Moby Grape-Moby Grape

Moby Grape

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.