arabchanter wrote:

 .




If anyone who is looking in, can explain to me how this improvisation counts as music? I'm all ears , this album got a gold disc for gods sake, so somebody must have liked it, seriously, what am I missing, I can see how the band could possibly enjoy it, but no' the punters.

Firstly, I don't enjoy Grateful Dead, and this album is probably quite typical of them.

However, improvisation is music, as I'm sure almost all of the songs you like were improvisations at one point. I reckon you are being critical of long tracks rather than improvisation, and I share your frustration at these to some extent. To me, if the music is pish, it doesn't matter if it lasts two or ten minutes.

But on balance, I prefer the 3 minute format. That's not to say I won't stick up for longer tracks: if it's something you like, then you'll enjoy that too.

Looking forward to the thoughts on Arthur, it's probably my favourite Kinks album, again, it's another one I have on vinyl.

Finally, it's one track per album on the list to make a twenty from the sixties, is that right? That'll be difficult, and I'd imagine our choices, from you, Tek, Shedboy and me (and maybe some others) will hardly match up!

DAY 168.
King Crimson.................In The Court Of The Crimson King    (1969)




A vehicle for left-field guitar hero Robert Fripp. King Crimson are one of the major prog rock acts, surviving countless personnel changes since their formation.


The other original members were singer/bassist Greg Lake, drummer Michael Giles, lyricist Peter Sinfield and keyboard/vibes/woodwind player Ian McDonald.

This line up only recorded one LP, but it remains their best known work.

As said in last post, couldn't finish the Kinks album, due to unforseen circumstances, ( my youngest, ski trip meeting) so will wrap these two up tonight.

 

Two albums in a row that I like, and Arthur has one of my favourite Kinks song, Shangri-La (it'll be in my top twenty from the 60's albums list).

Felt that you'd enjoy Arthur, arabchanter, and think you'll despise In the Court of the Crimson King (!!!), so I'll leave that until I read your comments. The opening track of that has been heavily sampled over the years, and used in advertising too.

DAY 169.
Leonard Cohen................................Songs From A Room   (1969)





Cohen crafted a collection of narrative efforts that enhanced his claims to be a troubadour to rival Bob Dylan. Throughout the ten tracks, he ruminates on the nature of friendship and more intimate relationships.



While not a commercial success, a pattern largely unbroken until I'm Your Man, this lackadaisical triumph is an inspiration to the misanthrope in us all

    I knew you'd hate In the Court of the Crimson King. I like every track on it! One will be in my 60s Top Twenty from 1001.

I've quite a few Crimson albums on vinyl, they along with Laibach have been leftfield additions to my pop/punk collection over the years. Residents, and Krautrock too.

Meanwhile, I've no time for the Leonard Cohen, and singer/songwriters generally.

But it's good we all like different things.

DAY 169.
Leonard Cohen................................Songs From A Room   (1969)






Leonard Cohen for me, is similar to Pat with Dylan, if you take the time to read his lyrics they really are well crafted but, his vocal delivery for this listener is too downbeat and droll.

I did like "Bird On A Wire" and "The Partisan," the latter being an old Resistance song, the rest were fair to be honest, but I find it hard to listen to his voice for more than a couple of tracks at a time, and feel they would be better covered by other singers.

I wont be buying this one.



Bits & Bobs; 


Already done some bits on post #444 (if Interested)




Bird On A Wire



Speaking of this song in a 1993 interview with Song Talk, Cohen explained: "It was begun in Greece because there were no wires on the island where I was living to a certain moment. There were no telephone wires. There were no telephones. There was no electricity. So at a certain point they put in these telephone poles, and you wouldn't notice them now, but when they first went up, it was about all I did – stare out the window at these telephone wires and think how civilization had caught up with me and I wasn't going to be able to escape after all. I wasn't going to be able to live this 11th-century life that I thought I had found for myself. So that was the beginning.

Then, of course, I noticed that birds came to the wires and that was how that song began. 'Like a drunk in a midnight choir,' that's also set on the island. Where drinkers, me included, would come up the stairs. There was great tolerance among the people for that because it could be in the middle of the night. You'd see three guys with their arms around each other, stumbling up the stairs and singing these impeccable thirds. So that image came from the island: 'Like a drunk in a midnight choir.'"


