We Could Be Great Friends

Snuffling through my musty old albums recently, like a human pig in autumn grubbing out vinyl truffles from the mulchy underworld, I dug out Oar by Alexander Spence. Playing it again reminded me of why I loved it in the first place... but first some background.

Alexander 'Skip' Spence was an integral part of the late 60s California hippy scene, starting out as the drummer in Jefferson Airplane before co-founding Moby Grape. As we all know, the late 60s California hippy scene involved a certain amount of LSD, and having indulged a fair amount Skip Spence started behaving more and more erratically - hanging around with a lady who was into black magic and an old homeless man they called 'Father' for instance.

Eventually he was arrested whilst trying to break down his bandmate's hotel door with a fire axe and was committed for six months to the prison psychiatric ward of Bellevue Hospital. At the same time he was officially diagnosed as schizophrenic. Whilst in Bellevue he wrote many of the songs which would go to make Oar.

When he was released from Bellevue he bought a motor cycle with an advance given to him by Columbia records and drove to Nashville, where he recorded Oar in less than two weeks. He played everything on the album himself - guitars, drums, bass, vocals and production.

Oar was his first and last solo album as the following thirty years saw him slip further into mental illness and alcoholism. But as they say, if you're going to make only one album, you might as well make it a classic. Spence was only 22 years old when he recorded the album but all of the songs sound as if they were recorded by someone twice his age - the liner notes of the CD say that at times he sounds like "Johnny Cash sharing a bar stool with Albert Camus".

Here are Little Hands and Broken Heart to get you started.

Alexander Spence - Little Hands

Alexander Spence - Broken Heart





007. Ian Brown - My Star


Crisp Debris