Alexander "Skip" Spence-- Oar

Good album in my opinion, but I wouldn't consider it a masterpiece.

When I first checked it out--I didn't hear it for the first time until the later 70s--I was pretty disappointed with it, because everyone was talking up how weird it was, which is what got me really interested in it, but it didn't strike me as particularly weird at all. I was especially expecting to hear something with weird songwriting, something that would strike me like the first time I'd heard Trout Mask Replica or Meet the Residents. But the songwriting on Oar is pretty conventional.

After I adjusted my expectations and simply listened to it as I would any singer-songwriter album from the late 60s/early 70s, I dug it a lot more.

 

He’s my avatar for a reason. Love MG, love Oar.

I agree that it’s not a total downer album. There are funny and sweet moments. Hell, the thing starts with Little Hands and it doesn’t get more uplifting than that. Maybe it’s just a really good mix of light and shade. Anyway, it’s got such a light touch that it doesn’t wrench the tears out of you, they just kinda fall on their own accord. A delightful record and I don’t know another quite like it.

 

I get it...not a relaxing rainy day (or sunny afternoon) listen. Strangely attractive to my ears though...in a bizarre way.

One does not want to delve too deeply into the mind that created this musical adventure while listening...your words on it really are spot on, sixelsix!

To me it is the childlike simplicity in execution, backed by a delightfully dark vibe that appeals.

 

I've never understood the concept of someone thinking they "should" like an album. You either like something or you don't. Oar is an album that's very idiosyncratic, not particularly accessible, and not really representative of the era in which it was recorded. It's not surprising that a fair amount of people do not like it.

 

get over yourself. I love Barrett and Lee. Spence certainly falls into that category.

 

You seem a bit defensive. This is a discussion forum, so it shouldn't be surprising/distressing if someone attempts to engage you in discussion regarding a statement you've made here.

Categorizing artists based on their mental illnesses may not be the soundest premise upon which to base a musical critique.

 

I read it as saying, "'On paper,' you'd think I'd like this, but I do not." In other words, it has a lot of characteristics that normally the person would expect to like--maybe one is a fan of the artist in other contexts, it's in a genre that one likes, etc.--but nevertheless, one doesn't care for it.

 

This is one of my favorite tunes by the Grape! However, I believe that is Skip singing the quiet interludes, before Bob Mosely comes in with the hammer down.... I know he's not on the other songs, but it sure sounds like him on Seeing, which is a Wow-era song.....

 

My word, there are additional tracks? I have it and enjoy listening to it when I'm in a weird mood, but it's strangely exhausting for me to listen to it all the way through. Kind of like Trout Mask Replica.

 

Heretically, I like the tribute 'More Oar' album even more. Most of the artists get to the heart of his songs in a way that I don't think Skippy could. Or wanted to.

 

Love it. Very similar in many ways to Madcap Laughs, in that it is the sound of genius songwriter falling apart, but in the process finding moments of amazing beauty in such an uncontrived honest way, that probably wouldn't have been possible had they not been falling into the void.

 

Boy, I could not disagree more, especially about that particular song. To me it's analogous to saying Peter Paul and Mary's version of "Blowin' in the Wind" is preferable to Dylan's.

 

I told you my preference was heretical. Of course, I prefer this to the original too:

 

Yes....I meant the large part of Grape '69 was sans Skip. A wunderful LP.

 

I think Oar is a wonderful album, it is sort of a continuation of the last part of Indifference from MG’s debut album, a sudden shift in tempo, a different key, a different view of the world. To paraphrase Jon Savage, Oar is what remains after the dark star have crashed and poured its lights into ashes. It is not an album I play very often as I very seldom have the time to give the album the concentration it requires. On the one hand, it just drifts you by if you play it in the background, but give it time and you’ll find that it is very much a conscious effort of Skip. It is not a rambling incoherent album, but very much the opposite. I get the feeling that from a musical perspective, Skip was very much in control.

But having said that, and while we’re discussing Skip, does anybody have any more information regarding the recording of All my life (I love you)?

 

I have been listening nonstop to this album for the past three days, and it is totally hypnotizing. I initially thought he must have been making the lyrics up as he went along, as his singing is often unintelligible, but I found the lyrics on a music app and they are quite beautiful. He sings them as if he is half asleep, but that just makes it more mysterious, the sense that he is throwing off these wonderful lines.

 

Good description. Hypnotic. I listen to my original vinyl, while gazing at the beautiful cover which is also hypnotic.

 

One of the factors that makes this album so wonderful is that, whatever one's opinion is of it, it is unique. I haven't heard anything that sounds like it. It is at once frightening/creepy and reassuring. Although Books of Moses gives me no reassurance at all. I initially thought the pounding of the stone was the shutting of a coffin with the listener (still alive) inside.

 

I noticed on Sundazed's Facebook page that they mention an upcoming 3 CD/LP reissue with 2 hours of unreleased material from the Tennessee "Oar" sessions. A Sundazed release in conjunction with Sony/Legacy. This sounds interesting. I thought what we've had presented to us on CD was it. But there is more material I guess, including alternate versions of Oar songs among other unreleased material. I'm not on Facebook so I can't post a link. Maybe someone else can do the honors.

