high luster, and a few minor scuffs, and rates an easy very good plus condition...The Jacket has some minor storage wear and a name erased on the back, so this rates a very good to very good plus condition...... I use the strict Goldmine Magazine guidelines for grading records, and most dealers think I rate TOO tough!!! ...See My other auctions now up for more psych, soul and rare LPs!! Mailed in a special hard cardboard LP mailer..Sent media rate for $3.00 in the USA, or Priority in the USA for $6.00. For overseas rates, please use the US Postal Service Internet site for rates and restrictions...Most LPs with the mailer weigh about one pound, give or take one ounce... The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, no strangers to weirdness on their prior 1967 album Part One, had still often stuck to relatively straightforward, concise, and pop-flavored songs on that LP. Here they stretched out into less structured, more avowedly psychedelic (and indeed experimental) territory, with mixed results. "Smell of Incense" (covered for a small hit by Southwest FOB) was sublime psych-pop. Yet "Suppose They Give a War and No One Comes" was just some fool — actually the band's chief investor, lyricist, and tambourine player, Bob Markley — grafting silly, self-consciously freaky recitation of a vintage 1936 Franklin Roosevelt speech onto an ominous fuzz guitar backup. Other cuts like "In the Arena" and "Overture — WCPAEB Part II" were free-form psychedelic creepiness without the strong content of, say, likely influence Frank Zappa. Yet some of the strangest efforts exert their own strange charm, like "Buddha," with its unfathomable delineation of a garden of delights set against chimes, tinkles, and gongs. Interspersed with all this was some generic country-folk-rock (although the wavering backup bagpipes on "Delicate Fawn" give even that a weird sheen), fair harmony soft rock ("Queen Nymphet"), and unhinged garage-psych-fuzz madness. ....

As their name suggests this band attempted to push back the frontiers of musical experience. They wrote and arranged all their compositions enjoying considerable recording freedom. The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (WCPAEB) were the first L.A. outfit to have a light show and were one of the biggest bands in town in the early days (in fact, the Mothers Of Invention once opened for them). Ironically, despite their reputation as psychedelic enfant terribles, none of the members used drugs (just like another purveyor of freaky music, Frank Zappa).

The Harris brothers and Michael Lloyd first met in 1964 when they were all students at the Hollywood Professional School - the school attended by most of the kids working in show-business. The three certainly had pedigree. Shaun and Danny were the sons of one of the U.S.'s best-known classical composers, Roy Harris, and Michael was a musical prodigy who had been working professionally for some time as a member of the New Dimensions. They first worked together as The Laughing Wind, and as such recorded a 45 for Tower Records entitled: - Good To Be Around/Don't Take Very Much To See Tomorrow. In order for them to start performing they needed a drummer, and for a short while Danny Belsky, an old friend and former band member with Michael filled in on their first recordings. Thereafter, John Ware played live with the band and legendary drummers Hal Blaine and Jimmy Gordon played in the studio. Their final member Bob Markley was introduced to them by Kim Fowley at a party he was throwing for The Yardbirds during their first U.S. tour at Markley's house. Markley was a wealthy attorney originally from Oklahoma who badly wanted to be in a band so he could get lots of girls (true!). Although a lot older than the other three (he was about 30, they were 16 or 17), he made a deal with them that he'd provide them with equipment if he could be in the band. As he didn't sing or play an instrument, he held a tambourine and stood in front of a dead mike. Markley's role in the band remains unclear. Because of his background in law, the other three left him with more and more business control, preferring to concentrate on the music. It's probable as a result that most of the production and composing credits attributed to him are spurious. Contrary to what most articles of the band allege, Michael Lloyd never left the band and continued making the albums with the Harris brothers right up to the demise of the band.

Markley's social connections helped them to get a deal with Reprise Records where they recorded three albums despite having no commercial success whatsoever....