Disc of the day
Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
Features Disc of the day
Alexander Spence
Oar
(Columbia, 1969)
Moby Grape hipster captures his psychological disintegration on tape…
In 1968, having released two superb albums of mellowed proto-powerpop with San Francisco hippie-supremos Moby Grape, Alexander ‘Skip’ Spence, propelled by the super-strength Owsley LSD then pouring from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury intersection, took an axe to drummer Don Stevenson’s door. He would spend the next six months as a patient at New York’s Bellevue Hospital under the watchful eye of the doctors who would soon diagnose him as a paranoid schizophrenic. The 12 eerie evocations of chaos and confusion that make up his 1969 solo masterwork were born during the 22-year-old’s stay at the facility. Combining the ramblings of a man on the brink of mental collapse with some real moments of flippancy and laughter, Oar is a genuinely strange record. Unsurprisingly, the journey from Little Hands’ Grape-esque guitar grooves to Grey/Afro’s terrifying nine minutes of mantric drone, isn’t an easy one. Even when Spence builds his songs around a familiar sound (primarily minimalist country-folk) unsettling oddities and ominous modulations creep in. Spence recorded the album in Nashville and played every instrument himself. He would spend the rest of his life dogged by psychological problems that would force him, for a time, to live as a homeless alcoholic on the streets of California, but at least he left Oar – more than most of us sane, functional people will ever manage. Just take a look at the tousled-haired, half-smiling figure gazing out from the record sleeve and tell me you don’t want to peer inside.
Ross Bennett
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 12/07/2008
Further Listening
Viv Stanshall – Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead (Warners, 1974)
Syd Barrett – The Madcap Laughs (Harvest/EMI, 1970)
Moby Grape – Moby Grape (Columbia, 1967)
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