Moby Grape - Live 1967

Moby Grape was a great American rock band in the 1960s, but they also seemed to be cursed. They were exceptionally talented, with all five band members able to sing lead vocals and write songs. They managed one great album, their 1967 debut album "Moby Grape." Rolling Stone Magazine has put it high in their top 500 albums of all time list, and it's made other such lists. 

One music critic is quoted about the album in the Moby Grape Wikipedia page: "'Moby Grape' is as refreshing today as it was upon first release, and if fate prevented the group from making a follow-up that was as consistently strong, for one brief shining moment Moby Grape proved to the world they were one of America's great bands. While history remembers the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane as being more important, the truth is neither group ever made an album quite this good."

But, as I mentioned, the band seemed to be cursed. Their manager (Matthew Katz) was about as terrible as a manager could be. They fired him in 1967, but he'd got them in legal troubles that would bedevil them for decades before they finally beat him in court. One band member, Skip Spence, lost his mind in 1968 and had to be institutionalized. Another, Bob Mosley, strangely joined the Marines in 1969. Bad things kept happening that stopped the group from reaching their full potential. But for a brief time in early and mid-1967, everything was working and they were great.

This album attempts to collect the best live recordings from that special time. Note that I had prepared this album long ago, and it was sitting in my pile of hundreds of albums to be posted at this blog someday. But last month (April 2023), Prof. Stoned posted an album that is very similar to what I intended to post. You can find it here:

http://www.profstoned.com/2023/04/moby-grape-grape-live-unreleased-1968.html

Prof. Stoned is doing great things at his blog, remixing music to improve the sound quality. So I've used his versions for much of this, so this can have the best sound quality as well. 

It starts out with Moby Grape's live performance at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. Most musical acts at the festival played short sets, and that was the case for this band too. Four of the songs they played have been officially released on the box set for the whole festival. But a fifth, "Hey Grandma," was filmed and only appeared on a DVD. Prof. Stoned converted that and made it sound good. But it turns out they also played a sixth song, "Fall on You." Unfortunately, no version of this is publicly available. I also couldn't find any other decent live version from 1967. So I used a version from a 1968 concert bootleg to give an idea of what the entire Monterey Pop set sounded like.

The next three songs, tracks 8 through 10, are unreleased. But they come from a soundboard bootleg of a concert at an unknown date in January 1967. It's a shame this source only has three songs, but it's better than nothing. 

The remainder of the album comes from another January 1967 concert. These have been officially released, on an album called "Live (Historic Live Moby Grape Performances 1966-1969)." Prof. Stoned also included them on his album. So, like the Monterey Pop versions, I've used his versions here.

It's a shame that there's so little high quality live recordings of Moby Grape from 1967 compared to other similar bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. But if you put them all together as I did here, it shows an exciting and talented band, with three lead guitarists and five vocalists singing harmonies. Perhaps it was inevitable that a band with five singer-songwriters couldn't hold together for very long. But at least they had their "brief shining moment," and we have some recordings of it. 

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 talk by Tommy Smothers (Moby Grape)
02 Hey Grandma (Moby Grape)
03 Indifference (Moby Grape)
04 Mr. Blues (Moby Grape)
05 Sitting by the Window (Moby Grape)
06 Omaha (Moby Grape)
07 Fall on You (Moby Grape)
08 It Depends on You (Moby Grape)
09 Changes (Moby Grape)
10 Leavin' (Moby Grape)
11 Ain't No Use (Moby Grape)
12 Rounder (Moby Grape)
13 Looper (Moby Grape)
14 Bitter Wind (Moby Grape)
15 Changes (Moby Grape)
16 Indifference (Moby Grape)
17 Someday (Moby Grape)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15205577/MobyGr_1967_Lve1967_atse.zip.html

The cover is a screenshot I made from the DVD performance of "Hey Grandma" at the Monterey Pop Festival. I took the band name at the top from a concert poster. I added the text at the bottom in a similar style.