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The Boards
Surf rock band whose saxophonist Coy Harlingen is much sought-after, in Thomas Pynchon's 2009 novel Inherent Vice.
"Anything on the rock 'n' roll grapevine," Doc inquired, "about a surf saxophone player named Coy Harlingen who used to play for the Boards?"
"OD'd, right?" said Lefty the bass player.
"Allegedly OD'd," Scott said, "but there's also been a strange rumor going around, is that he really survived? they brought him back in some Beverly Hills emergency room, but everybody kept it quiet, some say they paid him to go on pretending he's dead, and he's out there someplace right now walkin among us in disguise, like with different hair and so forth-"
"Why would anybody go to that much trouble?" Doc said.
"Yeah," said Lefty, "not like he's some hot-lookin singer every chick wants to ball, some kick-ass guitarist who'll change the business forever, just another surf-band sax player, easy to replace." So much for Coy. As for the Boards, they'd been making piles of money lately, living all together in a house up in Topanga Canyon, with the usual entourage-groupies, producers, in-laws, pilgrims who'd journeyed long and hard enough to be taken in as part of the household. The resurrected Coy Harlingen was darkly rumored to be one of these, though nobody recognized anyone there who might be him. Maybe some thought they did, but all was fuzzed, as if by the fog of dope.