 
Ron Cornelius ran Cohen's band for four years. Here's what he told Songfacts about this song: "Bird On The Wire is a classic in my book. Leonard has a home on an island in Greece called Hydra, and from his living room, there's an electric wire you can see, and that's where he got the idea. He just happened to mention that one night because me and a friend that was a road manager for him all over the world, Bill Donovan, we went and stayed a couple of weeks there but Leonard just went there to open the house up and then he split for Montreal and we stayed there by ourselves, he said, 'see that wire, that's the wire right there.' When I was their there still was not a gasoline engine on the island anywhere."


 
In 1990, the title was used for a movie starring Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn - well, sort of; the song and movie were changed to "Bird On A Wire," which is how many people who cover the song do it, including The Neville Brothers, who sang the version used in the movie.


 
Joe Cocker, Willie Nelson, Joe Bonamassa, Tim Hardin and Johnny Cash have all recorded versions of this song.


 
Cohen had a difficult time recording "Bird on the Wire," as the song never sounded "honest" enough to him. Depressed, Cohen finally gave up and went back to his hotel room. It wasn't until four days before the final scheduled recording session that he got what he was after. He asked everyone except for essential personnel, including producer Bob Johnson, to leave the studio. "I just knew that at that moment something was about to take place," Cohen said in Sylvie Simmons' I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen. "I just did the voice before I started the guitar and I heard myself sing that first phrase, 'Like a bird,' and I knew the song was going to be true and new. I listened to myself singing, and it was a surprise. Then I heard the reply and I knew it was right."




Bob Johnson produced the Cohen performance of "Bird on the Wire" that appeared on 1973's Songs from a Room and is the version most people know. Johnson was a highly respected producer whom Bob Dylan called "unreal." In addition to Cohen, Johnson produced such classic albums as Dylan's John Wesley Harding, Simon and Garfunkel's Bookends, and Johnny Cash's At Folsom Prison.


 
Cohen always started his concerts with this song. "It seems to return me to my duties," he said. "It was begun in Greece and finished in a motel in Hollywood around 1969 along with everything else. Some lines were changed in Oregon. I can't seem to get it perfect. Kris Kristofferson informed me that I had stolen part of the melody from another Nashville writer. He also said that he's putting the first couple of lines on his tombstone, and I'll be hurt if he doesn't."


 
"The song is so important to me," Cohen told New Musical Express in 1973. "It's that one verse where I say that I swear by this song, and by all that I have done wrong, I'll make it all up to thee. In that verse it's a vow that I'll try and redeem everything that's gone wrong. I think I've made it too many times now, but l like to keep renewing it."



The Partisan




This song is an adaptation made by Hy Zaret of “La Complainte du Partisan” written in 1943, by Emmanuel D'Astier de la Vigerie (called “Bernard” in the French Resistance) and Anna Marly. Some of the original French is kept on the second half of the song;


"I learned this from a friend when I was 15. He was 17. His father was a union organizer. We were working at a camp in Ste.Marguerite, Quebec. We sang together every morning, going through The People’s Song Book from cover to cover. I developed the curious notion that the Nazis were overthrown by music"

arabchanter wrote:

DAY 170.
Fairport Convention.......................Liege And Lief    (1969)







Tragedy struck the band, when their van overturned killing drummer Martin Lamble and a young friend of Fairport, Jeannie Franklyn.


Reeling from the disaster, the survivors regrouped with drummer Dave Mattacks and the folk circuit star Dave Swarbrick (violin and mandolin) for recordind sessions at a country house in Hampshire, Liege And Lief was the result.

'Reeling' from the disaster, some comedy there 

That album title would have been a great motto for the new incarnation of Rangers in 2012, it means 'Loyal and Ready'.

But it's a great electric folk album, encouraged me to take up the mandolin (along with the stuff from Scotland's own JSD Band, who I really loved for a time). I've got three mandolins now, one a really old one from the late 1800s made in Italy. Not electric, obviously.

Dave Swarbrick really took over the band for this album,and I enjoyed his influence.
 

DAY 170.
Fairport Convention.......................Liege And Lief    (1969)







This album I'm led to believe is one that the purists all seem to agree is Fairport Conventions finest album, but for me not so much.


