This West Coast trio had a very short life span – around six days – before leader Tab Nerdley choked on a bagel in a Palm Springs deli at the age of 23. “It was his fourth that lunchtime”, recalled bassist Boscombe Manningtree. “We'd warned him about overdoing the house special – a salami double-decker with provolone and mayo – but he wouldn't listen. It's tragic but then again he was a greedy bastard”. Greedy indeed, as the pianist is all over the opening track, ‘Lemon Bopsicle’: a tart, bop original that, unfortunately, shows up the limitations of the group. Nerdley stumbles in a few places – literally; banging his head on a microphone and apparently knocking a glass ashtray onto the keyboard. Manningtree has trouble making the changes and Eli Font sounds as if he's playing with wooden spatulas. Next up is another original, ‘All The Things You Aren't’ – with the unusual time signature of 16/8 and which the drummer kicks off. Font was known on the Coast for his delicate brushwork. Unfortunately, it wasn't at the drum kit – “he did a beautiful job painting my lounge”, tenor veteran Harold Land once declared. The group then make their way through a handful of standards and a brace of blues before wrapping things up with the Manningtree penned ‘Fire In The Hole!’, which, at seven minutes duration is about seven minutes too long. At a pinch it could be heard as an extraordinary forerunner of Coleman's free jazz experiments of the late 1950s/early 1960s – or it could simply be heard as three men who had been drinking heavily. Nerdley was once described as “a poor man's Bud Powell”. That poor man must have been destitute.