Album Notes

3 CDs-1 DVD The collection Coyle and Sharpe fans have been waiting for.

Disc 1. The Best of ‘63
Recorded off a radio in Mal’s Telegraph Hill apartment, New Year’s Eve 1963

Disc 2. Coyle and Sharpe on the Loose Reissue
Originally produced by Henry Rollins and Jennifer Sharpe 1995

Disc 3. The Arrest Plus Odds ‘n Ends
Recently discovered unedited, experimental recordings from 1962 plus Coyle and Sharpe Get Arrested. Perhaps for collectors only. Sound is sometimes marginal.

Disc 4. DVD, The Impostors TV Pilot 1965 with host George Fenneman (Groucho Marx’s sidekick on YOU BET YOUR LIFE.)

COYLE AND SHARPE BIO
Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe met in a boarding house in San Francisco in
1959. Coyle was a benign con man who had talked his way into 119 jobs
by the age of 25. Sharpe had just graduated college and had drifted
out to the West Coast to check out the Beatnik scene. The pair found
they had a mutually sick sense of humor and decided to if the to see
if they could avoid real jobs and see if they could make a living
pulling Pranks or "Terrorizations," as they then called them. Using
one of the first miniature tape recorders, The Mohawk, which they hid
in a brief case, they roamed the streets of San Francisco capturing
their bizarre encounters with unsuspecting citizens. After surviving
for two years on peanut butter sandwiches, they released an LP on
Warner Brothers Records and then were hired by KGO radio to do a
nightly show. Most of the audio on this release was recorded during
this period. In 1964 they went to Hollywood to hit the jackpot .They
did a television pilot , THE IMPOSTORS, which didn't sell. Perhaps 40
years ahead of their time, they were never hired again and their
partnership ended. In 1967 Coyle left California to pursue a career in
tunneling. He died in 1993 while burrowing under the City of
Barcelona. Sharpe continued to work in media and ultimately moved back
to San Francisco where he did hundreds of man-on-the-street interviews
for radio and television. Despite their brief partnership, Coyle and
Sharpe continued to flourish in the underground media thanks to the
dedication of Mal's daughter Jennifer Sharpe who, along with Henry
Rollins, produced a CD of their material in 1995. It is reissued in
this package. In the year 2000, The Whitney Museum hosted a
centennial exhibit THE AMERICAN CENTURY. Coyle and Sharpe were
featured in the Soundworks Exhibit.

This package, edited and compiled by Mal Sharpe, contains most of
their best work including some long lost tapes from their early
ramblings through the nighborhoods of San Francisco. Were they ever
arrested? Listen ...