more More MORE OAR!
“Maybe I'm dreaming you. Maybe you're dreaming me; maybe we only exist in each other's dreams and every morning when we wake up we forget all about each other.”― Audrey Niffenegger
I have been doing much meditating recently on the sole solo record by Skip Spence, Oar. I don’t think I have thought so much about it in decades, since working on a tribute record to Oar with my friend Bill Bentley in the turn of the last century. But as Oar turns 55 this year, Britt Govea from Folk Yeah productions called musician and label man (Howlin’ Rain, Silver Current Records) Ethan Miller and me asking if we would join him in putting together a night of celebration to the record, called More, More Oar. That celebration is this weekend, Saturday night at the Chapel in San Francisco (tickets here). And over the past weeks, Oar has woven its dark beauty back into my life.
Oar might be the first outsider record of its time, or at least the first outsider record recorded by a known, seasoned musician and released on a major label. The prologue of this record focuses on one of the most beloved musicians of the San Francisco 1960s hippy scene: Skip Spence was pulled into drumming for the Jefferson Airplane, having no prior experience on the instrument, and after that tour of duty, co-forming the best band on any stage in town, The Moby Grape. The ‘Grapes first record came out with mighty high expectations just to be completely overlooked as their record label infamously screwed up its marketing, releasing five singles concurrently. On the way towards making the next record, Skip had a psychic break, attacking a band member. Skip was sent to a hospital and diagnosed with schizophrenia.
And here is where Oar’s story begins. When Skip was released, he went right to Nashville. He may have driven there on a motorcycle. He may have been wearing his pajamas on the ride. These are all camp-fire details. When he got to Nashville, he went into a studio and recorded a slew of songs, where he played all of the instruments. There is a story that these recordings were mere demos for a more produced record that would never come. Some of the songs seemed fully formed, others the meandered walkings of a Kyoto philosopher (automatic writing, as Yeats would refer to such poetics). Regardless, it led to the creation of Oar.
Bill brought me the idea of More Oar in 1998 when Skip had been diagnosed with lung cancer. The concept behind the release was to raise money for his medical bills. We matched all the album’s tracks with great artists until we had finished, finished as Skip slipped into a coma. Bill played him the record as he lay unconscious in his hospital room. More Oar became more of a eulogy than a fundraiser, with the entire Moby Grape sans Skip regrouping for a show around its release in Skip’s honor.
And now we are celebrating Skip Spence again, with Oar being the anchor.
There is something about this record, this strange, often beguiling, record that wonders and twists like the lost musical genius behind it, who often fell back and moved forward in life. I listened to Weighted Down (The Prison Song) yesterday, played while I was being interviewed on KALX about the show this weekend. There is an omniscience in Skip’s voice as he confesses to feeling crushed by the pressures of life and of loss and of loneliness. He sings, “So now I come with words of pain to bring you news of life.” It is a heartbreaking, beautiful song that lifts itself out of time to shake us with its message of the burdens of days, with its warnings and its sadness.
Oar is not only a personal journey of sadness. There are songs like Little Hands, that opens the record (that Robert Plant covered on More Oar), celebrating childhood and innocence, All Come To Meet Her, more of a dream than a song, of hope and expectation, and Dixie Peach Promenade, which is just a silly yarn with playful innuendos throughout, that Greg Dulli made his own on the More Oar comp and included it in his live set for years after.
Left to his own devices in the studio, Skip Spence used his time in Nashville to pull songs out of himself that give a mapping of his complex, challenged brain. The complexity of a schizophrenic, with the skill of an expert song craftsman and storyteller, he put together a group of recordings that are unlike anything else, with highs, lows, and the classic country-folk-singing-between (like Cripple Creak and Diana)…sounding like no other, inherently different in that he recorded everything himself, in his own very unique self-taught way. I listened to one of his early recordings recently, Blues from an Airplane, a song he co-wrote with Marty Balin, that opens up the debut Jefferson Airplane record. It is in that song that we get a prophetic moment channeling the future Oar, with Skip’s drumming performance flowing haphazardly on top of the track, showcasing an artist who had never played his instrument before, successfully improvising his way, pushing through the song. On Oar, even at its most crazed, strange and mushable moments, emphasized by War and Peace and the final song Grey/Afro, Spence pushes through, steering a Rembrandt-hued vibrating hole-y vessel with seasoned steadfastness—with only a single oar—as the stormed ocean of existence swells in.
