Moby Grape

Track	Album
Fall On You	Moby Grape
8:05	Moby Grape
Sitting By The Window	Moby Grape
Indifference	Moby Grape
Can't Be So Bad	Wow/Grape Jam
Rose Colored Eyes	Wow/Grape Jam
It's A Beautiful Day Today	Moby Grape '69
Seeing	Moby Grape '69
Apocalypse	20 Granite Creek
Horse Out In The Rain	20 Granite Creek

Moby Grape (l to r): Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis, Don Stevenson, Skip Spence
Bob Mosley – photo: Jim Marshall from the shoot for the 1967 promo poster

 

 

Moby Grape playlist

 

 

Contributor: Dave Stephens

Moby Grape, released in 1967, is a candidate for the best debut album of all time; at the very least it should be in the top ten of all time. I’ve selected four tracks from it but could easily have gone for all ten, or even attempted to twist the editor’s arm and included all thirteen beauties.

Some back story may be necessary for those readers who’ve never even heard of the great Grape. The group was formed in 1966 around drummer Skip Spence who had been sacked from the Jefferson Airplane after appearing on their debut LP, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. That wasn’t the reason he was sacked I hasten to add; apparently he took an unannounced holiday in Mexico. Members recruited were bass player Bob Mosley, drummer Don Stevenson – Spence switched to guitar – and two more guitarists, Jerry Miller and Peter Lewis. All three guitarists played either lead (well) or rhythm. All five members wrote songs and all five sang (also very well). All these guys were from bands who had been working in the San Francisco area (in the main) and whose names are now well and truly forgotten. So there was a goodly amount of experience present right from the very beginning.

While there might have been a slight resemblance to the early Airplane in their sound, the various Grape members brought to the table a very wide range of influences encompassing blues, folk, country (the Byrds’ Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, widely acclaimed as the first country rock album, didn’t see release until 1968), soul, British pop, old fashioned rock and roll and even the odd touch of jazz. While the term Power Pop is not usually seen against their name, I would rate several of their numbers to be even better than Big Star in this category.

Early gigging established the band as a force to be reckoned with, easily able to see off opposition/support/call it what you like. Manager Matthew Katz, who had also been associated with the Airplane, pulled off a major coup by signing the boys up to Columbia Records. The group’s first LP was released in 1967 and, in a totally OTT marketing stunt, Columbia released five singles from it at the same time. The singles achieved nothing of any significance chartwise and the LP, while receiving very good reviews, only sold moderately well. What possibly hindered the band, quite apart from a perception of over-hyping, was that they were not seen as hailing from the same musical stratosphere as the other big name SF bands of the period, typified of course by the Grateful Dead. While the band was capable of extending numbers live, their LP contained songs of not much more than three minutes in length, unlike psych heroes the Dead, Quicksilver and so on.

The band’s second album, Wow/Grape Jam, was a double set with the second featuring extended jamming (perhaps to counteract the impression above). While selling well initially – it was released with a bargain price – it got a thumbs down from the critics. Skip Spence got heavily into LSD – he is sometimes perceived as the San Francisco equivalent to Syd Barrett – and left in 1968 (see later). January ’69 saw the release of the band’s third album, Moby Grape ’69 which was seen critically as something of a return to form. There was then, one more album for Columbia, Truly Fine Citizen, and a few more scattered over ensuing years. However record buyers’ attention moved elsewhere and memories of that fine first set faded in the minds of all but the most devout fans.

I’m unashamedly reaching for a cliché in my comments on Moby Grape. Its opening track was one that made you sit up and take notice – how many times have you heard those words? But Hey Grandma was all that. The three pronged guitar attack with Jerry Miller mainly to the fore, the harmonies, the subtle rhythmic changes, the forceful delivery, they were all there. And the boys were gone in no more than two and half minutes, absolutely typical for a set where only one track exceeded four. The less tangible attributes were also there: life, energy, intensity and involvement, all those sorts of things. Track #2, Mr Blues introduced Bob Mosley, the man with the big voice, something of an American equivalent of Chris Farlowe. Perhaps a difference between the two was that Mosley didn’t spend much time on soul covers (although you got the impression he might have cut his teeth on such things).

Track #3, Fall On You, is my first selection. Beatles on speed is a typical reaction. Great interplay between lead singer Peter Lewis, and the backing harmonies – the drop on the final “You” is to die for. And they’re in and out in less than two minutes this time. Perfection.

But it gets better. 8:05 is a ballad, but, my what a ballad. Totally unexpected in terms of what had come before. Arguably the best track out of the entire Grape oeuvre. And while we’re on ‘bests’, in my opinion this is one of the very best tracks of 1967, a year that wasn’t short of goodies. This one should have been a mega-hit and the fact that it wasn’t I can only put down to the incompetence of Columbia.

