The United
States of America – Gifts and Creatures
(soniclovenoize
“Second Album” reimagining)
Side A:
1. Kalyani
2. You Can’t Ever Come Down
3. Tailor Man
4. Nightmare Train
5. Osamu’s Birthday
6. Do You Follow Me
Side B:
7. No Love
8. The Sing-Along Song
9. Perry Pier
10. Invisible Man
11. The Sub-Sylvian Litanies
12. The Elephant At The Door
13. The Sing-Along Song (Reprise)
Happy Fourth
of July! This is a reimaging of a possible
second album from psychedelic-pop visionaries The United States of America. Using a combination of solo recordings from
band-leaders Joseph Byrd and Dorothy Moskowitz, as well as a few outtakes from
the debut United States of America album, we will attempt to make what a theoretical
sophomore 1969 album by the band would have sounded like. All
tracks have been volume adjusted from the best sources and crossfaded into two
continuous LP sides of music.
To put it
simply, there was never a band like The United States of America, nor there
ever will be again. Formed by young
ethnomusicologist and Fluxus art movement centerpiece Joseph Byrd and his
former-partner Dorothy Moskowitz in 1967, the pair were somehow equally influenced
by John Cage and The Beatles. After
composing a set of material with Byrd on keyboards and Moskowitz on vocals, the
duo recruited the rest of the band from musicians whom they knew and performed with
in the Los Angeles art, experimental and scholarly music scene: Gordon Marron
was recruited to play an electrified violin through a ring modulator;
African-drum student Craig Woodson was recruited to play a drumkit amplified by
a number of contact mics; modern classical bassist Rand Forbes played fretless
bass, often through a fuzz pedal. The
quintet was also joined by Marron’s friend Ed Bogas, who supplied additional keyboards. Young art students who essentially wanted to
create a rock band—despite being totally unfamiliar with the medium—were
also highly tapped into revolutionary 1960s politics and the counter-culture, and
sought to subvert the establishment by ironically dubbing the band The United
States of America.
After
recording a demo in September 1967, success was found fairly quickly as The
United States of America were signed to Columbia before they even performed
their first show! After touring with
Richie Havens and The Troggs, the group began recording their self-titled debut
that December with Moby Grape producer David Rubinson. Cracks already began to form in the unit, as
Rubinson allegedly attempted to elevate Moskowitz to being the star of the show; likewise, creative differences between Byrd and the union of Bogas, Marron and
Rubinson put a strain on the recording sessions. Regardless, the sextet and it's producer created an album unparalleled in its fusion of rock music, experimental electronics,
counter culture social commentary and genre hopping from pop to Dixieland to
sound collage. Released in
March 1968, the band followed its release with another tour with The Troggs and
The Velvet Underground.
Despite
being on the cusp of fame, the band quickly disintegrated. Unfortunate
circumstances shadowed the tour, including audience hecklers, a random attack
on Byrd by unhip locals and a literal backstage fistfight between Marron and
Byrd. Columbia records had a difficulty
in marketing the musical (and literal) revolutionaries and the band wondered
if they were “selling out to the man”. Internal band dynamics began to reach a
breaking point as each tried to vie power of the band from its originator,
Byrd. After an additional recording
session in May 1968 for a follow-up single “You Can Never Come Down”, the band
called it quits that summer, with Byrd walking away from the creature he
created (or fired from the band, as he claimed!). Not surprisingly, additional demo sessions
with Moskowitz and a backing band of session musicians were recorded in late July
still under the name of The United States of America, indicating Columbia’s
desire to continue the moniker with Dorothy as the centerpiece. These recording of two Moskowitz originals “Tailor
Man” and “Perry Pier”, as well as a third penned by Kenneth Edwards of Linda
Ronstadt’s band Stone Ponies, “Do You Follow Me”, were decidedly more
commercial-sounding, featured a standard rock instrumentation rather than the guitar-less and cutting edge
sound of The United States of America. Regardless,
nothing came of these recordings, which were shelved after the band’s break-up.
Meanwhile,
the outcast Byrd struggled to find direction.
