Oar

Skip Spence | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD
• ASIN: B000005D9E
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #355,449 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Little Hands

2. Cripple Creek

3. Diana

4. Margaret/Tiger Rug

5. Weighted Down (The Prison Song)

6. War in Peace

7. Broken Heart

8. All Come to Meet Her

9. Books of Moses

10. Dixie Peach Promenade (Yin for Yang)

11. Lawrence of Euphoria

12. Grey/Afro

13. This Time He Has Come [*]

14. It's the Best Thing for You [*]

15. Keep Everything Under Your Hat [*]

16. Furry Heroine (Halo of Gold) [*]

17. Givin' up Things [*]

18. If I'm Good [#]

19. You Know [#]

20. Doodle [#]

See all 22 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The only solo album from this ex-Jefferson Airplane and -Moby Grape cult hero is something of a legend. Cut in four days all by himself, it bombed upon its release in 1969. Nevertheless, Spence's legend has led to devotion from such fans as Tom Waits, Robert Plant, Beck, and R.E.M. Oar features quiet, stark folk; odd turns of phrase; old-timey shuffles; playful swing; and pretty melodies croaked out from Spence's hoarse voice. Generally, the mood is blissed-out with the occasional apocalyptic dread ("Cripple Creek," "Books of Moses") and dissociated narratives ("Margaret-Tiger Rug," "Lawrence of Euphoria") that come naturally to a poor soul who's since seen time in psychiatric institutions. The reissue adds a few bonus cuts; these actually detract from the spooky power of the final cut, "Afro/Grey." Oar is a strange, likable period piece. --Jason Gross

Product Description

The visionary solo work recorded during Alexander "Skip" Spence's last days as part of the seminal San Francisco band Moby Grape. Sundazed restores the original Columbia album version of Oar directly from the 2-track master tapes, circa 1968. Our CD edition contains previously unheard material from the original sessions, unpublished photos and in-depth annotation by David Fricke, Greil Marcus and Jud Cost. The bonus cuts included are exact representations of what Skip recorded during the last day of the heady and historic Oar sessions. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars mesmerizing, December 19, 2002

By 

Gordon Smith (san jose, ca United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oar (Audio CD)

I live in a neighborhood with a lot of "halfway houses", and thus a lot of pretty disturbed people. When I was in High School there was a rumor that a certain local panhandler was none other than Skip Spence, the founder of Moby Grape. My friendds and I, sons of Bay Area Hippies, all, took a lot of plaeasure in imaging that it really was the 60's legend leaning up against 7-11 drunk and bewildered. We wondered what kind of drugs we'd have to take to end up like that. Anyway, I figured I could get a little perspective on the guy if I actually listened to his music. So I borrowed a copy of Oar, and hated it. It was mostly slow, and seemed tedious and self-involved. Of course, I was 17 years old. Now, I'm glad I got it. This record is so good in it's way that it's hard to describe. It's sort of straight-ahead folk as done by a guy who's run the gamut of 60's psychedelia. The music isn't overtly psychedelic, but the guy can't help leaving serious traces of all the weird places he's been. It's amazing how far a guy with a guitar can take you. This is a real eerie recording and it's not always pleasant, but it does things few albums can. For that it's worth the money. By the way, my friends and I were wrong all along about the drunk guy at 7-11.

41 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, June 17, 2004

By 

Gianmarco Manzione (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oar (Audio CD)

If Death ever picks up a few chords and takes it to the studio, the result is likely to sound a lot like this. From the haunted vocals of "Cripple Creek," the choking heart of "Diana" and the ferocious guitar licks on "War In Peace," perhaps the album's best track, something darkly powerful lurks beneath the surface of this masterpiece. Amid so many tossed-off attempts at marketable psychedelia in Spence's day, this is one of the few with at least an air of authenticity. Though as song after well-wrought song unfolds, it becomes less of an "air" and much more of the real thing. Equally as startling as Spence's sense for great songwriting is the range of voices and tones he explores. The oddly comforting "Little Hands" descends into the possessed "Cripple Creek." "Books of Moses" might as well be the only recorded vocal performance of Moses himself, it sounds that rusty and raw; yet this too floats quietly into that other end of Skip's endless spectrum with the unassuming "Dixie Peach Promenade."

