Spence Oar

No one except psychedelic Renaissance man Alexander "Skip" Spence could have created an album such as Oar. Alternately heralded as a "soundtrack to schizophrenia" and a "visionary solo effort," Oar became delegated to cut out and bargain bins shortly after its release in the spring of 1969. However those who did hear it were instantly drawn into Spence's inimitable sonic surrealism. As his illustrious past in the Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Moby Grape would suggest, this album is a pastiche of folk and rock. In reality, however, while these original compositions may draw from those genres, each song has the individuality of a fingerprint…

No one except psychedelic Renaissance man Alexander "Skip" Spence could have created an album such as Oar. Alternately heralded as a "soundtrack to schizophrenia" and a "visionary solo effort," Oar became delegated to cut-out and bargain bins shortly after its release in the spring of 1969. However, those who did hear it were instantly drawn into Spence's inimitable sonic surrealism. As his illustrious past in the Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Moby Grape would suggest, this album is a warped blend of acid folk and far-out psychedelic rock. While these original compositions do draw heavily from those genres, each song has the individuality of a fingerprint, and Spence performed and produced every sound on the album himself at Columbia studios in Nashville in the space of less than two weeks…

Alexander Spence - Oar (1969) {Sundazed SC 11075 rel 1999}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 372 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 151 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 183 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1969, 1999 Columbia / Sony Music / Sundazed Music | SC 11075
Rock / Folk Rock / Psychedelic Rock

No one except psychedelic Renaissance man Alexander "Skip" Spence could have created an album such as Oar. Alternately heralded as a "soundtrack to schizophrenia" and a "visionary solo effort," Oar became delegated to cut out and bargain bins shortly after its release in the spring of 1969. However those who did hear it were instantly drawn into Spence's inimitable sonic surrealism. As his illustrious past in the Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Moby Grape would suggest, this album is a pastiche of folk and rock. In reality, however, while these original compositions may draw from those genres, each song has the individuality of a fingerprint. As a solo recording, Oar is paramount as Spence performed and produced every sound on the album himself at Columbia Records studios in Nashville in the space of less than two weeks.

Bruce Palmer - The Cycle Is Complete (1970) {Collectors' Choice Music CCM-375-2 rel 2003}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 208 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 82 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 123 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1970, 2003 Verve Forecast / Collectors' Choice Music | CCM-375-2
Rock / Acid Folk / Psychedelic Rock / Folk

Bruce Palmer (acoustic/electric guitars/Fender bass) is best known for his association with the earliest incarnation of the Buffalo Springfield. It was he and Neil Young who trekked from their native Canada in the latter's hearse (named Mort) to Los Angeles in search of Stephen Stills with the hopes of forming a rocking teen combo. His tenure was cut short by deportation which stemmed from two separate marijuana-related convictions in 1967 and 1968, respectively. The Cycle Is Complete (1971) – Palmer's only solo effort – is an eclectic masterwork with stream of consciousness jams that combine folk, jazz, and rock onto a quartet of primarily instrumental sides.

The latest in Ace Records’ Songwriters series takes the listener from a version of ‘Why Don’t You Smile Now’ from Lou Reed’s pre-Velvet Underground days through selections from the band’s albums to three from 1972’s solo “Transformer”.

As a longtime member of one of the groups that helped create heavy metal (Deep Purple, for the uninitiated), it's understandable to expect a solo outing by bassist Roger Glover to be geared toward headbangers. But as evidenced by his fifth solo album overall, 2011's If Life Was Easy, Glover has opted to follow a bluesier, roots rocky path. Which is understandable, because the whole point of doing a solo album should be to step out from under Purple's high-decibel shadow. As a case in point, a pair of tunes feature Glover's daughter Gillian Glover on vocals: "Set Your Imagination Free" and "Get Away (Can't Let You)," with the former falling in "ballad" category while the latter is a blues-rocker with blaring horn work.

A promising guitarist whose personal troubles have perhaps kept him from realizing his full potential, Lurrie Bell rebounded from an early-'90s nadir with the intense and sometimes bizarre Mercurial Son, almost like a Chicago blues version of Skip Spence's Oar. The following 700 Blues was considerably more polished, but 1998's Kiss of Sweet Blues finds a workable middle ground between the two extremes. The songs, mostly by producer/rhythm guitarist Dave Specter and bassist Harlan Terson with Bell contributing only a pair of riff-based instrumentals, aren't as challenging as those on Mercurial Son, but they're entirely credible; "Blues and Black Coffee" and "Hiding in the Spotlight" have the hard-earned intensity to put themselves over even if they lack the earlier album's knife-edge immediacy and sometimes peculiar phrasing…

Detroit musician Ted Lucas spent decades quietly pursuing musical greatness in and around his hometown. Throughout the '60s and '70s, Lucas' name was attached to several regional rock bands, session work for Motown before they left Detroit for Los Angeles, and even time spent studying the art of raga with Ravi Shankar. He continued playing up until his death in 1992, leaving behind only scattered documentation of his various output, the most lasting and visible article being this self-titled album from 1975, first released by Lucas himself on his OM Records imprint. Recorded largely in his attic apartment, the album is divided into a first side of six spare tunes of soft psychedelic folk and a second side with two instrumentals and a wandering blues jam…