Salvation came when Columbia Records, recognizing him as a genius despite
the failure to market and keep his band alive, offered him the chance to make a
second album, this time a solo effort in which he (allegedly) had total creative control. Like Moskowitz just recently prior, Byrd
gathered several session musicians—dubbed The Field Hippies—and recorded a song
cycle of hastily-written material under the working title Gifts and Creatures,
using a new version of the unused United States of America single “You Can
Never Come Down” as a centerpiece. Although
the sessions were difficult and Byrd had to utilize a series of female
vocalists in obvious mimicry of his departed muse Moskowitz, the resulting
album The American Metaphysical Circus was somewhat of a sequel to the sole
Unites States of America album. Again
mixing experimental rock and pop with Dixieland and gospel, the album began
with a suite of songs designed to replicate an LSD trip, followed by a suite of
sharp-tonged songs dedicated to President Lyndon B Johnson and concluding with
another suite parodying the decaying older generation and their early
retirement farms. Released in 1969, the
album miraculously became a cult hit and remained in the Columbia Masterworks catalog
for over 20 years, despite being too rock for the classical crowd and too arty
for the pop crowd. Both The United States
of America and The American Metaphysical Circus became cult classics of the psychedelic
60s, remaining hidden gems of the era, waiting patiently to be discovered by music
aficionados over the next 50 years.
Even through
the album title’s implication and the obvious continuity of band-leader Byrd,
The American Metaphysical Circus wasn’t quite the sequel that these
second-generation United States of America fans hoped for. While having some musical similarities, The Field
Hippies seemed to go on tangents that circled Byrd’s own fascination
with traditional American music and his study in ethnomusicology. And of course, the obvious lack of Dorothy Moskowitz
strong yet cool voice, replaced by ragtag facsimiles Christie Thompson, Susan
de Lange and Victoria Bond who simply could not hit the mark. Is there
somehow a way to reconstruct the album to make it more a proper encore to The
United States of America?
For my
reimagining, we will use the core of The American Metaphysical Circus, but patch
in the original United States of America recording of “You Can Never Come Down”,
the three Moskowitz-lead United States of America recordings from 1968 and two
outtakes from the self-titled 1967 sessions in order to make it a more appropriate
follow-up that will almost solely feature lead vocals by either Dorothy or Joseph. Sources are simply the 1996 One Way Records
remaster of The American Metaphysical Circus and the 2004 Sundazed remaster of
The United States of America, the later featuring a number of the required
bonus tracks for this reimagining. We
will call the album Gifts and Creatures, the original, intended title of The American
Metaphysical Circus, with cover art featuring imagery from The United States of
America’s live shows in 1968.
Side A
begins with The Field Hippy’s “Kalyani”, but is hard edited into the USofA’s “You
Can Never Come Down”, ideally establishing the intent of this reimagining. Crossfading back into the outro of The Field
Hippy’s version of the same song, we go directly into Moskowitz’s “Tailor Man”,
followed by The Field Hippy’s “Nightmare Train”. Next is The United States of America “Osamu’s
Birthday”, an outtake from their debut album, with Moskowitz’s “Do You Follow
Me” closing the side.
Side B
begins with another outtake from the first USofA debut, “No Love”, going
directly into The Field Hippie’s “The Sing-Along Song”. Moskowitz’s “Perry Pier” follows and then edited
into The Field Hippy’s “Invisible Man”.
Now, we could not have a United State of America album without a sound
collage, right? If I may be so bold, what follows is my own creation from previously heard sound
elements, ideally creating a reappropriation of several themes on the album
into a new context, in which we will call “The Sub-Sylvian Litanies”. We will use the most USofA-sounding selection
from The Field Hippies as the epic track to conclude the album; hopefully there
is a suspension of disbelief as we feature a lead vocal by Susan de Lange instead of our beloved Dorothy.
What is the
result of Gifts and Creatures? While defiantly
an interesting experiment of what could have been, two things become quite
obvious. Firstly, both Dorothy and
Joseph seemed to depart from the experimental rock of their debut album, with Moskowitz
leaning towards the female soft-rock singer-songwriter territory and Byrd towards
ethnomusicological pursuits. Strangely enough, those two sounds seems to
match fairly well and make a cohesive album, despite it not really sounding like
a true USofA album. Which leads us to
the second point: the truth is, the trinity of Marron’s modulated violin, Forbes’ fuzzy bass
and Woodson’s electrified drums seemed to be the USofA’s secret weapon, and
what stylistically set the band apart from their contemporaries. Aside from the two songs that feature them,
they are sorely missed from this reimagining of a sophomore album.
Regardless,
I hope you enjoy the album (that admittedly simply originated as a little experiment of
my own), and make your Fourth of July an American metaphysical circus!
Sources used:
Joe Byrd & The Field Hippies - The American Metaphysical Circus (1996 One Way Records CD Remaster)
The Unites States of America - The United States of America (2004 Sundazed CD Remaster)
The Unites States of America - The United States of America (2004 Sundazed CD Remaster)
flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR, Audacity & Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included