Moby Grape

A Very Cruel Fate

The cruel fate
of Moby Grape
beclouds the best
band out of
the sixties

I am no musicologist, nor am I a sixties’ bands historian, but I know what music I like now and I knew what music I liked back then and when it comes to Moby Grape, these two likes very much coincide. I still, fifty plus years on, listen to them, often, enraptured, amazed.

To me, Moby Grape (and many scholars and band historians agree) was the best band to come out of San Francisco in the sixties, if not the best band out of that decade, period — save The Beatles.

The band had a unique configuration with bass and drums and three guitars: Bob Miller, who was, and still is, an excellent blues guitarist; Skip Spence, who was more of a renaissance man (which his stint as Jefferson Airplane’s original drummer bears witness to) — not an overly skilled but yet very innovative guitarist; and Peter Lewis, the finger picking folk guy with the great, deep, vibrating voice.

Bob Mosley was the bass player and Don Stevenson rounded out the band on drums.

Another thing that set them apart from the crowd was that all five members were lead vocalists, and good at it — making for, yes, amazing harmonies.