Fred Cole became one of the elder statesmen of the garage punk scene in the 1980s, ‘90s, and 2000s with his bands Dead Moon and the Pierced Arrows, but Cole, born in 1948, had been playing rock & roll since the mid-'60s, and the Weeds were his first band to achieve national prominence. The Nevada-born Cole cut his first record in 1964 with an R&B-leaning garage band called the Lords, but that group proved to be short-lived, and in 1966 he formed the Weeds; Cole was the lead singer, while Eddie Bowen and Ron Buzzell played guitars, Bob Atkins was on bass, and Tim Rockson was the drummer. The Las Vegas-based label Teenbeat Club Records issued a Weeds single, "It's Your Time" b/w "Little Girl," and the combination of that record and the group's live shows generated enough buzz to attract the attention of Uni Records, a subsidiary of the powerful MCA-affiliated Decca label. However, the group's brush with the major labels proved unsatisfying; Uni and the Weeds' manager insisted that the band change its name (possibly because of the oblique marijuana reference of the original handle), and when the group's album Just Colours arrived in stores in 1968, the group was called the Lollipop Shoppe. The new name was a poor fit for their moody fusion of bluesy garage punk and manic psychedelia, and while the album's first single, "You Must Be a Witch," was later celebrated as a classic among garage rock mavens, both the single and Just Colours enjoyed little commercial success at the time. Two Lollipop Shoppe tunes appeared in the 1968 biker flick Angels from Hell (a sign Cole and his bandmates must have been doing something right), but by 1969 the band had called it quits, though a 1971 reunion as the Weeds resulted in a final single. In 2007, the Weeds' singles were combined with the full Lollipop Shoppe album for a German CD reissue that brought together the group's complete catalog in one package. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi