being heard in a collage: a calliope playing "National Emblem", a ragtime piano playing "At a Georgia Camp Meeting", two marching bands playing "Marching Through Georgia" and "The Red, White and Blue" switching between left and right channels. The other two tracks are of electronic sounds. The marching bands were arranged and conducted by Byrd, rather than being taken from existing recordings. Whether intended or not, the record took the form of a coherent "song cycle", a radical commentary on contemporary American society. The words ranged from satires on decadence ("The American Metaphysical Circus", "..Wooden Wife..", (this title being a parody of the 1905 music hall song, "I Wouldn't Leave My Little Wooden Hut for You" by Tom Mellor and Charles Collins) to lyrical expressions of longing (the pastoral "Cloud Song", the political "Love Song for the Dead Che"). Musically, the songs ranged from pseudo-classical elegance ("Stranded in Time", "Where Is Yesterday") to aggressive discordance and hard rock ("The Garden of Earthly Delights", "Hard Coming Love"), with heavy electronic distortion and collages of music such as brass bands, in line with Byrd being heavily influenced by Charles Ives. The final suite "The American Way of Love" integrates most of these elements, with a dreamlike ending containing a collage of earlier tracks. According to Lillian Roxon, the three-part suite "dealt most explicitly with the activities of homosexual prostitutes on New York's notorious 42nd Street". Break-up The band fell apart shortly after their album was released. One factor was disagreement between Byrd, Marron and Bogas over musical direction, with Marron's promotion of lighter "McCartney-esque" material conflicting with Byrd's original vision for the band, and conversely Marron and Bogas becoming unhappy with the priority given to Byrd's songs. Dissent led to a backstage fist fight between Marron and Byrd after the band's performance supporting the Troggs at the Fillmore East, when the English band's fans had heckled the United States of America and Byrd and Marron competed against each other in turning up the volumes on their amplifiers. At another show in Orange County, band members were busted for smoking marijuana during the show, leading to it having to be completed by just Moskowitz and Byrd, who later complained that Marron, Forbes and Woodson were "often sloppy in performance" as a result of their drug use. There were tensions between Byrd on one side, and Moskowitz and Rubinson on the other. Byrd commented