them. Both Byrd and Moskowitz also contributed to an album of Indian raga music by Gayathri Rajapur and Harihar Rao, recorded in 1965 and released by Folkways Records in 1968. On one occasion in 1965, as the concluding part of a series of concerts and events called "Steamed Spring Vegetable Pie" (a title taken at random from The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook), Byrd organized a blues band fronted by his friend Linda Ronstadt, to play during a "happening". Byrd said that "the realization that rock was an access to a larger public came out of that concert, and the idea of forming a band began taking shape." Byrd became increasingly attracted to radical politics, and became a member of the Communist Party, explaining that it was "the one group that had discipline, an agenda, and was willing to work within the existing institutions to educate and radicalize American society." He left UCLA, but continued to stage performance art events, albeit on a reduced budget. After their personal relationship broke down in 1966, Moskowitz returned to New York, but she and Byrd stayed in contact. In early 1967 Byrd started to form a rock band with another politically radical composer, Michael Agnello, together with Moskowitz, bassist Stuart Brotman (previously of Canned Heat and later of Kaleidoscope), and African drumming expert Craig Woodson who had also been involved in the New Music Workshop. Audition recordings by this version of the band, from September 1967, are included on some later CD reissues. However, Agnello left the project on a point of principle when a commercial recording contract with Columbia Records was being considered, and Brotman also left. The first public line-up of the band included Byrd, Moskowitz, Woodson, and two contemporary classical musicians with whom Byrd had worked on earlier experimental projects in the New Music Workshop: Gordon Marron (violin) and Rand Forbes (bass). Later, for some of their recordings and performances, they added Marron's friend and writing partner Ed Bogas (keyboards). Byrd initially commissioned electrical engineer Tom Oberheim to build him a ring modulator, later replaced by electronic oscillators in a monophonic synthesizer built by aerospace engineer Richard Durrett. Among other effects, Marron used an octave divider on his electric violin, and Woodson attached contact microphones to his drum set and hung slinkies from his cymbals for a musique concrète effect. As the group's founder and leader, Byrd stated that his aesthetic