Skip's story is the stuff of legend now: frustrated with Jefferson Airplane's refusal to allow the guitarist any more than the role of a drummer, he fled to the briefly brilliant Moby Grape before strapping his guitar to his back and taking a motorcycle ride to Nashville, where he recorded this album in a haze of drugs and alienation. His is one of those cases in which the confidence of genius is the thing that kept him from glory in his day, but assured him a longer-lasting spotlight among the rock 'n roll immortals. The indignity of his mental illness and the decades he spent wasting away in asylums is compounded only by the alleged "tribute album" released for him in 1999. The hope was that it would pay his medical expenses, but Spence died just around the release of the album. Even so, why guys like the squealing money-bags of rock, Robert Plant, couldn't simply cut a check for the man's bills rather than releasing this "tribute album," bound to fail commercially because hardly anyone living had given a second's thought to its tributee in at least thirty years, is beyond me. At least it served up a classic rendition of "Book of Moses" by the always reliable Tom Waits, as well as a weirdly effective cover of "Halo of Gold" by Beck. Yet only one or two of the various artists featured on the tribute has ever managed the simultaneously accessible and challenging music Spence achieved on this, his only solo album. A solid affair from start to finish, it testifies to the combination of talent and substance so rarely bestowed upon the music world.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Skip Spence's Tour de Force, November 1, 2002

By 

Gavin B. (St. Louis MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oar (Audio CD)

"Oar" has the dubious distinction of being the worst selling album in the massive Columbia Records catalog, and it effectively torpedoed the professional music career of Skip Spence. In 1969, Skip was committed to Bellvue Hospital after a drug fueled rampage with a fireman's axe, in a Manhattan hotel, while on tour with Moby Grape. Following his release from Bellevue, Skip headed to Nashville and recorded "Oar" a stunning coda to Moby Grape, the Summer of Love and his career.

Skip cobbled this album together with few resources aside from his own musical brilliance. The frequent comparisons to Syd Barrett really don't hold up. Skip was in full command of his mental facilities during the "Oar" sessions and to praise this album as the work an "acid casualty" is to trivialize the visionary intent of "Oar". True...this album has inspired an entire genreration of do-it-yourself, low-fi, outsider music but Skip's singular talent demands that "Oar" be accepted on it's own terms. Beneath the pastoral feel of "Oar" lurks a knotty tension that threatens to explode, even on a "good time" song like "Lawrence of Euphoria". It's all there...the full range of Skip's struggle with sanity... the creeping paranoia, the mania, the isolation and finally a sense of resignation. "Grey/Afro" a circular drum-driven tour de force is "Oar's" touchstone. This is where all of Skip's conflicting emotions collide in a mantra that slowly builds into a frenzy of disjointed drumming only to collapse and restart almost endlessly. It's listening to a stalled automobile trying to kick over, again and again.

In 1989, I caught up with Skip Spence who had lived in and out of homeless shelters for many years since "Oar". He was using psychotropic medications and finally had his own apartment in San Jose California. Skip never lost sight of the fact that he was first and foremost a musician and was always trying to get back in the game. Skip was writting some exceptional music, which he said was "floating around" on tape somewhere. I hope that music eventually sees the light of day because it is the equal of anything on "Oar". Skip seemed geneuinely suprised that I knew the Moby Grape classic "Omaha" and could sing and play the song along with him. Skip told me he always considered "Oar" to be his ultimate artistic statement and hoped that someday it would find an audience, however small. From time to time he'd send me a funny postcard, even though we'd met only once for a couple of hours. His last postcard said a group of great musicians were recording a tribute album to "Oar" and he was plotting the biggest comeback in the history of mankind. Skip's death went unreported by most of the major news services and I read about his passing on an internet site devoted to noted homeless people, three weeks after his death. I wish he would have stuck around long enough to finish his comeback.