Given a choice betwen this one and "Unhalfbricking" I would plump for the latter any day of the week, this one was just too wobbly voicee and medievalish for my taste, the track I enjoyed most was the medley, 4 minutes of didley music that wasn't to painful, but the rest were just too folksy for me.


This album will not be going into my collection



Bits & Bobs;

Some Bits & Bobs about this band already done in post #652  (if interested)



Matty Groves


"Matty Groves" is an English folk ballad. According to a report in the London Times of March 2, 1945, this song was specially written by the composer Benjamin Britten and dedicated to the musicians of the German POW camp Oflag VII B the previous year.




This is not quite correct; "Matty Groves" is also known as "Little Musgrave And Lady Barnard". Dating to at least the 17th Century, it is a well-known murder ballad - Child Ballad Number 81.




Written in 2/2 time, Britten's version was published by Boosey & Hawkes Music of London in 1943 as "The Ballad of LITTLE MUSGRAVE and LADY BARNARD" with the dedication "For Richard Wood and the musicians of Oflag VIIb".


 
As with many folk songs, the names of the characters vary, but basically Lady Barnard, the wife of Lord Arlen (Lord Arnold, Lord Donald...) entices her servant into her marital bed. Unfortunately, she is betrayed by another servant. In some versions, this servant is promised a fine reward if he is telling the truth, and death if he is lying. The nobleman hurries home and catches the lady of the manor in flagrante delicto. Unsurprisingly, he calls on her lover to get out of bed and face him, but Little Musgrave declines. Rather sportingly, Lord Arlen takes out two swords and offers the servant the better one, and the chance to strike him first.




Painted into a corner, Mugrave has little choice but to accept the offer, strikes Lord Arlen first, but is killed in return



.

Then, Lord Arlen sits his wife on his knee and asks her which of them she now prefers; she responds that she would rather kiss the dead lips of her lover, at which point he stabs her through the heart and orders them to be buried together with her on top, because she is of noble kin.


 
This song has of course been widely recorded, including by Joan Baez (as "Matty Groves"). This is the last and longest track on her 1962 live album. Running to 7 minutes 44 seconds, it features just Baez and her acoustic guitar.



 
Fairport Convention recorded an electrified version of this traditional folk song on Liege & Lief. The album title is composed of two Middle English words - "liege" meaning loyal and "lief" meaning ready. The LP has come to be regarded as a major influence in the development of British folk-rock, and in 2006, BBC Radio 2 listeners voted Liege & Lief the "most important folk album of all time." Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson reflected on its influence in an interview with Mojo magazine March 2011: "What surprises me is how influential it was in other countries. Folk musicians in places like Sweden, Spain, Holland heard Liege & Lief and thought, 'this what we need to do with our culture,' and it spawned all these folk-rock bands playing their own traditions. We were hoping it would get in the charts and the music would be accepted alongside the American-influenced stuff but that didn't happen and it became a cult. It remains a cult to this day."




 

DAY 172.
The Stooges................................The Stooges   (1969)








The Stooges were picked up by Electra as an afterthought, A&R man Danny Fields came to sign MC5, but was so impressed by The Stooges live performances that he took a chance on them as well



John Cale was to produce their debut album, the only problem was the band only had 3 songs, so they were sent to a hotel room with a two day ultimatum to fill out the album.



The album became iconic, as Iggy metamorphosed from Stooge to Pop, helping to lay the ground for the coming punk explosion.



Will do the double tonight!  (looking forward to this one, Walker no' so much)
 

DAY 172.
The Stooges................................The Stooges   (1969)







Right, now we're talkin' and about time to, today was the first time I had listened to a Stooges album, I've heard some of Iggy's solo stuff to which I became very fond of, I must say!


This is a great album, although I must tell you on first play that "We Will Fall" fair took the gloss of the first listening, and to be honest like MC5s with "Starship" almost put me off the thing all together.


I played it three times, and to be honest "We Will Fall" didnae get any better fir me, luckily enough "1969," "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "No Fun" ably assisted by the rest of the tracks more than made up for it, in my humble opinion.


I could see why some people might not like this, but for me the raw energy alone that gets kicked out of the speakers, is worth the entrance fee any day of the week.


The Stooges will be purchased, and asap.



