THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA /ORIGINAL FUZZ PSYCH/ NM

$

33

ORIGINAL 1968 COLUMBIA 360 STEREO  RECORDS PRESSING CS-9614

  SLEEVE HAS LIGHT WEAR, SEAM WEAR, LIGHT STAINING TO BACK

RECORD IS  NEAR MINT-

TRACKLISTING:
AMERICAN METAPHYSICAL CIRCUS
HARD COMING LOVE
CLOUD SONG
GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
I WON'T LEAVE MY WOODEN WIFE...
WHERE IS YESTERDAY
COMING DOWN
LOVE SONG FOR THE DEAD CHE
STRANDED IN TIME
THE AMERICAN WAY OF LOVE

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Joe Byrd, who master-minded this group of experimental California musicians, was born in Louisville, Kentucky. He is a descendant of the famous Byrd family of Virginia and he grew up in Tucson, Arizona. During high school years, he played in country-and-western and pop music bands, but by the time he entered the University of Arizona he had begun playing vibes with a jazz group.

After graduation, Byrd received Stanford University's Sollnit Fellowship for graduate study composition. But Byrd chose to split for New York, where he had already begun listening to electronic music and meeting far-out Berkelee composers.. While there, he worked as a conductor, arranger, teacher and assistant to critic-composer Virgil Thompson. It was during this era that he developed his interest in experimental music and his works were often performed abroad.

Influenced by events in California in the late sixties, he decided to quit New York and head for the University of California at Los Angeles. Here he worked as a teaching assistant, also finding time to study acoustics, psychology and Indian music. He eventually dropped out of UCLA to work full-time on his musical enterprises. After working on Phil Ochs' Pleasures Of The Harbor, he put together The United States Of America, whose other main asset was vocalist (and Byrd's ex-girlfriend) Dorothy Moskowitz, who possessed possibly one of the most attractive singing voices in rock. Other original members included political radical Michael Agnello and bassist Stu Brotman but both left before the band signed to Columbia with Brotman joining Kaleidoscope.

The group's sole album was erratic but often brilliant, with Byrd and Moskowitz writing most of the music and lyrics between them. Opening track, The American Metaphysical Circus parodied Sergeant Pepper and the unusual, but commercial I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar became well known here in England by virtue of its inclusion on the CBS compilation The Rock Machine Turns You On.

Overall the album was one of the most successful attempts to marry experimental electronic music with rock lyrics. Instruments used included a Durrett synthesizer and Tom Oberheim's ring modulator, an electric violin and an unfretted bass. The beauty of the lyrics was matched by the excellence of Moskowitz's voice on tracks like Cloud Song and Love Song For The Dead Che.

Other tracks like The Garden Of Earthly Delights and Coming Down appear drug-inspired:

"Poisonous gardens, lethal and sweet
Venomous blossoms
Choleric fruit deadly to eat
Violet nightshades, innocent bloom
Omnivorous orchids
Cautiously wait, hungrily loom
You will find them in her eyes,
In her eyes, In her eyes"
(from Garden Of Earthly Delights)
I think it's over now, I think it's ending
I think it's over now, I think it's ending
A thought of coloured clouds all high above my head
A trip that doesn't need a ticket or a bed
And everything is smelling sweeter than the rose'
(from Coming Down)
The album is a minor collectors' item but has also been reissued. It climbed as high as No. 181 in the U.S. Album Charts when it was first released. The cover was originally planned to be an American flag dripping with blood but, understandably, Columbia bailed out of the idea.

Live, the band played an exact reproduction of the album but had trouble getting suitable gigs. One, in which they were paired with The Troggs, was an unmitigated disaster and they also had an ill-tempered coupling with The Velvet Underground (in fact, after leaving the Velvets, Nico tried to join the USA). In addition, tension between bandmembers was rife, with Byrd, who the album's producer David Rubinson describes as "one of the most insane examples of a control freak that I've, to this day, ever experienced", attempting fruitlessly to dictate policy to the other strong personalities in the band. Every rehearsal became, in Byrd's words, "group therapy". When three of them were busted for marijuana at a gig in Orange County, California, only Byrd and Moskowitz remained and they soon split into two factions with each leading their own group.- FUZZ, ACID & FLOWERS