Roots Of Madness

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

The 2005 De Stijl / Child Of Microtones reissue of an extraordinarily obscure American homemade LP from 1971: the only release by Roots Of Madness, a Bay Area collective active 1969-1976 around Don Campau and the staff of the Dogmouth record store in Los Gatos, California. The original Girl In The Chair was a 500-copy private pressing on the Dogmouth label, sold mostly out of the band's own shop, with cover artwork by Peter Blind and liner notes by the radio-experimenter and free-form pirate-radio pioneer Lorenzo W. Milam (who also sings on the final song under the pseudonym PP McFeelie).

The band's name comes from a Theodore White documentary about China (China: The Roots Of Madness), but the music has nothing to do with politics. It is American outsider folk-psych at its most homemade: minimal four-track home recordings made on reel-to-reel, with acoustic guitar, voice, occasional electric guitar, almost no rhythm section. The performances are loose, often funny, often touching, with the kind of unguarded directness that Daniel Johnston, Jandek and the Shaggs would shortly make famous. Songs run together; styles shift mid-piece; the recording quality is rough in the way private home recordings always are.

The pressing on offer is the De Stijl / Child Of Microtones 2005 reissue on IND-045, with the original sleeve faithfully reproduced. Not the 1971 Dogmouth first edition (which is essentially impossible to find), but the version that actually allows you to hear this remarkable obscure document of American DIY culture.