When I hear the beginning of "After Bathing at Baxters", I am immediately transported back to Lincoln's birthday in the Spring of '68. That album had just began as I was reaching lift-off on my last "flight" ;-). Unlike I, Skip Spence, drummer on "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off" (and later in Moby Grape on rhythm guitar and vocals), and Mark Loomis, lead guitarist in Cupertino cult garage band The Chocolate Watchband, didn't know when to stop, and could be seen wandering around my home town of San Jose/Cupertino, lost forever in the clouds. As is, tragically, Brian Wilson.
After '68 (when he was fed enormous amounts of LSD by a White Witch in NYC), Skip lived alternately in a State-funded halfway house in downtown San Jose and a trailer over the mountains in the beach town of Santa Cruz, bumming cigarettes from passers-by. He died of lung cancer in '99, two days shy of his 53rd birthday. Who knows what he could have done if not for the drugs? It's the same story with Syd Barrett of early Pink Floyd (whose solo album "Mapcap Laughs" is rather similar to Skip's "Oar" album, both incoherent ramblings) and Peter Green of early Fleetwood Mac, both acid casualties. It is the part of the Hippie story that is under-reported and acknowledged, imo.
