Sony*

A

Birdman

Few could have accurately predicted what would become of Skip Spence’s Oar album upon its release in 1969 (on the same day as Neil Young’s lush, precocious debut, no less). Well, maybe the immediate commercial fate of ex-Moby Grape man’s record was well within foresight for those who heard it: Oar is one of the most genuinely unhinged documents you’ll find in an era notable for psychedelic excess and Summer-of-Love posturing. Its documentary-like strangeness is all too real.

The influence of Oar, on the other hand, has to be at least a mild shock to those who were around to witness its humble early years of existence. Consider the last album beloved enough to inspire a track-by-track remake: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, an album as ubiquitous as Oar is obscure. Pity that Spence passed away in April just as his cult began to show themselves.

Spence wrote Oar during his stay in New York’s Bellevue Hospital following a legendary wig-out in which he pursued the Grape’s drummer with an axe, and recorded it in two days in Nashville by himself. Despite glowing critical acclaim, it went on to outsell only an exercise record in the Columbia Records catalog while its erstwhile creator dipped into alcoholism, schizophrenia, homelessness, and barring a couple of one-offs with the limping ‘70s Grape, obscurity.

Oar is a record of its time – witness the sturdy utopian strumalong “Little Hands” – but its psychedelia is insular rather than mind-expanding, accurately capturing Spence’s charred if mostly benevolent aesthetic in the form of close-miked, rickety gambols through country, folk, blues, gospel, and rhythmic mantras (the rubber vacuum of “Grey-Afro”). Listen through headphones and you’ll hear Spence’s every grizzled breath as he intones like an ancient mudflat troubadour on “Cripple Creek” or the last-man-on-Earth trudge “Weighted Down,” then plays your cracked huckleberry on the cowpoke lope “Broken Heart.” Spence had a sense of humor, too; “Margaret Tiger Rug,” “Dixie Peach Promenade” and “Lawrence of Euphoria” all brim with goofy wordplay that the singer performs with a barely-reined glee.

Oar’s finest moment is the spooky “War In Peace,” the very tune I would play for someone who asked, “What’s psychedelia?” Spence seems to marvel at the sound of his own falsetto as it whisks across the song’s smoldering, relaxant soundscape. Cascading lead guitar enters the song as it climaxes in a tableau of Spence’s vocal mortar whistles and “Sunshine Of Your Love” riff-rumble.

More Oar has to be one of the most musically successful tribute albums ever. Not only is it remarkably easy to digest for a 17-cut cover of a weirdo LP, but there are none of the artist-song mismatches or outright butcherings that normally plague these things. Obscure outfits like Outrageous Cherry and Flying Saucer Attack hold their own with guys named Plant and Waits, and every artist here seems to have lived inside Oar like an old shirt. Even the lone complete reinvention – Mudhoney’s sinister garage-squall take on “War In Peace” – seems right.

The core of More Oar is singular male vocalists doing their favorite Oar songs to the hilt. Robert Plant and Greg Dulli nearly steal the show with plaintive offerings that bring the poignancy of the affair up front – Plant’s “Little Hands” is cut from the same heartfelt cloth as his West Coast-folkie odes from Zeppelin’s halcyon days, and with “Dixie Peach Promenade,” Dulli resists the lyric’s randy pull (“I could use some yin for my yang”) to turn in the most subtle, plangent performance of his career. The rest – Mark Lanegan (“Cripple Creek”), Alejandro Escovedo (“Diana”), Jay Farrar (“Weighted Down”), Robyn Hitchcock (“Broken Heart”), Tom Waits (“Books of Moses”), and Beck (“Halo Of Gold”) are faultless, models of class and personality.

Spence’s son played this tribute for him the last hour he was alive, reports the June issue of Mojo. Whether the sick 52-year-old man heard his odd, brave songs being sung back at him by adoring peers is anyone’s guess, but More Oar does give Skip the last word. After the final listed track is “Land Of The Sun,” a piece Spence recorded for the X-Files soundtrack just a few years back. The track was rejected. It was too eerie.

(* - This review was written based on Sony’s 1991 CD reissue of Oar. The Sundazed label has recently issued a remastered version of the album with additional tracks and liner notes.)