Genius or Madman? the Unexpected Brilliance of Skip Spence 

Been a long time since I've heard anyone talk about this record. Great find! Cheers

You should check out Craig Smith/Maitreya Kali and his album “Apache-Inca”. He was a similar story to Spence; an acid casualty. Craig’s music was amazing.

Love this álbum!!

This kind of deep information is why I watch... never heard of Spence but good to know now

Great vid. Yes, I know this record well, having discovered it some 10 years ago perhaps. Very unique, as you say. Some incredible stuff on here - Stark, desolate, tender, borderline shambolic in places as if hanging by a thread, minimal, he's like the American equivalent of Syd Barrett in so many ways : a fragmenting soul at its core.

Sounds so intimate lile he bared his soul and is all the better for it. Some compare his descent into mental illness to Syd Barrett and the album he did Madcap Laughs. I would also liken to Nick Drake he didnt get mentally ill but he was troubled in his mind but produced great albums lik 5 Leaves Left.

Oar is a masterpiece.

Spence was indeed San Francisco’s Syd Barrett. Like Barrett, he was an undiagnosed schizophrenic who wrote great songs but behaved in ways that had to be tolerated/mitigated by bandmates. He was a guitarist in an early lineup of Quicksilver Messenger Service and was the drummer on the first Jefferson Airplane album. He hardly participated in Moby Grape but they used his songs. Like Peter Green’s alleged acid freakout with weirdos in Germany, he had an acid freakout when he got involved with weirdos in N.Y.C., where Moby Grape’s management had him committed. The legend is that, once released, he drove a Harley straight down to Nashville (in his pajamas) to cut “Oar.” So he wrote the songs while in the mental institution in N.Y.C. This is noteworthy because until then (and afterward), he was California all the way.

He got involved into the occult san fransisvo had these sex witches t making certain rock stars completely obsessed with them syd barrett peter green ,OAR is a very revolutionary album because of its sonic landscapes i font thonk any record reallly utslized reflective surfaces and utalized spatial dimensions interwoven into the songs themselves maybe joy division or martin hanette focoused in on that particular element making the music latent with space ....You should check out if you haven't already dr.phibes and tbe house of wax equations and a local band from here called acetone

Oh. And let me ask. What's your opinion on Group 1850 - probably the leading Dutch psychedelic band?

Agreed Oar is a great album. The American Madcap Laughs IMHO Happy Trails is inferior to the debut album by QMS. I mean it's got a side of solos bookended by the proper song. Each member including the bassist and drummer get a spot to play "Who Do You Love" without any support. As a person who skips drum solos like "Toad", "Do What You Like" etc this was huge disappointment only beaten by the awful live Eight Miles High on Byrds Untitled. And I'm sure you are aware but you give the impression that Skip was on the QMS recordings. Skip Spence was replace by Gary Duncan very early on - he was in the band by August 1966, so more than a year before that debut LP. Incidentally if you like looking for "holy grails" in Rock then there is an acetate only (150 copies) early version of the first QMS album called the "First LP Acetate (or similar)" which contains "I Hear You Knocking" in place of "It's Been Too Long". Some of the tracks contain horns which are absent on the official release. It's out there on bootleg.

T-T-T-T-TODAY, JUNIOR!