Bits & Bobs;



Not many records are as great an influence as The Stooges debut. At the same time, not many records are as simple as this, yet still achieve and accomplish as much as it has. The reason for this being the 'do it yourself' mentality of the band. Of course, many other bands during prior years had kept it simple. Garage bands of the 60's - the Seeds, the Pretty Things, the Sonics - and even some of the more popular UK acts at the time - the Who, the Kinks - featured simple songwriting, 3 chord riffs, and screaming vocals.


The artists were hardly striving to be talented, virtuosic musicians, rather focusing on having a good time through means of fun music. When the garage rock revival movement began in the early 70's, the world was introduced to the Stooges. The Detroit area around the Stooges incarnation was in havoc due to the massive 1967 race riot at the time. This must have fueled the raw music that the Stooges created.


Soon, former Velvet Underground member John Cale ended up producing their legendary debut. The recording of this album is not spectacular, nor should it be. The bands sound is that of an average rock band. This record alone influenced many people to pick up a guitar and start a band. After hearing this record it seemed possible. With simple 3 chord wonders, the Stooges created music that inspired many artists to come.


Iggy Pop wasn't much of a songwriter; even a singer/musician for that matter. The Stooges have claimed their practice sessions consisted of them getting stoned and listening to the amplifiers feedback. To say the least, his singing skills aren't at the level of some of the other musicians at the time. Nor are his lyrical compositions. "I wanna be your dog" seems to be about a sexual encounter. But the lyrics remain simple and minimal. In fact, there are very few lyrics throughout the entire record.


Simple song form is eminent, with verses and a repeating chorus. "We will fall" is an exception, with much experimentation featured. All things considered, the singing is perfect for what the stooges represent. Iggy Pop helped many singers to come realize the true unimportance of singing talent. Iggy made up for it by smearing peanut butter all over his chest and using vaccuum cleaners on stage.


The Stooges first record was not an commerical success. It was also received poorly by critics. In hindsight, it has become clear however how much it has shaped rock music since. It, along with possibly MC5's "Kick Out the Jams" and The Velvet Underground & Nico's debut, arguably creating the entrire genre of punk rock.


The rawness, the energy, the angst all portrayed through the music has effected many people over the years. Kids relate to the music created more so than ever because of the relevant issues to their times. Punk Rock would not be where it is today, let alone be here at all without the likes of the Stooges. This album is exceptional in that it has grown more popular throughout the years. The impact of this album makes it extremely important in the history of punk rock music, or even rock music for that matter.



I Wanna Be Your Dog


In this Punk classic, Iggy Pop sings about how he wants to be used sexually by a woman. Songs like this helped establish Iggy as a Punk icon known for unpredictable and outrageous behavior. In an interview with Howard Stern, Pop explained the sentiment behind the song: "Have you ever seen like a really good looking girl, really nicely dressed, and she's walking down the street with her dog, right? And like her dog is... intimate with her body, and she likes him and everything. Basically, it's the idea of I want to unite with your body. I don't wanna talk about literature with you or judge you as a person. I wanna dog you."


 
This track is well known for its three chord riff and a continuously repeated single piano note, played by Velvet Underground founding member John Cale, who also produced the track. These elements, along with the heavily distorted sound, has lead critics to consider the track an early example of Heavy Metal and Punk music.


 
The song has been covered by numerous artists, including Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Hole, The Sex Pistols, Slayer and Joan Jett. It has also featured in many films, most notably the 1996 action film The Crow: City of Angels, in which vocalist Iggy Pop played the role of Curve, one of the film's villains.


 
Well into his 60s, this song still inspires Iggy Pop to rekindle his notorious stage antics, particularly the stage dive: "because it is our oldest, and most very, very memorable number, I do it," Iggy said "I also do it on that song because I push so hard on the first two versus that I can't think of anything to do by the time the guitar solo comes around. When the guitar solo comes, I tend to do a stage dive to go with the solo."



No Fun

According to Iggy Pop, this song's riff came out of a jam session when the whole band was stoned and Iggy made up lyrics to go with it based on "I Walk The Line" by Johnny Cash.


 
This is a track from the American rock band's self-titled first album, which is today acknowledged as one of the greatest debut long players ever. The band only had five tracks to include on their first release as a typical Stooges song of the period would involve two minutes of composed song followed by several minutes of improvisation. The Stooges were told by Elektra that they needed more material so the other three songs - "Real Cool Time," "Not Right" and "Little Doll" were written overnight and recorded the next day.


