He was also a young man with an avant-garde pedigree and a recording contract. The American Metaphysical Circus was pretty much his baby: odd, tripped-out, mixing electronic sounds and musical styles from psych-rock to ragtime sometimes effectively, often overreaching, not as satirical as he might have thought at the time, certainly not as wry as Zappa or as ingenious as Van Dyke Parks, but positively one-of-a-kind.