The United States of America: NO! The Band...

The life of those that consider themselves experimental musicians isn’t necessarily always that great. Making weirdo music for a small cohort of like minded odd balls has its benefits – the big fish in a small pond thing. But for the most part, there’s a lot of down time and probably not too much acclaim.

That’s how it goes.

For those folks, though, that are able to get passed all of that and unloose an album, single or otherwise, the results (even years later) can be rather impressive.

As a music student Joe Byrd ran into all kinds of influential folks that made up the east coast, intellectual cognoscenti. Byrd, though, high tailed it to the west coast, taking with him enough enthusiasm for a nascent electronic music that was making headways in rock to influence his first group’s and only long player.

Yeah, Joe Byrd would show up again with the Field Hippies, but what he cranked out with those folks pails in comparison to the work he turned in with the United States of America.

First things first – this is not Presidents of the United States of America, a ‘90s rock and rolly band that made as much of an impact on popular music as the Toadies - but Joe Byrd’s ensemble. Vocally led by Dorothy Moskowitz (who could beat out Grace Slick in a talent contest any day) found themselves working sans guitar. Of course, the inclusion of Gordon Marron’s electric fiddle proved to make up for any lack of cohesion that could have resulted from the absent six strong. In the bizarre instrument choice, though, Byrd and his group wound up making a disc that had more twisted distortion than damn near anything released within the next few years – even if Detroit’s Iggy and the Stooges would eventually blow everyone outta the water.

But in 1968, the dreamy, stair stepping noise of Byrd’s production interspersed with the violin solos on “Hard Coming Love” should have landed the group a spot on just about any hippie bill in the country. The disc didn’t end up doing too much in the way of sales, or even career bolstering. Instead, the group’s self titled disc proved again that the American public, despite the flavor of the moment, can’t really ever handle the genuine article.

The Untied States of America wasn’t too far removed from other Bay Area psych acts of the time – again the violin was a pretty gnarly addition. But considering the strength of the songs represented over the duration of the disc, its failure in the marketplace seems odd.

It might be figured that the overwhelmingly aggressive tracks scared listeners away. But bucolic fair such as “Cloud Song” should have been able to reel in some of the laid back stoners of the era.

Either way, subsequent to the disc’s initial release back in ’68, Sundazed has reissued the offering and included some bonus tracks. The new additions aren’t necessarily all that enticing, but at least this masterpiece (I did just call it that) is readily available at this point.