We Will Fall


This is a 10-minute ethereal piece, that is completely out of place on The Stooges first album. It's driven by a yogic background chant and the viola of producer John Cale. The spoken word lyrics are Iggy Pop describing a night at the Chelsea Hotel waiting for his girlfriend (Nico from The Velvet Underground) to arrive.


 
The background chant is "Om Shri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram," though "Jai" is mispronounced as "Jah."



Some Iggy Quotes;



My parents wanted to light my artistic candle. But over time, the definition of 'the arts' began to stretch. And as I got older, they suddenly realized, Oh, my God, we're the parents of Iggy Pop.



 "What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen"



"I never believed that U2 wanted to save the whales. I don't believe that The Beastie Boys are ready to lay it down for Tibet."



"They say that death kills you, but death doesn't kill you. Boredom and indifference kill you."



"'Punk rock' is a phrase used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it"


"Something I like to do a lot is just sit by water when there's a current and just stare into the water. I don't fish, I don't hunt, I don't scuba, I don't spear, don't boat, don't play basketball or football - I excel at staring into space. I'm really good at that."


. 

DAY 173.
Alexander Spence...............................Oar   (1969)




 




In 1968 Alexander "Skip" Spence's mental stability was wavering. After he used an axe to try and break into the hotel room of fellow Moby Grape band members, Spence was committed to Bellevue mental hospital for six months.


Following his release, he took a $1000 advance from Columbia, bought a motorcycle and drove it down to Nashville, where he set about recording the songs that he had written in Bellevue. There is nothing quite like them in rock. 
 

DAY 173.
Alexander Spence...............................Oar   (1969)








First things first, "Oars" for me wasn't an easy listen not because I didn't like it, far from it, but have to say I found it quite harrowing at times, while listening/reading the lyrics, it's almost like watching someone unravelling and trying to deal with the demons in their head, remember this was all written in Bellevue Mental institution.


I liked “Little Hands” a hauntingly catchy opener that grabs your attention, followed by “Cripple Creek” which left me a little bleak and so it goes with this album, emotionally up and down.
Spence's delivery goes from hoarse to a whisper, that at some points can't be deciphered, but I did like his instrumentation, which was all his own work.


Obviously apart from the final track  “Grey/Afro,”  at 10 f'kn minutes, It’s like watching a train wreck - compelling, sad, gory - and even though you might never see anything like it again, you really want to turn away. It seems to be about seventeen different songs in one, and none of them are good, and I only lasted till half way through the track.


“Grey/Afro” probably sealed "Oars" fate, I did like it but sadly not enough to buy it, so I wont be.



Bits & Bobs 

Some info on Moby Grape in post #82 (if interested)



Chances are you've heard of Alexander "Skip" Spence, but you probably haven't heard him. You have, actually, in a sense at least, if you own either of the first two Moby Grape albums. During his 1966-68 stint in the legendary San Francisco band, Spence penned a handful of that group's best tunes, including "Omaha", "Indifference" and "Motorcycle Irene".


His solo album, however, is another matter entirely. Oar was issued by Columbia Records in February 1969, received no promotion, sold a minuscule number of copies, and disappeared. Even two subsequent reissues -- in 1988, on Britain's Edsel label, and again in '91 as a remixed/remastered CD with five bonus cuts courtesy Sony Music Special Products -- were doomed to go out of print, despite such luminaries as Robert Plant, Peter Buck, Robyn Hitchcock and the Flaming Lips praising the album in interviews over the years. All that professional and critical respect has resulted in a second reissue of Oar, and in the tribute More Oar.


Why has this cult artist and his lone artifact generated such an air of mystique over the last three decades? For one thing, with the Skip Spence story, you get the whole irresistible rock 'n' roll shebang. There was sex (Spence was a charismatic, baritone-voiced, good-looking young man); drugs (LSD reportedly drove him to attack a fellow band member with an axe); mental illness (summarily shipped off to New York's notorious Bellevue psychiatric hospital for six months, he would experience recurring problems, including a long homeless stint, for the rest of his life); and premature death (he passed away from lung cancer this past April 16, just two days shy of his 53rd birthday).