Please change your mind
Before my sunshine is gone

It goes on. Track #5, Come In The Morning is Motown with guitars with the boys doing their best Temps impressions, “Come in people we’re gonna tell you ’bout good dreams and things to make you happy”. The first Skip Spence penned track, Omaha, opens with a single tone plus phasing between the speakers – maybe an affectionate nod to Captain Beefheart’s intro to Yellow Brick Road – plus oodles of propulsion from the rhythm section of Bob Mosley, bass, and, particularly on this one, Don Stevenson on fire on drums. The track is one of the critics’ favourites and I had one hell of a job leaving it out. I had the same problem with the closer to Side 1, the rootsy, Naked If I Want To. It may just be a fragment, coming in at under a minute, but it doesn’t half punch above its weight.

And I ain’t got no money
But I will pay you before I die

Side 2 is just as good but I won’t go through every track this time. The second ballad in the set, Sitting By The Window, comes from the pen of Peter Lewis, and once again there are sublime harmonies backing Peter’s vocal not to mention marvellously inventive guitar work from multiple players. There’s plenty of fresh air about this. I was tempted to use the term ‘folksy’ but maybe that has the wrong connotations.

Skip Spence’s Indifference closes the album. Perhaps a strange title for a track that’s anything but indifferent. A great loping song, much of it sung in call and response duet between Mosley and Spence, with interjections from the rest of the band. Heavily guitar dominated again even while there are up tempo soul aspects present. I reach for easy comparisons but they’re not there. This one’s unique. One of Skip’s best. And he goes out on a variation to the reference tone this time.

1967 and early 1968 saw the release of Sergeant Pepper, Notorious Byrd Brothers and a few more epics. ’68 also saw the release of Wow/Grape Jam. Noted US rock critic and Rolling Stone reviewer Robert Christgau diagnosed the problem with Wow as ‘Pepperitis”. If you add in that the bonus disc Grape Jam suffered from “Creamitis” then you have a reasonably succinct summary of the contents. Or. at least that’s what a lot of people thought (and still think). However look beyond the over the top arrangements and you will find some good songs peeping out. The blues/rock stomper, Can’t Be So Bad was featured on the famous The Rock Machine Turns You On, a record that claims, most probably correctly, to be the first bargain priced sampler ever. The track is at least on a par if not better than, the offering from Mike Bloomfield’s Electric Flag which is also in the set. Electric Flag were virtually all blues/rock whereas the Grape had one heck of a lot more in their bag. And on this one the production works. Slower, almost elegiac horn arrangements alternate with the up tempo sections and there’s icing in the form of a gorgeous chunk of slow three part harmony shortly before the fade.

Rose Colored Eyes owes a little to the Byrds/Dave Crosby’s controversial Mind Gardens in its use of electronics and general psych mood, but it’s a much stronger song. The criticisms that McGuinn uttered re his ex-colleague’s song don’t apply here. I’m not sure that the “Get out of my town” and “Long haired creep” interventions (approx 2/3 in) do anything for the song. But that summarises the main problem with Wow; you have to swallow some unnecessary stuff in order to get at the songs.

I’ve already noted that, in the eyes of most of the critics, the third album, Moby Grape ’69, was seen as a let’s-get-back-to-basics return to the qualities and production values of their debut. I wouldn’t disagree. They had stuck with the same producer, David Rubinson, and he’d extracted a good set of songs from them – even with Skip Spence now missing – and had resisted any attempt at over-elaboration. The country tinges on their first had blossomed into country rock and there was even some old fashioned doo wop in the opening track, Ooh Mama Ooh. Bob Mosley contributed a stunning ballad, It’s A Beautiful Day Today. Not the sort of thing you’d expect from the guy with the scorched earth lungs but he was also the man who wrote Rose Colored Eyes on Wow. Mosley was/is a much more complex character than often realised.

My second selection from Moby Grape ’69 – though I could submit more – is the one song Skip Spence contributed before he left, Seeing. Alternating quiet dreamy sections and apocalyptic hard rock, this one is easily among his best. AllMusic comment, “it’s a harrowing meditation of madness that may well be Spence’s greatest song”.

Take me far away, my wiles and mind
Can’t beat a dream of death today
Hard to get by when what greets my eye
Takes my breath away

I never managed to find Moby Grape’s final Columbia album, Truly Fine Citizen, in UK record shops. Maybe I didn’t try that hard. Record buyers in general didn’t try at all. I’m not even sure Columbia tried very hard. They allocated big name producer Bob Johnston to the band (now minus Bob Mosley), but he was in and out in three days. I do have a couple of tracks from the set which sit on the band’s best-of CD and I’ve sampled a few more, but can’t get very excited about them.

