Oar

Skip's story is the stuff of legend now: frustrated with Jefferson Airplane's refusal to allow the guitarist any more than the role of a drummer, he fled to the briefly brilliant Moby Grape before strapping his guitar to his back and taking a motorcycle ride to Nashville, where he recorded this album in a haze of drugs and alienation. His is one of those cases in which the confidence of genius is the thing that kept him from glory in his day, but assured him a longer-lasting spotlight among the rock 'n roll immortals. The indignity of his mental illness and the decades he spent wasting away in asylums is compounded only by the alleged "tribute album" released for him in 1999. The hope was that it would pay his medical expenses, but Spence died just around the release of the album. Even so, why guys like the squealing money-bags of rock, Robert Plant, couldn't simply cut a check for the man's bills rather than releasing this "tribute album," bound to fail commercially because hardly anyone living had given a second's thought to its tributee in at least thirty years, is beyond me. At least it served up a classic rendition of "Book of Moses" by the always reliable Tom Waits, as well as a weirdly effective cover of "Halo of Gold" by Beck. Yet only one or two of the various artists featured on the tribute has ever managed the simultaneously accessible and challenging music Spence achieved on this, his only solo album. A solid affair from start to finish, it testifies to the combination of talent and substance so rarely bestowed upon the music world.

Why? I think it is Spence's voice, which has this authenticity to it that is missing even in many "wanna-be authentic" singer/rocker voices. Maybe it is the melody that is never lost even though the lyrics ramble and the beat slows. I just know this is an album I listen to a lot, and it has nothing to do with me putting on some kind of "poseur" attitude because this album is supposedly trendy-cool. I am just glad it was available 30-odd years later and that I got the chance to be exposed to it!

I recommend listening to the song excerpts and deciding for yourself -- does this appeal to you? Don't think too hard about it -- if it grabs you like it did me, then go ahead and buy it. I will say that when you do, it won't be one of those albums you throw into your collection and never listen to after a month -- it doesn't grow "old" the way some albums do.