Moby Grape: OMAHA — An OM AHA (M)OMent

 

           You don’t have time to read, nor I to write a long post, so I’ll keep this brief.

           Been listening to the Grape.  Like you perhaps, I’d heard about them for a long time before I finally looked them up (on YouTube) and heard “Omaha,” which, like you perhaps, I thought was called “Listen My Friends.”  That inspired me to purchase the “Listen My Friends” best of CD (above).

        To make a long story short, even before I knew much about them, and had just seen a few videos, I 

took an interest in Mr. Spence (or Alexander, or Skip), there seemed something intriguing about him, couldn’t quite put a finger on it..

        Then I started to learn more, and need I go into the biographical details?   In brief, he was a crazy dude — brilliant and crazy, or crazy because of his genius, who knows?   Was it the LSD and other drugs, or was he somehow wired more weirdly than everyone else (Wired for Sound?)  What was it?

       Because Spence was the author of “Omaha,” and what an incredible song!  That’s like a song that I was

always looking for, the song that was always in me, too.   So I’m curious to know more about this Skip guy, you can imagine.  Like: Was he into “Om,” as the title of this suggests?   And not just the title, but the song is one long “AUM/OM” (and you can OM to it real well).  It just tells me that one reason I like psychedelia (or Acid Rock) so much was because it was coming from this deeper, mystical consciousness of actual sound vibration, hearing the AUM sound internally, which is almost certainly where this came from.  

      According to the Yoga Sutra, AUM is connected to Ishvara, or God, and is quite literally the Word/Sound of God, and maybe even the immanent form of God.  It’s often compared to the beginning verse of the Gospel of John: “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”   That would explain why the music of that era is perhaps my most favorite, because it is quite a bit more Cosmic (and so more True, Beautiful, and Good) than other music, which is not so informed.

        So let us have more crazy people like Mr. Spence!  And Listen My Friends: OMAHA.

youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_FlNwQlBmU

ps. I love Spence’s other tracks on the Best Of CD, but “Seeing” is another favorite.  Would love to know

what the lyrics are, but no one has posted them on the Web to date.  Anyone know them?