the of mirror eye

* Skip Spence: Cripple Creek (3.5 mb) | Weighted Down (The Prison Song) (9.0 mb) | War In Peace (6.5 mb)
From Oar : Sundazed Music Inc : SUNDAZED SC 11075

Well, here in the Midwest, the lazy, hazy days of summer are almost upon us. And Oar, by Skip Spence is the personification of these up and coming days. Former drummer of Jefferson Airplane, member of Quicksilver Messenger Service and founder of Moby Grape, Skip Spence has an impeccable psychedelic resume. Personal instabilities though, a combination of mental problems exacerbated by rampant drug and alcohol use, prevented him from lasting any amount of time in either group. In fact, he was only present in that psychedelic “summer of love” from 1965-67, before trying to attack one of his bandmates with an ax and, subsequently, being commited to Bellevue, a mental institution in New York City.

After his release, he bought a motorcycle, rode to Nashville and cut a record in four days. The record was, in a very literal sense, all he had left. He poured everything he could into that album.

Oar is typically thought of, even by those who love it, as the unfiltered-yip and moan of a confused, tormented soul. Oar is certainly unretouched Spence, straight from the id. But there is just as much reason as intuition in the sound and character of Oar. Spence knew exactly what he was doing.
….The elemental instrumentation was partly a result of Spence’s one-man-combo methods, partly due to the constraints of recording on three-track tape (a peculiar, outmoded configuration by 1968). Yet the languid, bass-y ambience of the record was deliberate-to emphasize intimacy and heighten the dank air of enforced isolation. These were, after all, songs written behind bars and locked doors.

(from the liner notes)

And Skip never made another record after that. He spent the next thirty years in various halfway homes and homelessness before succumbing to lung cancer in 1999.

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