Product Description
-------------------
Scuttled by internal scuffles and bad management, Moby
Grape only lasted a few years. They were one of the most revered
bands in the Bay Area, though, and this is some find for fans: 19
unissued live cuts from their 1966-69 heyday. Witness their
triple-guitar attack, soaring harmonies and masterful mix of
country, folk, blues and garage rock as you hear 'em at the
Avalon, Monterey Pop Festival and on Dutch radio, doing Rounder;
Ain't No Use; Looper; Bitter Wind; Changes; Someday;
Indifference; Omaha; Mr. Blues , and more on CD or two 180-gram
vinyl LPs!
Review
------
Ask anyone: Moby Grape blew every other San Francisco
band clean out of the Bay. Moby Grape Live double-underlines the
fact that their all-singing, all-dancing schtick was every bit as
intimidating and irresistible on stage as it was in the studio.
The performances herein - ranging from an unreleased 17- minute
take of the lost and shivering Dark Magic in the Avalon Ballroom
in 1966 to a set recorded for Dutch radio in 1969 - burn with the
righteous fire you'd expect from a band who knew they were the
best and couldn't wait to tell you about it. Quite apart from the
cely believable audio quality of these s, it's the
sense of mutual respect which most impresses. The guitars of Skip
Spence, Peter Lewis and Jerry Miller are subtle, spacious and
unobtrusive on lambent readings of Someday and Sitting By The
Window (from Monterey, 1967), while the euphoric group hollers on
Omaha and Changes sound like the devotional affirmations of
lifelong blood brothers. We all know and revere Spence's
contributions to the legend: now let's hear it for bassist Bob
Moseley. If Skippy was Moby Grape's antic spirit then Moseley was
the band's soul, as his lionheart bellow on Bitter Wind and
Trucking Man gloriously attests. -- Record Collector, June 2010
Forgive David Fricke if he succumbs to hyperbole in his liner
notes to Moby Grape Live. This collection of concert s
captures the band's skill and effervescence to such a degree,
they do sound like that spirit of those times when everything
seemed possible.
Indeed, upon the release of their eponymous debut album in 1967,
fame, fortune and historical prestige seemed inevitable for Mody
Grape. Alas, it wasn't to be, due to various forms of
mismanagement plus personnel problems, but during these 1966 and
1967 s from various venues including the Monterey Pop
Festival this San Francisco quintet play like they couldn't miss.
Despite Bob Irwin's mastering expertise, the sound is such it's
difficult at times to discern just how detailed the guitar work
of Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis and Skip Spence is, as they
interweave strains of rock country and blues, but their own
excitement in the moment compensates. As it does for the slightly
ragged vocal harmonies on "Changes" and "Looper" from the Avalon
Ballroom: that interplay also reaffirms the versatility of a band
that, as composers of stellar originals such as those and "Bitter
Wind," should've scaled a pinnacle of popularity in the Summer of
Love (and perhaps beyond).
Enclosed in beautiful packaging with embossed cover lettering and
stylish photos alongside Fricke's essay inside the multi-fold
digipak, this seventy-plus minute CD concludes with an extended,
largely instrumental piece titled "Dark Magic:" in its
progression of Indian drones, blues paraphrasing and rock rhythms
that ebb and flow in an ever widening circular pattern, it is a
tour-de-force that suggests that Moby Grape had even greater
things to offer than even that which is so fully on display
elsewhere on this album.
-Doug Collette -- Glide Magazine, May 13, 2010
How nice it is to finally have live, prime Grape with decent
(though not brilliant) fidelity after suffering through nasty
bootlegs that have circulated. It's not up to the standard of
their best country-folk-psychedelic-folk-rock-blues studio
s, whose ultra-tight guitars and harmonies make this
seem a tad ragged. But there are fresh and energetic versions of
most of the songs on their first and best album, highlights from
their subsequent LPs and a few surprises. The live versions of
the early 1967 outtakes Rounder and Looper are the best of those,
and the cover of B.B. King's Sweet Little Angel the most
unexpected. Less thrilling is the 17-minute Skip Pence-penned
psych dark jam Dark Magic, but the inclusion of their complete
Monterey Pop set more than compensates, even if Spence is missing
from the 1969 cuts. -Richie Unterberger -- Mojo, April 2010
Something tells me, if I had been at San Francisco's Avalon
Ballroom in June of `67 to witness Moby Grape at the height of
their powers, scorching through their set of two-minute pop
blasts, blaring triple-guitar action and five-part harmonies
soaring, I might not have survived the night. None was the match
of the mighty Grape in those days; the band was "flying
musically" and easily the toughest act around. Moby Grape Live is
the first official release to afford a glimpse into the raucous
and entrancing stage performances of one of the most exciting,
original, and underappreciated bands of the '60s.
