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West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - Part One (1967)
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The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's first album for Reprise was
the best of the group's career, in large part because it was the most
song-oriented. It was still plenty weird, almost to the point of
stylistic schizophrenia, but when you got down to it, much of the
record was comprised of fairly catchy songs in the neighborhood of two
and three minutes. At times they sounded like reasonably normal, fairly
talented Byrds-like folk-rockers ("Transparent Day," P.F. Sloan's "Here's Where You Belong"); at others, a Kinks-like
garage band ("If You Want This Love"); and at others, a fey Baroque pop
outfit (the orchestrated "Will You Walk With Me"). There was an
undercurrent of unsettling weirdness and even paranoia, though, in some
cuts with otherwise pleasing tunes, like "Shifting Sands," with its
sizzling distorted guitars; "I Won't Hurt You," with its heartbeat bass
and disconnected vocals; and "Leiyla," where a standard teen garage
rocker suddenly gets invaded by spoken dialog that seems to have been
lifted from a vampire B-movie. The cover of Frank Zappa's
"Help, I'm a Rock" flung them into freakier pastures, emulated
convincingly on the group original "1906," an apt soundtrack to a
bummer acid trip with its constant spoken refrain, "I don't feel well."
It's true that all but one of these songs (the nondescript "'Scuse Me,
Miss Rose," written by famed Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash/Simon & Garfunkel producer Bob Johnston) is on the Transparent Day
compilation. But there are good reasons to consider buying the Sundazed
2001 CD reissue: The thorough liner notes start to unravel the history
of this mysterious band, and mono single mixes of "Help, I'm a Rock"
and "Transparent Day" are tacked on as bonus tracks. AMG review by Richie Unterberger
