Moby Grape: Classic or Dud?

Agreed. Moby Grape is not in any way, shape, or form a psychedelic-rock band.

Several of the songs on the 1st album have end sections that don't appear anywhere else in the song (Mr. Blues, Someday, Indifference), or at least oddball codas (Ain't No Use, Lazy Me).

"The Place And The Time" is their craziest songwriting though IMO, to say nothing of production. Nothing even close to a chorus in there.

I'm gonna have to revisit that one; I know the first record like the back of my hand, but the rest of them I'm not as familiar with.

My only gripe with the first record is the production. In fact, aside from CCR and Sly, I can't think of a single Bay Area band that was decently recorded at that time. The snare on the first Grape record sounds like close-miked wax paper.

Moby Grape is not in any way, shape, or form a psychedelic-rock band
you should listen to Dark Magic, because it's sure as shit psychedelic.

OK I've never heard anything but the studio albums. You're referring to the recently released live set?

He is.

My only gripe with the first record is the production. In fact, aside from CCR and Sly, I can't think of a single Bay Area band that was decently recorded at that time. The snare on the first Grape record sounds like close-miked wax paper.

OTM

First Quicksilver album is nice sounding.

surrealistic pillow sounds good imo.

The post-SP Airplane albums sound even better.

First Big Brother, too. Mainstream label stuff had a nice, clean sound.

It was clean, but tame. I get the sense listening to those records that the engineers had no clue how to record/mike a loud drum kit (if those drummers even played loud), and told the drummers to lighten things up a bit.

That's interesting. I do tend to like '60s rock drummers that had a lighter touch, like Ron Edgar in the Music Machine or the guy in the Peanut Butter Conspiracy.

We need a Peanut Butter Conspiracy thread! Listening to "It's a Happening Thing" or "Turn on a Friend" for the first time made me feel like I'd just discovered the unbeknownst missing link between the Spanky & Our Gang and Jefferson Airplane...

the

Spencer Dryden was in an early version of the PBC!

8:05

If you're not in my timezone:
8:05

― Eloi Wallach (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, March 16, 2011 8:05 PM (1 minute ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adF3Lc-g5Ac

I've had Wow on my computer for a few years, finally got around to burning it. (Just downloaded Wow, not the jam album.) I'm not surprised it's not as good as the first, didn't expect it to be, but based on a single listen in the car, it's just not very good at all. Parts of it sounded like David Clayton-Thomas had taken over vocals. I did like this, though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t78c5vwjIC4

Yeah, that song is great, there are other good things on "Wow" but they pretty much blew it. The demo(?) versions of "The Place and the Time" and "Bitter Wind" on "Vintage" are both brilliant ... though I like the weirdness of the album version of the latter. This is a weird thread, which is somehow appropriate.

I still like "wow" more than the debut, maybe because it's stranger.

Of course, it may also be because of the extras on the CD version, but hey.

Don Stevenson is now a subway busker in Toronto and seemingly very content about his life..
http://youtu.be/jIvSxA56HP0

<3

Amazing.

I want to be Don Stevenson when I'm 74.

"Because it drives like a motherfucker, and that's where it's at."

https://img.discogs.com/nZjwifemKO1pkyFmtRJqfvLrn3g=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-12919826-1544538686-5094.jpeg.jpg

from last year

When xgau got around to reviewingLive(Sundazed, 2010) last summer, he made a point of mentioning "And everywhere there's Stevenson, reminding everyone to keep it loud and keep it moving." Sounds like qualifications for a subway busker.
Xgau hasn't written about 'em all, not yet, but good takes on these (even cherrypicks Truly Fine Citizen) http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=Moby+Grape

Some more bits here, written later: https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/rs/mobygrape-07.php
Intrigued by comment on Moby Grape '69:
...rather than hinting at country rock, it is the very beast, songwriting honorable and presentation flat. So---good source of covers, maybe enough for a whole tribute/improvement album??

sometimes i prefer 69 over s/t

if you or the flaming lips or sean lennon or w/e can improve on “i am not willing” i’d really fucking like to hear it

