Moby Grape

First things first. I'd like to express my deepest gratitude to Mr. Matthew Katz, the Grape's original manager and the GREEDY TROLL who has done nothing but rob fans both old and new of one of rock's greatest groups. Katz could care about Grape's legacy as much as Terry Knight cared about Grand Funk Railroad, and it doesn't get any lower than that my friends! This reissue of Moby Grape's debut album, complete with bonus tracks, was released in October of 2007 only to be withdrawn the following month because of a lawsuit by Katz. The following two titles, "Wow" and "Grape Jam," were also pulled from production. It's such a shame because Sundazed did a stellar job of restoring this classic back to it's original sheen, only to have their time and efforts spit on by a money hungry jerk like Katz. So, if you already know about this album and are curious about one of the San Francisco music scenes hardest rocking outfits of the late '60s (seriously, The Grateful WHO? The Jefferson WHAT?), then put down the extra cash and pick up a copy of this reissue NOW!"So is it really that good?" Yes it is! Moby Grape was an incredible band of collective talent and a very sad story of one of rock's could-have-been. Their overall sound was not unlike a harder rocking version of The Dead but with many more elements in the mix. One minute they were folky (see "8:05") and the next they were prefiguring punk rock a decade ahead of schedule (see "Omaha"). Then you've got the whole "white boys loving black soul" thing going on sung at the top of bassist and vocalist Bob Mosley's white-soul pipes. Mosely was undoubtedly one of the most powerful vocalist of the era. However, with the Grape, the spotlight didn't just fall one particular individual. Every member of the band, including drummer Don Stevenson, could sing, play, and write. With the band's debut album released on May 29, 1967, and considerable press coverage, it seemed 1967 might be the year of the Grape. That is, before a few unfortunate happenings took place.For starters, on June 1st, The Beatles turned the rock music world upside down with the release of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," only a scant few days after the Grape released their debut. The band's performance at The Monterey Pop Festival, which should have propelled them into the stratosphere, was overshadowed by the likes of Janis Joplin, The Who, and Jimi Hendrix. Their record label, Columbia, sought to promote the band by issuing five singles off the L.P. (not one of them containing a non-album cut) all at once which confused the hell out of radio D.J.s! The only single to reach dry land was the fierce rocking "Omaha," which peaked at no. 88 on the charts (at least it made the Top 100).Since this new, albeit limited edition, reissue has been remastered from the original master tapes, you'll get a few surprizes. "Omaha" runs at least 15 seconds longer now and comes to a complete stop instead of fading out like fans have heard all these years on their original L.P.s. "Hey Grandma" runs a wee bit longer too but it still fades. "Hey Grandma" opens up the album in fine fashion (and it isn't about a teenage boy having a sexual relationship with an older woman, it's an ode to all the S.F. hotties running around in granny dresses so says Jerry Miller). The song features their trademark horse-galloping beat, fierce guitar pickin' from Jerry Miller and the band's harmonies in place. "Mr. Blues" swaggers in like a drunk returning home from a night at the bar and showcases Mr. Mosley on lead vocals. Peter Lewis then takes the lead for "Fall On You" which is a rocker. "8:05" is a resting spot with feathery layered harmonies and acoustic guitar. It caresses you gently before it's time to get down and sweaty with the soul-shake of "Come In The Morning," another Otis Redding meets The Grateful Dead moment. "Omaha" follows like a wrecking ball hitting you upside the head one direction then back the other! Truly one of the band's finest rockers, it's hard not to bounce off the walls to this one! "Naked If I Want To" closes side one of the album. It's a short, harmony laden, acoustic ditty that lasts under a minute and tells the tale of the poor, misunderstood, free-loving hippie that just wants the older generation to understand and nothing more.Side two starts out with "Someday." It's a laid back tune that will conjure up the image of early morning sunlight beaming in through an open window as you sit in a chair and take another hit off that lit joint in your hand. Don't get too relaxed though because you've got a barnyard dance to attend with the rollicking, countrified "Ain't No Use." The mood then shifts to not so much a gentle comedown as it does a completely depressing crash landing with Peter Lewis' plaintive cry of loneliness in "Sittin' By The Window." Then it's back on the runaway horse for "Changes" (one track on the album that I wish would've ran a bit longer, it really starts building steam on the fade). For "Lazy Me" it's apparent that soul can be found in just being plain stoned as the lyrics suggest ("I'll just lay here, and decay here"). "Indifference" caps off an incredible album with an incredible rocking arrangement that captures all the best elements of the band featured on all the previous tracks. I've always found the song's ending quite hilarious. It seems right as the song is coming to a climax where the band will suddenly fire on all cylinders, the drugs they took earlier kick in and the band forgets exactly where they were going! "Moby Grape" closes on that one last, confused, tethered guitar note.Phew! That was a lot to write. Now onto the bonus tracks. "Rounder," recorded during the sessions, was to be included on the album but vocals were never laid down. Needless to say, the song succeedes entirely on it's own as an instrumental. It's so good that it's hard to imagine it WITH vocals! Next up are two demos from their January '67 Columbia Records audition. "Looper" is another groovy harmony filled rocker while the early version of "Indifference" sounds tighter but no less heavy than the full blown assault featured on the actual album version. "Bitter Wind" which would be recorded again and featured on their second album in a complete overblown, overly ambitious arrangement, sounds much better here. The last track "Sweet Ride (Never Again)" was recorded in November of 1967 for the film of the same title. Featured here is the unedited version where the band proceeds to crack me up again like on "Indifference." Grape take off jamming and even though they begin to loose direction, they continue on until they cannot take it any further! It's great!"Moby Grape" is an enduring classic and deserves a place in every serious rock fans music collection. It rocks and it lives up to it's reputation as one of the best, if not THE best, album to come out of the San Francisco music scene in the late '60s. It's a shame the Grape never got their due and it's even more upsetting that their former manager Katz does his best to keep it that way. If you can find this great reissue at a reasonable price then grab it as fast as you can. Chances are you're gonna have to pay a pretty penny from here on out to buy one. I'm happy to be a fan of this awesome group....The Moby Grape...they were a GREAT BUNCH.

