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.

Their debut album, the eponymous “Moby Grape” made its way to Sweden in the summer of 1967 and I bought it the moment it arrived in my record store (on the recommendation of I no longer remember who).

Once I had listened through it, it was the album (LPs we called them back then, Long Playing records, vinyl of course, and analog of course) I played the most (along with Sgt. Pepper, which, as an aside, was released on the same day as “Moby Grape”) out of my, at that time rather small collection of 30 albums or so, could not afford more.

As another aside: an album at that time cost 25 kronor, about five bucks in 1967 money. Consider that my rent was thirteen bucks: this should put things in perspective: Albums, in other words, on my budget, were very expensive.

That said, my little collection included The Beatles (naturally), Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Country Joe and the Fish, The Doors…