Pals,
I guess you should know by now that a lot of the albums that might make their way onto this blog are in fact lifted from other blogs, specifically ones that deal with obscure or out of print records. While I wish I was rad enough to be the first and only person to ever bring these albums to your attention, I can only say that I owe a lot of my own listening pleasure to the great folks who go out of their way to post about these things before I ever knew about them and therefore educating me. This helps me help you, no? Well, something else I wanted to express was how no matter how badly I want to catch all of you up to all of the things I've heard and indulged in since I left Brussels, I am just too lazy for that and probably lost track. Nevertheless, the music that means a lot to me will end up here regardless, but for now you'll just have to dig on what I'm digging on in the present.
So, this next entry concerns itself with an album that relates to the above paragraph in that yesterday, some guy on some blog was hyping this album that I had only heard about a few times and how it's incredible and way underrated - within minutes I found it on another blog and there you have it, well, actually we'll all have it. The album I'm talking about is Skip Spence's "Oar" from nynteensixtyeyght.
Skip Spence was a groovy California slice by way of Canadia and was the original drummer for Jefferson Airplane. When he got tired of hanging out with hippies that couldn't get over how trippy psychoactive substances were, he turned to the guitar and started another group with some other cats called Moby Grape. Apparently their first album is the quintessential document of the true San Francisco psych scene of the late 60's. Can't wait to get my hands on that shit...
Anyhow, the Grapes all did way too many drugs and it hit Skip the hardest - he flipped out and came after a couple of his bandmates with an axe. He got busted for that, and when presented with the choice of going to prison or to a mental institute, he chose the latter. During his 6 month-long hospitalization period, he conceived what was to become Oar, which is his one and only solo album. As soon as he got out of the hospital, he asked Columbia records for an advance and a motorcycle so he could make his way out to Tennessee. They met his demands and so he set out to Nashville to record this incredible album in less than two weeks.
Sorry for the long-winded backstory, it's just that this guy deserves just as much as recognition as someone like Syd Barrett for being an acid casualty who practically sacrificed his sanity for such great art (like tons many other great artists did). Plus, he was only 23 when he recorded this; that may not make much a difference to some folks but to me it's kind of fascinating to associate such a relatively young age to something that sounds so ageless. Aged by now, yes, but ageless even more so. Some of the greatest music, in my opinion, falls under this description. Ageless, and timeless at that...
Moreover, it's cool that he used a shitty 3-track recorder to lay these tracks down and therefore was also somewhat of a lo-fi pioneer in a time when other, more notable musicians were dicking around and experimenting in the studio with technology that only got more and more advanced...
So, without further ado...
http://rapidshare.com/files/100632822/oar.rar
You should know that this is the original format in which it was released and not the reissue, which has some bonus tracks. If I ever get my hands on it, I might repost.
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