Hey Grandma...

... you're so young... Today in rock history, Alexander "Skip" Spence was born in 1946. Spence was a guitarist in an early line-up of Quicksilver Messenger Service before Marty Balin recruited him to be the drummer for Jefferson Airplane. After one album with Jefferson Airplane, their debut Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, he left to co-found Moby Grape, once again as a guitarist. You may remember Moby Grape as the band (besides having a great name for a rock band, as Dave Barry would say) with the album with the band posing in front of a funky general store somewhere and one of the band members was giving "the finger." Pretty controversial at the time, and Columbia records later put out another version of the album cover with the offending digit lopped off. I was fortunate to have the original version, which included a poster of the cover, which I promptly put on my closet door - apparently my parents didn't "get it," because they never made me take it down. My album also has the labels reversed, which is I suppose is relatively rare - hey, I wonder how much I could get for it on eBay? No, I think I'll hang on to it, and listen to "Hey Grandma" one more time. It's timeless music, a clever mix of r&b, blue eyed soul, pop, and country. They didn't last too long, as groups in those days came and went, but have left behind a great legacy of recorded music. So let's enjoy their music, and celebrate the life of Skip Spence. Thanks to www.garylessard.com and www.wikipedia.org for the info, and keep on rockin'!