Not me! Or maybe the ones you mention either. Xgau's not big on country rock, unless you count some of the more rural tracks on Working Man's Dead late-60s Dylan albums, and Gram Parsons (who loathed the term). Plenty of promising young and not-so-young performers nowadays who could use a good song (not their own).

what i meant was that the MG “i am not willing” is imo a near-perfect song that would not benefit much from a reinterpretation

I had no idea Peter Lewis's mother was actually Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Loretta Young. (She was in Orson Welles's The Stranger, one of Frank Borzage's greatest films Man's Castle and won her Oscar for Best Actress in The Farmer's Daughter.) Regardless, guy's had quite a troubled life and it's pretty amazing how he overcame those struggles then went out of his way to take care of his bandmates as well.

Had no idea about that either. Wanted to tell you about a new essay about “Omaha” I heard about that I am looking forward to.

Fairly amazing 3-part interview w Peter Lewis begins here: https://www.craigmorrison.com/spip.php?article65

guy's had quite a troubled life and it's pretty amazing how he overcame those struggles then went out of his way to take care of his bandmates as well.

GREAT read. Thanks for sharing dow.

He should write a book--but considering the interviews, maybe he pretty much has? Was orig looking for the Sundazed one I saw many years ago, but so far haven't reeled it back in--so who knows what else may have gotten lost.
I thought I knew a fair amount about their saga, but omg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Grape

I got word that the sundazed reissues of the first two (three?) Albums were being withdrawn, so managed to get the first and "Wow", like, immediately.

Of course, now it's the remaining ones that are the hardest to find.

Damn! At least you got that one.
Was thinking there was a Lewis interview among these, anyway quite a trove otherwise:
http://www.richieunterberger.com/sitemap.html

Yeah, it's pretty sad and crazy. This article is a great read if you want a good summary of their litigation with Matthew Katz:

https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-story-of-moby-grape-chaos-and-courtrooms-acid-and-white-witches

Here's a brief excerpt:

Some time in 2000, Lewis came face to face with Katz in court: “Katz was there, hugging me and saying that we shouldn’t have lawyers to decide everything.

I told him: ‘I don’t want to hug you, Matthew. But I’ll say this: I buried your protégé last year. I felt his hand go cold in mine. This guy died like a mouse without his cheese while you were spending his publishing money on whatever you spend your shitty money on. I want to say this on his behalf: if this whole thing was about your redemption, so that you could see that what you did to us wasn’t a cool thing, then I think he would have told you it was worthwhile. Because that’s the kind of guy Skippy was. But Matthew, go and sin no more.’ So he leaves the court, weeping. Then the next day he calls the court and tries to vacate the settlement because he didn’t think he got what he wanted!”

It feels like a case where Katz has to die before the band can finally get their catalog back in-print. I'm amazed that hasn't happened yet but Katz is hanging on well into his 90's.

It would never happen today, but I remember Skip Spence's death earning a (very brief) mention on my local morning news show.

Put some tussin on it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rVYZ4hYnt0

It feels like a case where Katz has to die before the band can finally get their catalog back in-print. I'm amazed that hasn't happened yet but Katz is hanging on well into his 90's.

Hopefully his death will enable that to happen, but Allen Klein’s been dead 13 years and the Stones still don’t have control over their ‘60s catalog.

oday Peter Lewis of the legendary Moby Grape shares “Path of Least Resistance,” the first song from his upcoming album Imagination, out June 16th.

Peter Lewis played a crucial part in the creation of that rare beast, the perfect rock & roll album: Moby Grape, a legendary union of guitars, voices and brotherhood made in a now-distant American age, the psychedelic San Francisco of 1967. While the band stands alongside Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead in the eyes of knowledgeable fans and critics, the band never reached the same level of name-recognition due to an early dissolution and corrosive management. “Path of Least Resistance” is inspired by these management troubles that began in the 60’s and still hamper the band’s ownership over their success to this day.

Listen to “Path of Least Resistance”

Spotify

Apple

YouTube

magination will be released through OMAD Records, the boutique label of the album's producer John DeNicola.