 

"Today we celebrate what would have been Skip Spence’s 72nd birthday! And what better day to announce that the once-thought-impossible is soon to be a reality?!?!?

This summer, Sundazed / Modern Harmonic will proudly deliver to the world a 100% mindblowing, definitive, multi-disc edition of Alexander Spence’s beyond-iconic album, Oar. The upcoming set will feature nearly TWO HOURS of previously unheard recordings from Skip’s legendary 1968 Nashville sessions, including songs that were never before known to exist, radical alternate versions, revealing demos, snippets and more. Originally released in 1969 by Columbia Records, then expanded in content (and in audience) in 1999 by Sundazed Music, this upcoming, definitive, multi-disc edition of Oar, entitled AndOarAgain from Sundazed / Modern Harmonic is a find of true historic significance.

The background: Alexander Spence – a singer, songwriter, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist known as “Skip,” recently relieved of his duties in the San Francisco rock band Moby Grape after a descent into excessive hallucinatory-drug use, arrives in Nashville on a motorcycle that he purchased with part of a small recording advance from Columbia Records, the Grape's label. Spence had powered down to Nashville on his new bike after being released from New York's Bellevue Hospital, where he had just spent six months in the psychiatric unit.

Skip then spends six days in studio sessions (spread over two weeks) in December, 1968, recording Oar in the Columbia Recording Studios, at 504 16th Avenue South in Nashville, Tennessee. At the sessions’ end, the Oar reels are painstakingly edited, refined and organized into an album by legendary producer David Rubinson. This will be Skip’s first album as a solo artist.

It will also be his last.

Issued commercially on May 19th, 1969, Oar will be Spence's only complete expression of his experimental verve and musical facility, under his real name and creative control, before he recedes into rapidly deepening, and - ultimately conquering - darkness.

David Fricke: “A half-century after its brisk, strange birth, Oar remains one of the most harrowing and compelling artifacts of rock & roll's most euphoric era: an apparent chaos of eccentric composition and overwhelming melancholy, wreathed in country-blues shadows and the smokey blur of Spence's wounded-baritone singing.

This definitive edition of Oar – over 3 CDs (or 3 LPs) with nearly three dozen previously unknown performances, including additional songs and fully conceived alternate takes – prove Spence's diligence, inspired momentum, and clarity beyond any doubt. He played all of the instruments, including bass and drums, and produced the album, testing ideas and building arrangements with an odd but assured vision: a confession of mental and emotional trauma stripped to primal-blues, ragged-country, and solitary-folk fundamentals, sung as if from inside a trance but precise in the tormented details.

The additional recordings here – nearly two hours of music on the way to Oar along with roads not taken – at once clarify and muddy the enigma: how did Spence determine the final, preferred state of the album's twelve songs? An extended outtake of "Diana," running close to six minutes, is just voice and spindly acoustic guitar, interspersed with outbursts of robust strum. Stripped to just vocal and acoustic guitar in a newly-revealed version here, “Broken Heart” now sounds as bleak, grave, and true as Johnny Cash's towering noir, in his sunset years, with producer Rick Rubin. Then there are the scraps of song, more than a dozen in this set: sparks and notions on bass and drums, sometimes guitar, with a flick of melody or possible chorus. Some never get much past a minute like "I Got a Lot to Say," a potential R&B dance party with Spence testing that vocal line against different tempos. Some go farther, with genuine promise. You can't miss the hint of classic, soaring Moby Grape in "I Want a Rock + Roll Band." In a momentary reprieve between prisons, physical and mental, Spence recorded as much music as he had in his head and heart and as much as the studio clock and Columbia's budget permitted.”

Sundazed Music/Modern Harmonic, in conjunction with Sony Music/Legacy Recordings, is elated to announce the Ultimate Expanded Edition of Skip Spence’s Oar, an edition across 3 CDs (including the original album), or 3 LPs, joined with deluxe packaging and unseen photos. The set will also contain new notes from David Fricke (senior writer at Rolling Stone, MOJO contributor, and host of The Writer’s Block on Sirius XM radio). David has been writing about Skip Spence and Moby Grape for three decades."

Hallelujah!

 

WOW

 

No, 'WOW' was Moby Grape!
:--)

 

Hey check out my avatar, from the Oar inside cover!

I like the way it pulls the classic trick of luring you in by starting with a catchy sing-along number ("Little Hands"), then after that Blam!, the weirdness/moodiness starts. Same for David Crosby's first solo album.

One thing that is essential to understanding this album is to know the story behind it, aka you must read the liner notes on the CD. An absolutely fascinating and sad story about Spence and Moby Grape. Otherwise, it may just sound like a crazy guy doing a lot of mumbling and banging on tom tom's. There really is a singular, visionary uniqueness to this album, once you get used to it. Just don't expect it to sound even remotely like Moby Grape

 

Agreed, well said. It's the definition of "off the beaten path", that's for sure.

 

Yes indeed. They still WOW me.