credited as providing electronic music, electric harpsichord, organ, calliope, piano, and Durrett Electronic Music Synthesizer. Besides Byrd, Moskowitz (lead vocals), Marron (electric violin, ring modulator), Forbes (fretless electric bass), and Woodson (drums and percussion), several of the tracks also credited Bogas. Moskowitz and Byrd collaborated in writing most of the songs, with Byrd responsible for both words and music on three tracks, "The American Metaphysical Circus", "Love Song for the Dead Ché", and "The American Way of Love". Byrd described "The American Metaphysical Circus" and "The American Way of Love" as "comments on the media as a means of thought-control, and the bourgeois sentimentality of the hippies' "Summer of Love" compared with the realities of love under capitalism." In "Garden of Earthly Delights", Byrd wrote the lyrics for the first verse and chorus; Moskowitz came with the track's title and some of the melody and lyrics. On "Coming Down", Moskowitz contributed to the melody line as well as writing the second and third verses. On "Hard Coming Love", Byrd wrote the title and first verse, and Moskowitz contributed what she referred to as the "lame doggerel that follows". Byrd's song "Love Song for the Dead Ché" reflects his leftist views; Columbia Records originally wanted the title changed because of its political implications. Two tracks - "Where Is Yesterday" and "Stranded in Time" - were written by Marron and Bogas. Byrd later described "Stranded in Time", arranged by Marron, as "a weak Beatle-esque copy of 'Eleanor Rigby', [which] could not be performed live because it called for string quartet. It should never have been included [on the album], but Dave Rubinson loved it." The record was released in early 1968, at a time when there was a receptive audience for “underground music” which combined musical experimentalism with radical social and/or political lyricsother examples, in their very different ways, including the Velvet Underground (who shared a common background in the New York experimental music scene; according to Moskowitz, Nico at one point tried to join the USA), Frank Zappa (whom Byrd disliked, considering him a niche-marketer "subsumed in a self-referential loop"), Love's Forever Changes, Country Joe and the Fish, and Jefferson Airplane. The album is littered with references to Byrd's obsession with old-time American music such as the Dixieland jazz intro on "I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife for You, Sugar". "The American Metaphysical Circus" starts out with five layers of sound