In his 1998 book Unknown Legends Of Rock 'n' Roll, Richie Unterberger attempted to explain the album's out-of-time, therefore timeless, appeal: "Like [Syd] Barrett, Spence conveyed a magical sense of childlike wonder with his one-of-a-kind songs, which fascinate with their eerie tightrope walk between coherence and madness. If Skip was a psychedelic cousin of Barrett's, he drew upon bedrock American blues, country and folk influences to a far greater degree than his British counterpart." As the story goes, Spence had begun writing new songs while in Bellevue. After getting out in December 1968, he drove to Nashville, spent a week in a studio producing himself and playing all the instruments, and emerged with what Unterberger described as "not psychedelia in the San Francisco sense, but a sort of summit meeting of Delta Bluesmen and the spirit of Haight-Ashbury." The biblical musings of "Books Of Moses" sound as if they're delivered through clenched teeth, accompanied by a spooky Delta blues guitar. In the strummy country-folk of "Cripple Creek", a "cripple on his deathbed" is visited by an angel and embarks on a surreal final journey. The oddly elegant "All Come To Meet Her" brings to mind images of the Jefferson Airplane charting a plantation-era waltz (Spence, the Airplane's original drummer, actually musters some convincing Jorma Kaukonen-style licks while triple-tracking his vocal to achieve the group harmony effect). These are clearly not the inaccessible, avant garde ramblings of some basket case.


Troubled though he may have been, Spence had the basics of songwriting down, and a musical vision to go with them. He also emerges as a unique vocal stylist: While at times his unadorned baritone might resemble an untrained cross between Dylan's nasal croak and Marlon Brando in The Godfather, elsewhere he's capable of such gorgeous bird-in-flight falsetto swoops that his closest peer may have been Tim Buckley. Some have labeled Spence as the progenitor of today's naif subculture (Daniel Johnston, Smog, East River Pipe, etc.); aside from the general lo-fi, alone-in-a-room ambiance that surrounds Oar, it was his tendency to steer in whatever direction a song might lean that really makes the case. Abrupt time signature shifts, sound effects and odd vocal treatments make the album seem weird at first, but it's a good kind of discombobulation. For example, the extended stream-of-consciousness bass/drum/voice drone of the 9-minute "Grey/Afro" still makes no sense thirty years later, but sonically speaking, it's intoxicating. The otherwise straightforward blues of "Books Of Moses" has some off-kilter percussion that sounds like someone in the back room pounding nails into a pie pan. And "War In Peace" is a masterpiece of spontaneous deception, its haunting mood (set up by Spence's wraithlike vocal, a lumbering bassline, and strange electronic birdcalls) abruptly shattered at the end when Spence lurches into the "Sunshine Of Your Love" guitar lick.


Sundazed Records boss Bob Irwin, who produced the 1993 two-disc Moby Grape anthology Vintage, obviously fell under the spell of Oar. Aware that the '91 CD reissue had been substantially remixed, he returned to the original two-track masters and restored them to the mix that graced the original vinyl. The sonic improvement is startling; there's a clarity and depth to the new Sundazed version of Oar, giving Spence's singing and playing a finer degree of intimacy. Not only does Spence now sound like he's sitting right in front of you, but his guitar has a dry, twangy crispness. Adding lots of echo may have been the Sony remixers' solution to what they thought was a primitive-sounding album; in hindsight, however, it's clear that Spence genuinely was aiming for the kind of raw immediacy of vintage blues and folk recordings. The Sundazed disc additionally excises some structural tinkering.


