Alexander Spence AndOarAgain (3-CD)

AndOarAgain provides unparalleled access to what David Fricke calls “the most harrowing and compelling artifacts of rock & roll’s most euphoric era” across three dozen unheard tracks! In addition to the quintessential original album, AndOarAgain features nearly two hours of unheard music on the way to Oar–along with roads not taken–that both clarifies and muddies the enigma of how psychedelic legend Alexander 'Skip' Spence determined the final state of his iconic masterpiece. The time: December, 1968. The setting: the Columbia Recording Studios at 504 16th Avenue South in Nashville, Tennessee. Alexander Spence – a singer, songwriter, and guitarist commonly known as Skip, recently relieved of his duties in the San Francisco rock band Moby Grape after a descent into excessive hallucinatory-drug use and a psychotic episode with a fire axe – is recording Oar, his first album as a Columbia solo artist. It will also be his last.

Made in six days spread over two weeks, then released six months later on May 19th, 1969, Oar will be Spence’s only complete expression of his experimental verve and musical facility, under his real name and creative control, before he recedes into rapidly deepening, ultimately conquering darkness. A half-century after its brisk, strange birth, Oar remains an apparent chaos of eccentric composition and overwhelming melancholy, wreathed in country-blues shadows and the smokey blur of Spence’s wounded-baritone singing.