They were great, and such an inspiration to so many of my current favorite bands!

Biography by Jason Ankeny
Despite releasing only one LP, the United States of America was among the most revolutionary bands of the late '60s — grounded equally in psychedelia and the avant-garde, their music eschewed guitars in favor of strings, keyboards and haunting electronics, predating the ambient pop of the modern era by several decades. The United States of America was led by composer and keyboardist Joseph Byrd, a Kentucky native raised in Tucson, Arizona; there he appeared with a series of rock and country bands while attending high school, subsequently playing vibes in a jazz outfit as a student at the University of Arizona. Despite winning a fellowship to study music at Stanford, Byrd instead relocated to New York, intrigued by the avant-garde experiments emerging from the city's downtown music scene; there he began earning international notoriety for his own compositions, at the same time working as a conductor, arranger, associate producer and assistant to critic Virgil Thomson.

Byrd eventually returned to the west coast, accepting an assistant teaching position at UCLA and moving into a beachfront commune populated by a group of grad students, artists and Indian musicians. He soon began studying acoustics, psychology and Indian music, but quickly turned back to experimental composition, leaving the university in the summer of 1967 to write music full-time and produce "happenings." To perform his new songs — material inspired in no small part by the psychedelic sounds produced during the Summer of Love — Byrd recruited a group of UCLA students (vocalist Dorothy Moskowitz, bassist Rand Forbes, electric violinist Gordon Marron and drummer Craig Woodson) to form the United States of America; the group's lone self-titled LP, produced by David Rubinson, was recorded for CBS in 1968, its unique ambience due largely to their pioneering use of the ring modulator, a primitive synthesizer later popularized by the Krautrock sound.

The subject of critical acclaim, the album spent over two months in the lower regions of the Billboard charts; still, the United States of America disbanded soon after, with Byrd resurfacing in 1969 with The American Metaphysical Circus, credited to Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies, a group of a dozen musicians including vocalists Susan de Lange, Victoria Bond and Christie Thompson. A critical and commercial failure, the LP was his last until 1975, at which time he released Yankee Transcendoodle, a collection of synthesizer pieces. Three years later Byrd also produced Ry Cooder's Jazz album, and in 1980 he issued another synthesizer record, Christmas Yet to Come. He additionally wrote for films, television and advertising jingles. Fellow United States of America alum Dorothy Moskowitz, meanwhile, later resurfaced in Country Joe McDonald's All-Star Band, with the remaining members of the group essentially disappearing from the contemporary music scene.

which used to be on the Spark website. It's evidently not there anymore, but when I was looking for it, I found this:

Let us go then, bastard, you and your monkey and I,
When the fucking evening is spread out against the fucking sky
Like a patient etherized upon a motherfucking table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The fucking muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a motherfucking tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To fuckin' lead you and your hand-job to an overwhelming question . You are a crispy shitbag. . .
Oh, do not ask, ‘Fuckin' what is that shit?’
Let us go and make our visit. I will eat your soul.

After looking over my post history, I'd have to conclude I'm not really one of those DUers with an "impressive body of work". I do have a large collection of sarcastic comments, however.

This "trying to fit in to society" thing just isn't working out, and all my attempts at rational discourse have availed me nothing. The way things seem to be going in the world, it seems to me that the only sensible thing is to go completely out of my fucking mind.

Right then...I'm off to go yell gibberish at strangers out in the street.

by quite a few people I wouldn't have expected it from, at least with regard to the manipulation of intelligence and the whole drumbeat to war prior to the invasion, as well as with respect to getting the hell out of there now...my question is:

Can we bring into the public dialogue the fact that aggressively invading another sovereign nation--and regardless of what the intelligence said or didn't say, this is what happened--is exactly the kind of thing that was outlawed after WWII?

and I quote, from the International Court at Nuremberg:

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

What has happened in Iraq is not a "preventive war", it is an act of bald aggression.

Can we talk about that now?

of the "African Development Bank". It seems I may have some money coming my way!

Here's the first part of the email:

"Dear Friend,
I am the officer of bill and exchange at the foreign remittance
department
of African development bank.

In my department i discovered an abandoned sum of US$10.5 US dollars "

It goes on to say that since no "next of kin" can be located for the original account holder (he died in a plane crash - Oh nohs!), I can have this money deposited in my account if I just send this fellow all my personal information. I think I should do it...I mean, ten and a half bucks is a lot of loot for me! What do you all think?

Three gents were drinking apple martinis in a bar and had gotten to the stage of arguing about details.

“I tell you it’s spelled W-O-O-M,” the first said loudly.

“No no, no,” the second protested. “It’s W-O-O-0-M.’

“You’re both wrong,” the third ventured.

“I say it’s W-O-O-M-B.”

A gynecologist passing spoke up. “You’re getting close,” she told them. “Actually, it’s W-O-M-B.”

They stared at her a moment, then stared at each other. Finally one spoke:

“Madam,” he said, “it’s obvious that you’ve never heard an elephant fart.”

I was sent forth from the power,

and I have come to those who reflect upon me,
and I have been found among those who seek after me.
Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,
and you hearers, hear me.
You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.
And do not banish me from your sight.
And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing.
Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!
Do not be ignorant of me.
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am <the mother> and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband
and he is my offspring.
I am the slave of him who prepared me.
I am the ruler of my offspring.
But he is the one who begot me before the time on a birthday.
And he is my offspring in (due) time,
and my power is from him.
I am the staff of his power in his youth,
and he is the rod of my old age.
And whatever he wills happens to me.
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/thunder.html

I'm truly puzzled.

I don't mean those who are part of the super-rich, top 1% overclass...greed and self-preservation I understand.

I’m talking about the average people who seem to consistently vote Republican against their own best interests, who seem to embrace whatever point of view Rush and his ilk foist on them, and who, it seems to me, represent the true problem that progressives must confront in order to reclaim our nation as a constitutional democracy. If enough of these people could be reached, and made to listen to reason, then maybe we could put an end to this current madness.

It's easy to say, "well, they're stupid", or call them "sheeple" or whatever else makes us feel superior, but that just adds to the problem. Name-calling and other tactics that increase alienation can never foster discourse. Besides, ignorance and gullibility are not motivations, just characteristics. I feel that these qualities are intentionally developed in the general population in order to make life easier for the fascists. (Well, that along with hatred toward any and all targets that those who give them their “talking points” decide need to be hated.)

But what is the motivation for this "pulling the wool over their own eyes" that right-wingers engage in? What drives them? And can their minds be changed?

All humans want similar things, I should think: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and so on. But how is it that these people connect such ideas with their right-wing ideology? Do they honestly--even after repeatedly seeing what this "conservative" Republican agenda does to their wallets, their freedoms, and the lives of our troops--do they still think that such "conservatism" is the be-all, end-all answer to everything?

It’s clearly not patriotism that governs their thoughts and actions, if anything can be gleaned from the recent reactions to Cindy Sheehan – e.g. “we don’t care” about the troops, or apparently the American flag…

…or the cross. So there goes any kind of religious motivation, too, I think…I mean, they aren’t really Christian at all—Jesus Himself would probably puke if he saw what these assholes are doing in His name. They can pay lip service to religion and morality all they want, but until their actions reflect the teachings of Christ, they are just lying to themselves. And everybody else.

I keep coming back to racism as a major motivator, but even that doesn’t explain the whole thing to me. I mean, they seem to hate the white liberals just as much as they hate all the non-white ‘others’. They seem to be extremely easy to whip up into feverish hatred of whomever…

So, what the hell is it that drives them?