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Their name was a provocation—“a way of expressing disdain for governmental policy. It was like hanging the flag upside down,” as the group’s Dorothy Moskowitz told Terrascope. But if you were young in 1968, there was a lot going on—LSD, Vietnam, The White Album, Stockhausen—and the United States of America somehow sounded like all of it at once: a counterculture state-of-the-union address. Their debut album was the work of a group of UCLA students working under the direction of Joseph Byrd, an ethnomusicologist and former student of John Cage. Byrd, a card-carrying Communist, envisaged an avant-garde rock band with radical politics at its center, and from that combustible starting point came a suite of music that pulls in all directions. Fuzz-rock and musique concrète leaks into traditional jazz and ragtime, with Moskowitz’s beautiful but affectless voice a rare constant. By any conventional yardstick, it’s a jumble, but think of it as the musical equivalent of a Rauschenberg collage and it all makes sense.

In my life I have owned many, many albums. This is the only one I've owned three times in different iterations. I love this record. All the trouble. All the failure. All the noise. 

United States of America - American Metaphysical Circus (1968)

United States of America - Garden of Earthly Delights (1968)

United States of America  - I Won’t Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar (1968)

United States of America - Love Song For a Dead Che (1968)

United States of America - The American Way of Love (1968)

1. Metaphor for an Older Man
2. California Good Time Music
3. Love Is All 

After USA exploded and fell to the ground, Joe Byrd formed The Field Hippies. 

Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies - Kalyani (1969)

Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies - You Can’t Ever Come Down (1969)

Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies - Nightmare Train (1969)

Phil Ochs - Crucifixion (1967)

Country Joe MacDonald - Sexist Pig (1972) Joe MacDonald's "Paris Sessions" album features Dorothy Moskowitz on keyboards and vocals. Last I checked, there were videos on YouTube of this tour. 

Merry Clayton - Gimme Shelter (1970)

East of Idaho - Don’t You Want Me (1994)

Elton John - I’ve Been Loving You (1968) His debut single. Sank without a trace. 

Chicago - Got To Get You Into My Life (1975)

Harry Nilsson - She’s Just Laughing At Me (1968)

Jan and Dean (with Davy Jones) - Laurel and Hardy (1967)

Jimmy “Bo” Horne - Dance Across The Floor (1978)

The Spotnicks (with Jimmy Nicol) - Husky (1964)

Klaatu - Sub-Rosa Subway (1976)

Les Humphries Singers - MacArthur Park (1975)

Ray Stevens - Age of Aquarius (1969)

Steely Dan - Dallas (1972)