So much has been written about Moby Grape (we'd be talking REAMS if it were all on paper, but these days we're more likely talking mega-megabytes, I guess) that it's next to impossible to come up with anything close to an original insight on this legendary group. So allow me a personal reflection, if you would. I was a mere slip of 15 year old when this record was released and a budding music freak, scarfing up everything I could get my hands on that got even a remotely favorable review in CRAWDADDY or HIT PARADER (ROLLING STONE was just getting off the ground in '67, of course, and had yet to make an appearance in my hometown).Back in those days, HIT PARADER, under the editorial leadership of a guy named Jim Delahant, was actually a pretty cool magazine and a great source of info about all the San Francisco bands--and they raved about Moby Grape and about MOBY GRAPE (the album). Not only that, they printed the lyrics of all five simultaneously released singles in their song lyrics section--as though they actually were HITS (which, of course, they famously were not). So for this boy, the first album was a must-have, but really only one of many from that Summer of Love and the autumn that followed. (Others included, of course, THE DOORS, STRANGE DAYS, SURREALISTIC PILLOW, FREAK OUT, YOUNGER THAN YESTERDAY and, of course, the Meisterstueck SERGEANT PEPPER.)I loved the record from the get-go, but my fevered 15 year old brain (come to think of it, I was actually still 14 when I picked this one up) I felt it wasn't all that experimental or innovative. From everything I'd been reading about the music coming out of San Francisco, this seemed more like straight-ahead rock'n'roll than truly freaky stuff. Oh, sure, you got a little distortion at the opening of "Omaha" and some of the lyrics were fashionably obscure in that Dylanesque way that everybody and his brother and sister were emulating at the time. But where were the 15 minute jams? (We'd have to wait til the sophomore effort for those.) These songs were not just tight: they were punchy and SHORT. ' Course in hindsight, that's hardly a bad thing at all.Sometime around the mid-fall of that year, in fact, I realized that despite all the groovy experimentalism of the Beatles. the Doors and Zappa, say, THIS was the record I was playing most frequently. That was a bit of an eye-opener (or EAR opener). Maybe I wasn't quite the budding avant-gardista I imagined myself to be. All I knew was that this was GREAT stuff.We all know about the bad luck and troubles that ensued. It seemed that the group named for the punchline of a typically 60s absurd joke went through a ton of, uh, stuff that wasn't at all funny. Something wound up harpooning Moby Grape, and it was likely not JUST the bad management and marketing. The group's history seems to be one perfect storm of troubles and misfires.I started this review by suggesting that everything that there was to say about the this beleaguered group's history had already been said. But actually, one hypothesis that hasn't been explored sufficiently--as far as I know--would be the claim that the group's very unity, their tightness, professionalism and their emphasis on polished instrumentation may have actually worked against them. The three guitar sound, the strong shared vocals actually made it impossible to speak of a dominant figure or STAR within the band's ranks. We tend to forget how star-struck a generation we really were, but the big guns of the era really were the bands that featured a VERY prominent individual (or two or three, in the case of the Beatles). Moby Grape could not boast a Lennon, a Morrison, a Jagger, Joplin or a Slick. In some ways, they were even more "communal" than the Dead (whose central figure even then was Jerry Garcia, who could boast of maybe a kind of anti-charisma). Moby Grape could boast of top notch vocalists (really! give 'em a listen) and great guitar work, but the glam-quotient was lacking. Does't count that one of the band members was the son of a movie star. And even though two members would eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia (and what are the odds of THAT,even among hippie freaks), Moby Grape's MUSIC was not OUT THERE in the most outre sense of the term. Nowadays that scarcely seems like a weakness. This album has aged better than 90% of the product of that era. Musicianship matters.I guess my timing was off in one way. I seemed to have missed out on the re-mastered, expanded Sundazed version that briefly saw the light of day a few years ago, and while that seems to be available in downloadable form still, and for those for whom that's an option, I'd say, go for it. This version, on Mr. Katz's imprint, is also too pricey (and reportedly no revenues from its sale are actually going to the surviving band members). I can see why some die-hard fans recommend NOT buying this particular version of this historic album. There are authorized "best of" collections out there, the sales of which will benefit group members. Still this record exerts its own special appeal--and it goes beyond mere nostalgia. Moby Grape's first album was near perfect AS AN ALBUM, near perfect from start to finish.If the notion of lining their former manager's pockets is too disturbing, consider buying this one used. There's also justification for buying an authorized anthology such as LISTEN MY FRIENDS as well, since the cuts are reportedly remastered and include the original non-fade-out endings on several tracks. That's what I intend to do. Can't have too much vintage Grape, after all.