True artists help us see crevices of existence that we otherwise are not able to see. Often, unfortunately, their vision often has costs, and in Skip’s case the cost was his sanity. Skip Spence’s life checked in and out of successes, of hospitals, of lucidity. But as a true artist sometimes does, he popped up just long enough…and in enough patches…to leave behind a body of art that can lift us up, enlighten and mystify. Oar is Skip at his most personal, and a crowning achievement that continues to inspire today.
I am very much looking forward to this weekend to hear how the incredible cast of characters that are coming together at the Chapel will breathe new life into his crazy courageous songs. Moby Grape Jerry Miller will be there (he recorded a promo for the show) with a house band that includes Ethan Miller (who is also musical director), Steve Turner (Mudhoney), Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Kash Killion (Sun Ra Arkestra), Andy Cabic (Vetiver), Bill Orcutt and special guests Cyril Jordan (Flaming Groovies), Leslie Medford (The Ophelias), Scott Matthews (Du Rocks), Paula Frazer (Tarnation), Meg Baird with Charlie Saufley, Kelley Stoltz, Inna Showalter (Magic Fig), Jesse DeNatale, and Brogan Bentley. The Chapel. This Saturday, June 15th. 8:30. Get tickets here (all profits go to Music Cares) and check out Dave Pehling’s preview of the show on CBS News as well as the Skip Spence interview Joel Selvin kindly sent to me recently…
Top 25 Most Valuable Items Sold on Discogs in May 2024
A Led Zep box set for $11K? Any takers (there is at least one out there!)? How about Joy Division’s first release for close to $9K? Mono Banana Velvet Underground for $8K? Anyone remember the 1990s…the golden age of record collecting…when people were unloading their records and most records went for $5-$100??? To know then what we know now… There are many records I would love to own on this list (always original Blue Nots and Sun Ra releases) but I will wait for the lucky garage sale to find ‘em.
Arooj Aftab Tells Puja Patel How Winning the Grammy Sparked Her Reinvention
Aftab continues releasing record after record of beautiful music mixing culture, experience and traditions; she is emerging as one of the most important musicians of her day.
I love the night….It’s the time that everything you thought of and did you can remember and decompress it. I don’t know if there’s such an active thing happening at night, it’s just the processing and formatting of what we’ve done in our lives.
Ship of renowned polar explorer Ernest Shackleton found on ocean floor
My wife knows that the Shackleton story of survival is one of my favorites…and sent me this article that popped up today. The Quest has been found!!!
The Saints Are Coming: Band Announce Vinyl Box Set & Tour
Steve Turner is in the Skip Spence More More Oar band this weekend, as it is announced that Mark Arm will be in a revamped Saints for an Australian tour with ex-Bad Seed/Birthday party drummer Mick Harvey. And to top it all off, the great In The Red Records will be releasing a box set of the classic Saints era with tons of unreleased tracks and mixes!!!! OH YEAH! It is a perfect day.
Open Culture has put together a grouping of Edgar Allan Poe stories read by recent celebs. Poe is notoriously hard to read aloud, making each of these recordings a greater revelation. My children whisper one of his poems, Assignation, on the upcoming Gravel Springs record (more of that soon).
A great weekend read by Roger Luckhurst about the history of telepathy, and how scientists have hoped it would be a proof source for big inventions and advancements. Don’t let the Elon Musk beginning of the article deter you….it is only showcasing a recent proof of the potential importance of telepathic study.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre review – original 1974 shocker is grotesque but brilliant masterpiece
Quentin Tarantino calls it a perfect film and in light of its 50th birthday, it is coming back to theaters, opening in England this week. A new remastered version I hear. Looking forward to its reopening in America. One of my favorites.
The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Awesome, David! And WHAT a poem! See you soon...
Wow…Skip Spence is a name I haven’t heard in decades. Great post.