The next outing for the Grape came via the Reprise label in ’71. The record was 20 Granite Creek, named after the band’s communal home in the Santa Cruz mountains where the album was recorded. Both Spence and Mosley were back, as was producer David Rubinson. The good news was that the magic was back, and the bad news: that no one took any interest whatsoever. One got the impression that this time the band members had just been given their head. Bob Mosley opened with a full-on garage anthem, Gypsy Wedding, already in retro mode for ’65. Skip Spence got one track only; the weird and wonderful instrumental Chinese Song on which he played a koto – it’s one that has admirers and detractors – I’m in the former grouping.

Peter Lewis contributed three splendid songs. With regret I’m passing over the rocker Goin’ Down To Texas with its three guitar interplay just as entertaining as that heard on Moby Grape. Apocalypse is more of a slow burn; could this have come from anywhere else other than the West Coast? Lewis’s limpid voice is echoed by another of those lazy but intricate guitar patterns.

As I stood upon the meadow in the summer wind today
Watching while the long grass did its afternoon ballet
There came like mountain thunder, the Horseman angel’s cry
Apocalypse is now mankind, your time has come to die

Horse Out In The Rain is one of those woozy near psych workouts that the Grape only very rarely did. Slow, echoey and riff based, with guitars seemingly fed through molasses, it’s one that gradually seeps into the brain.

There were two more studio albums from Moby Grape, Moby Grape ’84, released in 1984 as implied, and, Legendary Grape, released in 1989 (see footnotes). Both albums were recorded without Skip Spence who was hospitalised during this time though he did appear in the very occasional live show. I can’t claim intimacy with either of these albums but have sampled all tracks. AllMusic rated them at 3 and 2.5 stars respectively. In my view the first of the pair is competent but without songs that reach out and grab you. I reckon AllMusic were a little mean on Legendary Grape possibly due to the fact that the default setting for the band on this one was blues rock, albeit well executed. It also has a small handful of interesting songs though none that even remotely challenge my selection.

Just to show that not all Legendary Grape was blues rock (and that Moby Grape were a lot more than a bar band):

So, just how good were Moby Grape? The first thing to say is that you can’t really compare them to most of the other big name San Francisco bands of the day (as I implied in my introduction). A better reference would the bands from Los Angeles from the same time frame, the Byrds, Love (pre-Forever Changes) and Buffalo Springfield. Add in some of the grit from slightly later Neil Young albums and you might not be too far off. For me that first album can sit in the exalted company of Younger Than Yesterday, Da Capo and Buffalo Springfield Again and I have quite deliberately selected albums I love. The Grape’s later albums don’t consistently reach that level but they contain individual tracks that do. Does that answer the question?

Another thing, from the war stories of way back then, the Grape had no competitors when it came to live performance. A quote against one of their vids on YT:

“I saw the Byrds at UC Berkeley, with Moby Grape the opening act, and the Grape absolutely blew the roof off.”

I have one last comment and it’s a shameless crib from one of the Amazon.com reviews of Legendary Grape:

“Each member of Moby Grape never defined themselves as anything other than a working musician.”

 

 

 

Skip Spence and Oar

Skip Spence left the band during the recording of Wow in New York. Apparently, he attacked the door of Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson’s hotel room with a fire axe. He spent a spell in a detention centre and was then committed to the Bellevue mental hospital. It was while he was at Bellevue that he created the body of work that would become Oar. The album itself was recorded over seven days in the Columbia Studios in Nashville with Spence playing all the instruments. It was released in May 1969 and, reportedly, during that year, was one of the worst sellers in Columbia’s history. However it didn’t take too long for the record to attain cult status and that has grown over the years. The original LP had a dozen tracks but this has been extended to 22 (with some no more than fragments) in the current Sundazed CD release.

There’s an argument that Oar deserves a Toppermost of its own. It wouldn’t be the first to be based on a single album and I do see some validity in this position. Equally, it wouldn’t be representative (or fair to Moby Grape) to include Oar tracks in this posting. Only on one or two can one see hints of the Grape – Little Hands is one such. We are told that Spence claimed that Oar was merely a set of demos for a ‘properly’ arranged and produced album but, like so much about Oar, that is unconfirmed. The only other people apart from Spence involved in the album were the engineer Mike Figlio, and Grape producer David Rubinson who stayed away from the sessions but instructed Figlio to keep the tapes running.

The adjective most frequently applied to Oar is inaccessible, though to these ears, it’s considerably more accessible than The Madcap Laughs and Barrett (to evoke the usual comparison). Many, not all, of the tracks here are genuine songs, with at times quite intriguing melody lines; a fact that is made slightly more apparent by their appearance on a tribute album, More Oar. Skip’s sometimes wandering voice (which occasionally takes on deep tones as on Cripple Creek) is appealing to me though I can understand those who find it less so. Lyrically, there’s pain and a lot more that doesn’t lend itself to clear understanding. But there’s humour as well, that’s if you have the right mindset.

