Various ‎– West Coast Soundings

One of the most infamously acrimonious musical unions transpired between two of the leading purveyors of West Coast cool jazz: Chet Baker (trumpet) and Stan Getz (tenor sax). Their paths crossed only a handful of times and West Coast Live captures two of their earliest encounters in Los Angeles at the Haig on June 12, 1953, and the Tiffany Club on August 17, 1953. These recordings have been issued in Europe and Japan ad infinitum in varying degrees of quality, completeness, and often sporting erroneous data. However, enthusiasts should note that West Coast Live is the only release derived from producer/engineer Dick Bock's own master reels. For two men who purportedly would rather not be in the same room at the same time, Baker and Getz are able to create some legitimately brilliant improvisation. For the Haig set, Getz had been brought in to co-lead a quartet with Baker for an incarcerated Gerry Mulligan.

In 1955 the difference between East/West Coast jazz was a hot topic, with critics and fans capable of taking zealous musical alliances with one or the other. The title of this disc, West Coast Jazz, was conceived as a joke, considering all musicians involved were originally from the East Coast and did not play exclusively in the laid-back, commercially profitable, cool style, as pigeonholed by some. Stan Getz was in California for his part in the film the Benny Goodman Story, where he picked up a week long gig at Zardi's in Hollywood. The pickup band that greeted him featured a great rhythm section: Lou Levy (piano), Leroy Vinnegar (bass), and Shelly Manne (drums), along with Conte Candoli (trumpet). These musicians connected with Getz immediately, having crossed paths previously…

An album full of vintage 1966-1968 music by the band that brought you the incredible "Hashish" on the legendary San Franciso Sampler "Fifth Pipe Dream". First ever release of this killer Westcoast psychedelic monster that took many years to complete! West Coast Natural Gas started in 1965 in Seattle. In early 1967 they went to San Francisco to work for a local music manager named Matthew Katz. Katz was the original manager for Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and later also It's a Beautiful Day. He talked West Coast Natural Gas into signing a contract with him but being young and stupid, they didn't realize at the time that they had basically signed everything over to him. They went into the studio and recorded some original tunes: A Favor, Go Run and Play, The Jumping Frog, Hashish, Water or Wine, Beyond This Place, and Two's A Pair…

The band's third album for Reprise has its advocates among psychedelic cultists, but it really is a letdown when stacked against their previous two Reprise LPs, even if those LPs (particularly the second) were haphazard in their psychedelic-pop-folk-rock admixtures. When they play it straight, the songs are often average or even unmemorable, easy-going late-1960s L.A. rock. When they are obviously trying to be strange, as on the title cut, it sounds contrived, and if you've heard the previous Reprise LPs already, Bob Markley's occasional deranged rants will be old hat. The minute-and-a-half "Anniversary of World War III" is entirely silent: a radical notion for a rock album of the time, perhaps, but something that had already been done by John Cage. There are some pleasing moments here and there, like the melancholy folk-rock ballad "Eighteen Is Over the Hill"…

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…

Raw, sometimes sloppy material by this enigmatic, psychedelic cult band appeared on an extremely rare debut album in 1966 (their first LP for Reprise, Part One, is usually considered their first recording). The West Coast Pop Art were always a strange act, and this collection does nothing to tarnish that perception. It's not so much the weirdness of the sound - they could be plenty weird per se on Zappaesque freak-outs like "Insanity" (co-penned by Kim Fowley), but only occasionally. It's more the sheer unpredictable range of the material. One minute they're attacking "Louie, Louie" and the classic jazz instrumental "Work Song" with all the finesse of teenagers in their bedroom; the next they're doing pretty psych-pop tunes with a bizarre edge, like "I Won't Hurt You"; then there are the Dylan covers, which are approached as if they are Yardbirds' tunes, with splashes of feedback and hard rock/R&B arrangements…