Among the changes from the Sony version: "Little Hands" doesn't end on a single chord, but fades out; "Lawrence Of Euphoria" has been restored to its original length (shortened by 23 seconds); "Diana" no longer contains the minute-plus guitar rave-up that Sony had appended. Sundazed's treatment of five bonus tracks that first appeared on the Sony reissue bears mentioning as well. Originally, they were less "songs" (track 13, "This Time He Has Come", was a continuation of "Grey/Afro") than simply fragments in which Spence, sans guitar, experimented with rhythm patterns on bass and drums while testing out lyric and rhyming schemes. (In some spots, he's heard scatting; elsewhere, his offhand manner suggests he's coming up with lyrics on the spot.) "It's The Best Thing For You" is the most tuneful of these tracks, in terms of a regular melody; "Furry Heroine (Halo Of Gold)" is amusingly goofy and full of lyrical non sequiturs (Spence even quotes Johnny Cash at one point). Sundazed has unearthed an additional 30 seconds for the latter tune, giving it a "new" intro. A track mistakenly titled "Doodle" on the Sony reissue is now correctly listed as "Givin' Up Things". And all five cuts have been stripped of their prior echo bath. The most significant news about the Sundazed reissue, however, is the presence of five additional bonus tracks. They all follow a similar formula -- just bass guitar, percussion and voice -- and a couple ("If I'm Good", "Fountain") are only half-minute snippets. There's a new one-minute "Doodle", a real find, wherein an ebullient (and most likely buzzed) Spence chuckles his way through haphazard rhymes like "at the park after dark, with an old girlfriend (or two) and a quart or two of brew." And "You Know", with its driving bassline, staccato beat and deeply soulful vocal, seems sufficiently promising to have warranted further studio elaboration. Of course, 'twas not to be. The last things we hear from the Oar sessions are Spence's talkback: "We out of tape? Did I just run out? Okay..." More Oar was assembled over the course of a couple of years by Bill Bentley, who clearly treated it as a labor of love. Bentley, a longtime Warner Bros. publicist and occasional guerrilla producer (he also was responsible for Sire/Warner's 1990 Roky Erickson tribute Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye), fell under the spell of Oar back in 1969. In his liner notes for the tribute disc, he calls the original album "a funky and fractured declaration of independence...like free-falling into Alice's wonderland. Spence was the only person I heard [in 1969] who sounded like he had even less to lose than me....This album sounded like one big psychic bandage." More Oar is presented in the same running order as its inspiration, with the dozen LP songs followed by the first CD reissue's five bonus tracks. As with most tribute albums, it's not perfect, although its flaws are few. Among them: Engine 54's whiteboy reggaefication of "It's The Best Thing For You"; the Ophelias' grating, vaudevillian "Lawrence Of Euphoria" (on Oar, the tune was at best a Thorazine-addled nursery rhyme); and Beck's "Furry Heroine (Halo Of Gold)" -- Spence's version, to be fair, was disjointed, but by "Beck-ifying" it and even recycling a keyboard riff from his own "Jack-Ass", Beck curiously supplants Spence's weirdness with his own. On the upside, however, there are some astonishing moments on More Oar. Mark Lanegan and Alejandro Escovedo do Spence's deep roots proud on "Cripple Creek" and "Diana", respectively. Lanegan's husky growl is remarkably close in tone and texture to Spence's, whereas Escovedo clearly knows his way around a desperately creepy Spence moan. Mudhoney's Mark Arm speak-sings the vocal of "War In Peace" to excavate the song's dark, cynical side (Spence had adopted an airier, Tim Buckley-like upper register), while the band's subterranean, echo-drenched arrangement perfectly ladles out the dread. Other high points include the tracks by Flying Saucer Attack ("Grey/Afro"), the Minus Five ("Givin' Up Things") and Jay Farrar ("Weighted Down"). Significantly, it's a pair of veterans -- who quite possibly purchased Oar upon its initial release -- who submit the best performances on More Oar.


Robert Plant gives "Little Hands" a breathless, celebratory urgency, bringing to life Spence's images of innocent children dancing happily, of "little hands clapping" and praying for "a world of no pain, for one and for all"; the song's acoustic guitar, upright bass and vibraphone arrangement is gorgeously low-key. And if Plant nails Spence's mood upswing, leave it to Tom Waits to capture the songwriter in mid-plummet: "Books Of Moses" is terrifying, its bone-rattle maraca, swampy guitar twang and Waits' apocalyptic, judgmental wail an uncanny re-envisioning of Spence's original, whose thunderstorm effects, lurching percussion taps, acoustic blues guitar and tense vocal were unsettling enough the first time around. Bentley even pulls a rabbit out of the hat for the finale. Following 5-1/2 minutes of silence after the last track, you suddenly hear an unmistakable voice laughing; then after an array of bass notes, guitar feedback and Indian percussion, the voice edges into an eerie, William Burroughs-style recitation. Sure enough, it's Spence's "Land Of The Sun", recorded a few years ago for the X-Files album but deemed too bizarre for final inclusion. How fitting to let Spence himself get the final word.


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