Modality Stew - "Modality Stew" {USA} [1978] (psych folk)

"Guitarist Sid Brown's first brush with popular recognition came as a member of Detroit's The Spike Drivers. Following the group's mid-1960s breakup Brown followed half of the country to Berkeley, California where he remained active in music, as well as writing a yoga column for the Bezerkly Tribe.

By the mid-1970s Brown was living in Vancouver, Washington where he continued to write and record material. I'll let the liner notes to 1978's "Modality Stew" pick up the story: "The creation of a spontaneous and purposely under-produced album free of technologic overkill and deified gadgetry began in Spring, 1978. For more than a year I had been involved in a mostly unsatisfactory, negative and painful recording project. For me it was a year of alienation, loneliness and a gnawing-knowing stress. As a disabled and dissapated (sic) rock n' roll veteran, it was painfully reminiscent of the not-too-goof-old-days of working for a major label recording company, a cynical manager and jaded producers: a nightmare of exploitation and greed. The depression of repeating history as I guilt-tripped myself into signing an oppressive recording contract lifted as I flew to Athens. Floating in a transcontinental limbo I felt bewitched, bothers and bewildered. Escaping, arriving, still hauling lots of psychic baggage, I did almost all of my site seeing within ..." read more here