The Fling
Orange, California
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
The United States of America — The Garden of Earthly Delights
from The United States of America (1968)
A psychedelic display of electronic music effects and all kinds of synthesizers, dreamed up by Joseph Byrd, a composer and ethnomusicologist at the UCLA New Music Workshop. Byrd hung in avant-garde circles with folks like Terry Riley and wanted to bring electronic sounds to rock music.
This cut has plenty of that, with crunchy electronic harpsichord and ray-gun screeching, and almost sounds like a rubric for the Stereolab sound. (Or maybe Broadcast, who drew influence from the U.S.A.)
It’s exciting music, but unfortunately the fun didn’t last long. Tensions between band members frequently boiled over, due in no small part to Joe Byrd, who was quite a control freak, according to some accounts. (He even got into a fistfight with electric violinist Gordon Marron backstage at a gig at the Fillmore East.)
And when three members of the band were busted for marijuana at a gig in Orange County, California, the experiment was over.
