The Girl in
The Chair
The Roots
Of Madness

Part II

If you like Glen Yarborough, you'll love the tragic "We had a Love (But It Died)." Let your ears and heart soar into "The Old Man's Ass." Remember that this brave group can only count five arms, seven legs, two glass eyes, an iron lung, a half-dozen mouths, and one bladderpump among them. And yet --- despite all odds --- can they sing! Such Music!

Don't be put off by their self-mocking fantasy. If you listen closely, you might hear throughout, in the background, the sounds of a kind of trickling --- what they later told us was Joe wetting himself (aptly, it was strongest in their song dedicated to the San Jose Water Works). You also might hear the rattling of Don's sputum cup on "The Flight of the Ocka Bird." You might not even be aware of the fact that Geoff actually had a gran mal seizure during the very recording of "Rèalisation II."

Forget all the rumors of incest, pederasty, masochism and onanism that their detractors are trying to lay against The Roots of Madness. Even in San Jose, the Prune Capital of the world, there are jealous, small-minded people, who are ignorant of what we now see as the purest of the New Smog-Belt avant-garde.

I like to think that it's simplicity; a simple-minded homefolk spawning true tragedy. As long as people sing the blues, as long as the outcasts, the difficult, the troubled pour out their hearts out to the point of seizure, The Roots of Madness will continue to be an inspiration to all of us.

Or, better perhaps, quoting from Lord Chesterfield --- it's "Nihility in Being." No busy-body social workers will beat them, no matter how many enabling orders they've issued to bring them and their instruments into the Reyes Point Veteran's Hospital "for observation" (as has been tried more than once). None of this is going to change the depth of feeling and obvious originality of this roughhouse gang, striving always, as one critic has it, "to put their heads where they belong...for the perfect fit."

--- L. W. Milam

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Technical Note on the Recording:
Material contained herein is protected by The Geneva Convention of 1947. It is only suitable for reproduction through urethral-driven stereopticon equipment. It was mastered on a Teriyaki Model #44 lathe-driven recorder, using Vollensak B-19 microphones. The mastering tape was Dak 120 Econo-line, and the whole was produced in Studio A of Radio Station KTAO, Los Gatos, California. Project engineer was C. McGowan.
Produced by DOGMOUTH Records
"At the Sign of the Retching Dogmouth."