Alexander Spence, "Oar" (Columbia, 1969)

The story goes that a 19-year-old Canadian who went by the nickname of Skip was in a club where one of the singers in a new San Francisco band also happened to be.

"You're my drummer," the singer told Skip.

He tried to explain that he was a guitarist, not a drummer. But the singer insisted, and soon Skip found himself at the percussion kit for a group called Jefferson Airplane.

And so began a brief, bizarre stint in the spotlight for the late Alexander Spence, who died of lung cancer seven years ago yesterday.

Airplane co-founder Marty Balin was the one who converted him temporarily to stickman, mainly because he thought Skip looked like a drummer. It turned out that he could play like one, too, as is evidenced by his work on the group's debut album, "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off" (RCA Victor, 1966).

But Skip was a guitarist at heart, so when he had an opportunity to join a new band in its formative stages, he took it. Plus, he was a free agent by then, having parted ways with the Airplane after going AWOL to Mexico.

"What's purple and lives at the bottom of the sea?" went a pointless joke making the rounds at the time. "Moby Grape!"

And so Skip's new band had a name and an approach that differentiated it from the countless other bands around San Francisco at the time: It boasted three guitarists among the five musicians in the lineup, and each member of the quintet could sing.

The high quality of their work shows on the debut, "Moby Grape," which Columbia Records released right at the start of what became known as the Summer of Love. Skip wrote two songs for the album, one of which, "Omaha" dented the lower reaches of the singles chart. (It might have done better had the record company not saturated the market by releasing five Grape singles simultaneously!)

Unfortunately, the arrests of a few band members - on the night of the album release party, no less, with Skip among them - started Moby Grape on a downward spiral, creatively and otherwise. The band's second album, "Wow," peaked at No. 20, four spots higher than its predecessor. But that's attributable to the inclusion of a "bonus" record called "Grape Jam," a collection of studio improvisations that probably should have stayed in the studio.

By that time, Skip Spence had fallen victim to the excesses of the Summer of Love, and beyond. After an incident in which he took an ax to a hotel door, he was committed to New York's Bellevue Hospital for several months. When he got out, he hopped on a motorcycle and headed to a recording studio in Nashville.

The result is "Oar," which sounds pretty much like it was recorded by someone who'd recently done time in a mental hospital. It's just Skip playing guitar, bass and drums, overdubbing himself on an osbolete (even then) three-track tape recorder. The overall sound is very murky, especially his vocals, which usually come across as mumbling. The arrangements often sound like he's straining to keep time, and the structure of some of the songs make it appear as if he was making them up on the spot.

But all of that makes "Oar" a fascinating listen for anyone who likes to stray from the beaten musical path. You never know where Skip is going next, from the relatively elaborate and catchy "Little Hands" to the world-weary "Weighted Down" to the epic "Grey/Afro" - the nine-minute closer that features Skip pounding a tribal beat, with his singing and bass playing under so much echo effect that it's virtually impossible to decipher the vocals.

Sundazed Records - which refers to Skip as a "national music treasure" - reissued "Oar" on CD in 1999, marking the first time the album had been widely available in 30 years. (When it first appeared, it was said to be one of Columbia's all-time poorest-selling albums.) Around the same time, a compilation called "More Oar" featured numerous artists covering his songs, including Robert Plant (yes, that one) doing "Little Hands."

Unfortunately, Alexander "Skip" Spence was gone by then, dying just a few days before his 53rd birthday, seemingly eons removed from the teenager who decided that, yes, he could play drums.