You will love every track. Fire up a big one, sit back and enjoy the trip!

I saw Moby Grape open for The YaRdBiRdS in summer '67 at the time of this album's release. They blew The YaRdBiRdS off-the-stage ……5 lead singers - 5 songwriters - Jerry Miller is rated #55 of Rolling Stone Mag's 500 Greatest Guitar Players -Skippy Spence, late of Jefferson Airplane (drums) was, at the time, the most exciting personality and performer of any/all SF bands. There is not a single "throw-away or filler" track to be found. I can think of only one SF band that is comparable as musicians, (however drastically different as they were) and that is The Sons of Champlin. Once about 50 years ago, Terry Haggerty of The Sons told me that his best friend was Jerry Miller of Moby Grape.Miller is a GREAT guitarist - Spence is SPECTACULAR - Bob Mosely (Mr. Blues) has one of the greatest "blue-eyed-soul-voices to ever sing into a microphone - Don Stevenson keep a rock solid rhythm w/o histrionics common to many drummers and sings wonderfully - And Peter Lewis' finger-style guitar licks make magic of "8:05" among others, and writes heartbreaking and blistering songs too. I have never met anyone who didn't like, and most of whom LOVED Moby Grape as I do. Don't show any "Indifference" and RUN, DON'T WALK to get your copy of a timeless representative of this Summer of Love classic, then walk down the street, naked if you want to.

VERY GOOD

My review is for the product rather than the music. The product information is inaccurate, so I am uploading pictures of the item I actually received.I believe all previous reviews are for records produced by alternative manufacturers, and the positions of Sundazed and Sony BMG have been pointed out by one of those reviewers. I would strongly advise research into the manufacturer of this more recent item prior to deciding upon purchase, as that is something I should have done.There is no poster with the Endless Happiness release but the cover is of good quality and it has the uncensored front picture. I would replace the paper inner sleeve as I had to dust off paper particles from the record prior to play, and I believe this type of sleeve could also cause damage to the vinyl surface with repeated use.The centre hole on my copy is a little tight but, using good quality headphones, the record plays without surface noise and the sound quality is good.As far as the music is concerned, it's five stars of course.