“We are all beings who want to live forever but know we won’t. Although this is a predicament everyone must learn to accept, the different ways in which we spend our time trying to cope with our mortality don’t always lead to a common sympathy between us, but to conflict and profound suffering. Yet in the end all we really have in the whole wide universe is each other and that is what this CD is trying to point out” – Peter Lewis

That comes through crystal clear on Imagination, a new collection of singular songcraft that could only spring from the creative consciousness of Peter Lewis. founding member of the legendary San Francisco rock group Moby Grape. Consider the driving, chiming “Path of Least Resistance,” as radio ready as a rocker can be despite its fierce philosophizing, and “If I Just Had You,” which spins incandescent longing into perfect doo/wop. Delicate guitars and lilting, uplifting harmonies are the warm embrace of “When You Come Back to Me” while pensive piano carries the earnestly heartening “Without You.” Impossible to peg, Lewis also lets loose with a country waltz (“The Garden Song”), a flamenco-influenced tragedy (“La Mujer”) and a jazzy, trippy nightmare (“Frank Zappa’s Ghost”).

With his voice in fine fettle, Lewis serves each song—bright and delicate here, gravelly and aching there, even roaring when required—through lyrical themes that ponder mortality versus eternity, illusion versus reality. The 10-track long player is his second release on OMAD Records, a follow-up to 2019’s The Road to Zion, and it marks a deeper collaboration with John DeNicola, main man of the bespoke label. “The songs on Imagination, like those on The Road to Zion, attempt to reveal a certain perspective about life,” Lewis says. “But on The Road to Zion, this perspective was highly personal, whereas working with John on Imagination, we sought a perspective we might share with everyone.”

Soon it will be time for listeners to enter Peter Lewis’s Imagination. What insights you glean from the words, what spirit you hear in the sound, what it makes you think and feel—about dreams, doubt and deception, life, love and the everlasting—will be yours alone. All Lewis will suggest, in terms of a shared experience, is a favorite line from Lost Horizon: “‘There are moments in every man’s life when he glimpses the eternal.’ I have been searching for this glimpse all my life and my sincere wish is that anyone out there searching for it too might find hope for their journey in this record.”

Imagination

1. Just Like Sunshine

2. Without You

3. Frank Zappa’s Ghost

4. When You Come Back To Me

5. If I Just Had You

6. Imagination

7. Path Of Least Resistance

8. La Mujer

9. The Garden Song

10. Saying Goodbye

###

PRESS CONTACT:

Big Hassle Media

jim at bighassle dot com

Did I get the memo about this 2019 release? (Probably, and forgot about it)(just checked, not seeing any email about it):

his second release on OMAD Records, a follow-up to 2019’s The Road to Zion, and it marks a deeper collaboration with John DeNicola, main man of the bespoke label. “The songs on Imagination, like those on The Road to Zion, attempt to reveal a certain perspective about life,” Lewis says. “But on The Road to Zion, this perspective was highly personal, whereas working with John on Imagination, we sought a perspective we might share with everyone.”

Been listening to Moby Grape quite a bit recently and Peter Lewis was the most consistent songwriter in the band, he has good songs on every album (and never wrote anything as bad as "Funky-Tunk" for instance).

'69 is OK. it reminds me of post-Forever Changes Love in a "Let's forget all that psychedelic nonsense and get back to playing some rock and roll" way but then the best track on it is a psychedelic era Skip Spence song.

"Truly Fine Citizen" is the very definition of a contractual obligation album. Peter Lewis - who didn't even want to do the album - tries his best but the Miller/ Stevenson writing team is pretty much bereft of inspiration. It was recorded in three days and sounds like it, honestly stand-in bass player Bob Moore (R. Stevie's dad!) sounds like he's just hearing the songs for the first time. I think the boring covers of the post-Skip albums don't really help either.

I love "Changes, Circles Spinning" off Truly Fine Citizen, but I agree the rest is pretty forgettable.

I still want to hear 20 Granite Creek and the 2010 Live on Sundazed, having read some very appealing takes from gen. reliable sources. Also that Ducks alb where Bob Mosley turns up (along with Neil Young etc.)