Separated into four sides, this double LP takes us to
performances from the same weeks their infamously overhyped
masterpiece Moby Grape was released, to their few high-octane
minutes at the legendary Monterey International Pop Festival,
jumping forward to a 1969 performance in Amsterdam featuring cuts
from Wow and `69, and ending back at the start: a full side of
"Dark Magic," recorded New Years Eve, 1966. This one's worth the
purchase for Side 1 alone. The rabid energy of the band, issuing
rapid-fire gems like "Rounder" and "Looper," hits a high point in
"Changes" into "Indifference" featuring Jerry Miller's careening
lead guitar. Skip Spence turns in a beautifully honest vocal to
cap the blistering set with "Someday." The highlight for me,
however, are the post-Skip tracks from 1969 on Side 3. "Murder in
my Heart for the Judge" shows the band at their loosest, the
slack and soul of the rootsier Grape a refreshing contrast. "I am
Not Willing," one of their best songs, gets a grooving drawn out
and it's interesting to hear a matured group attack
earlier hits "Fall on You" and "Omaha." The closing 17-minute
raga, "Dark Magic," is more than a piece of rock music history,
an actually listenable and fascinating performance, it features
inspiring guitar leads, primitive electronic squeals, Skip's far
out vocal, and the driving force of sound that made Moby Grape
one of the hottest band of the era.
Sundazed has curated an important document here. Hardcore Grape
addicts should note much of this material has been featured on
bootlegs over the years (notably the tracks from Monterey Pop and
"Dark Magic") but none of this has ever been officially released,
and never with such pristine sound quality. David Fricke's notes
are the icing on the cake. After the essential debut record, this
is the Moby Grape record I would recommend next. -Brendan -- The
Rising Storm, April 9, 2010
This stellar '60s San Francisco band's heartbreaking demise is so
well-documented, the luckless tale often seems more celebrated
than their mindbending music. Maybe that's because the group,
during the hallucinatory apex of the Haight-Ashbury, wasn't
actually a part of the community. Their individual talents were
formed in other places, so it almost seemed like a whole band of
designated hitters, maybe even carpetbaggers to boot, was at the
center. But so what? Everybody has to be from somewhere, right?
Moby Grape also committed the grevious error of releasing a
perfect album in the Summer of Love, and that wasn't allowed
either. Too commercial. The Grape's future soured and got
squished almost immediately, but not before sunshine-saturated
songs like "8:05," "Someday," "Omaha," "Changes" and
"Indifference" showed the locals how to record timeless tracks.
To this day, very few rock releases match that 1967 debut. Now,
finally, a strong legitimate live collection surfaces, and it is
shattering. Collected from Avalon Ballroom shows, their entire
4-song set at the Monterey International Pop Festival and a
Netherlands radio broadcast, Live is exactly what it says: a
turbulent but always beautiful journey through a seminal group's
brief life. It is mostly joyous in its rocking glimpse at the
birth and death of a band. The last song, the legendary but never
officially released "Dark Magic," proves once and for all Moby
Grape could ride the crest of -infused creativity with the
best of them. At over 17 minutes, Skip Spence, Jerry Miller,
Peter Lewis, Don Stevenson and Bob Mosley fly to the stars and
back. That it was on December 31,1966--when this part of the
Earth must have felt brand new and all possibilities
endless--only adds to the vibrant poignancy of the sound. The
Human Be-In was still two weeks away and all the good and
not-so-good qualities of the exploding counterculture were soon
to spread across the country. On this night and this song,
though, there was probably no higher place to see the view of
what was to come. And, most likely, Moby Grape knew it. Bless
their pointed little hearts. -- Sonic Boomers, April 20, 2010
