When
the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band were booted by Reprise following the commercial failure of their three albums for the label, their former producer Jimmy Bowen signed the band to his own Amos label for a follow-up. The result, 1969's
Where's My Daddy?, surely must qualify as one of the creepier musical efforts of its year. Even without prior knowledge of bandleader and lyricist Bob Markley's later descent into severe mental problems, not to mention a string of arrests involving underage girls, the lyrics of this album are disturbing; with that background, some of them are downright horrifying. A concept album of sorts,
Where's My Daddy? charts the odyssey of "Poor Patty" (possibly the barefoot ten-year-old street kid pictured on the album's sleeve) through the post-Summer of Love bad trips of the Los Angeles street scene. From the Lolita-like innuendoes of "Everyone's Innocent Daughter" to the climactic "Two People," which ends up with a beaten and raped Patty pleading her case to a disinterested judge, side two of
Where's My Daddy? is like one of those cautionary morality films of the '40s and '50s as reinterpreted by Dennis Hopper's character from Blue Velvet. The music seems almost secondary, with most of the brief tracks consisting of little more than one- or two-chord vamps under Markley's increasingly fragmented and freaky story. More of an album to be marveled at than enjoyed,
Where's My Daddy? holds a certain psychological fascination, but it's neither particularly musically competent nor salacious enough to be perversely titillating. Mostly it's just kind of sad. ~ Stewart Mason