Just one more comment and it comes from Greil Marcus:

“His voice is another instrument – I’ve heard the record many times and not understood more than a score of the words, and though this may be an affront to Spence’s lyrics, more likely it’s a tribute to the seduction of his music”

Skip Spence was involved off and on with Moby Grape (but mainly off) over the ensuing years until his death in 1999.

 

QUOTES

“San Francisco rock at its ’67 peak, this is genuine hippie power pop. Moby Grape sang like demons and wrote crisp songs packed with lysergic country-blues excitement, while the band’s three guitarists – Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis and Skip Spence – created a network of lightning.” Rolling Stone on Moby Grape (the album)

“Moby Grape’s 2nd album was about as successful as their debut, rising to #20 on the US album charts. It follows the same “parade of short catchy songs” template as the debut, but is comprised of about equal parts: a) songs that reach the glorious highs of the debut LP, b) good songs ruined by overstuffed Moody Blues/Bee Gees style “orchestral” production, and c) filler and crap … Bob Mosley’s “Rose Colored Eyes” is one of their finest “psychedelic” moments with echo-drenched vocal harmonies, gentle backwards guitar filigree and a trippy acoustic raga jam for a bridge.” Julian Cope in a review of Vintage: The Very Best of Moby Grape

“Moby Grape ’69 is concise enough – most of the songs are under three minutes and the whole thing clocks in at a shade under a half-hour – and the high points come close to recapturing the electric magic of the group’s nearly flawless debut.” Mark Deming in AllMusic review of Moby Grape ’69

“At first I thought this reunion album lacked magic, but these guys sound remarkably whole for a band that failed to take over the world in 1967. You can hear the country undertone now, but you can also hear why you missed it – at their most lyrical these guys never lay back, and lyricism is something they’re usually rocking too hard to bother with, though their compact forms guarantee poetic justice. Full of hope as they foresee their doom, stoned and drunk and on the move and yet always together, and above all intense, they should have at least taken over the country. All they really lacked was a boss, and what could be more American than that?” Robert Christgau on 20 Granite Creek

“What killed Moby Grape? Management nightmares, the implosion of the catalytic Spence, and the bummer of cutting a debut album as America’s Beatles and watching it flop. That album remains, however, still a flash of youth so exhilarating that its surviving creators, all past sixty, cannot let it go.” Robert Christgau, 2007

 

FOOTNOTES

1. Wikipedia tells us that the group name came from the punch line to the joke, “What’s big and purple and lives in the ocean?” and that it was selected by Mosley and Spence.

2. According to Carla Olson in a 2013 interview, Gene Clark loved the song 8:05 and had planned to record it on the follow-up album to So Rebellious A Lover which never actually happened due, in part, to Gene’s death. In 2013, Carla recorded the song in duet with Peter Case for the album Have Harmony Will Travel. It’s not on YouTube but is on Spotify.

3. I’m informed – and I very much hope this is true – that 20 Granite Creek managed to make the US Top 200 achieving the magnificent position of #177.

4. Peter Lewis, in addition to contributing those wonderful songs – and there are more that I didn’t mention – has been of great assistance to both Skip Spence and Bob Mosley in their problems with schizophrenia over the years. While Spence’s situation is near public knowledge what is far less well known is that Bob Mosley went through five years of homelessness in the 1990s.

5. During much of the life of Moby Grape there was/is conflict between the band and their original manager Matthew Katz. Legendary Grape was originally issued as a 500 copy, cassette only, release on Herman Records credited to The Melvilles because Katz, at that time, ‘owned’ the group name. Later, the tracks were remastered and eight extra tracks were added to the Legendary Grape release in 2003.

6. Given the comment above it might surprise the reader to learn that the Grape’s preceding album was produced by Matthew Katz.

7. I stated that Legendary Grape was awarded two and a half stars by AllMusic. Amazon buyers were more generous. In both the UK and the US it got four stars. The US reviews – 19 in all – contained significant numbers of five star and two star ratings. Almost all reviews were from ‘the faithful’ with the two stars emanating from ‘disappointed of Des Moines’ types.

 

Jerry Miller (1943–2024)

Skip Spence (1946–1999)

 

Moby Grape Facebook Public Group

Bob Mosley (Wikipedia)

Moby Grape lyrics

Moby Grape biography (Apple Music)

Dave Stephens had a long career in IT – programming, consultancy, management etc. – before retiring in 2007. After spending time on the usual retiree type activities he eventually got round to writing on one of his favourite subjects, popular music, particularly, but not only, the sort that was around in his youth. He gained experience at ‘the writing thing’ by placing CD reviews on Amazon. This led to his first book “RocknRoll” which was published for Kindle in 2015. He followed this up with “London Rocks” in July 2016. You can follow him on Twitter @DangerousDaveXX

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