The Skip Spence Story — The Essence of Psychedelic Weirdness, Its Peaks and Pitfalls

Spence is a true rock cult hero

Canadian-born songwriter, singer, guitarist, drummer (and a few other things), in many ways, represents the essence of psychedelic weirdness, with all the brilliant music that weirdness produced as well as all personal pitfalls that came along with it. Many songs, lyrics, or album titles would aptly describe the man that departed us in 1999 — Robert Wyatt’s album Ruth is Stranger Than Richard or even better, that line from The Grateful Dead’s iconic song “Truckin’” — “What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been.”

After all, Spence was a member of a few essential West Coast psychedelic bands, composed some of the most influential psych themes, and came up with Oar — probably one of the weirdest, and at the same time, most important psych albums of all time. All along, he had a main role in some of the strangest and most recounted events connected with rock music. As such, Skip Spence stands as the epitome of psychedelia.

From A Whisper to a Scream

So goes the Allen Toussaint song, yet another that can fit the story of Skip Spence. Starting out as a member of the obscure West Coast band The Other Side, and being one of the initial members of Quicksilver Messenger Service, one of the…