Moby Grape
Listen – Moby Grape – Someday – MP3
Greetings all.
The tune I bring you today is one of my favorites by one of the great underrated bands of the 60s.
I first encountered the music of Moby Grape, not in its original form, but rather via a record by the Golden Palominos.
The GPs were a loose conglomeration of multi-generational alterna types that I came to via the involvement of Michael Stipe of REM. The group’s 1985 LP ‘Visions of Excess’ included contributions from Stipe, Richard Thompson, Syd Straw (what ever happened to her??), Jack Bruce, John Lydon, Bill Laswell and Jody Harris of the Raybeats. What the album also included, was a song called ‘Omaha’, which got a fair amount of college radio play.
It wasn’t until a few months after picking up ‘Visions…’ that a chance visit to the loft of a garage punk guitarist in Manhattan – where an old 45 was pulled from a box and played – that I realized that ‘Omaha’ was a cover of a Moby Grape song. This revelation was a real eye opener because in addition to the fact that I knew the name (but not the music) of Moby Grape, the original version of ‘Omaha’ was nothing less that brilliant.
In the years since, especially after the release of the 2-CD Grape retrospective in 1993, I’ve grown to love and respect the band.
The history of Moby Grape is a tortured one, filled to bursting with business rip-off, mental health problems and an excess of bad timing. Fortunately it’s also filled with a couple of albums of outstanding music, some of the finest to come out of San Francisco in the late 60s.
The tune I bring you today was the flipside of ‘Omaha’, the group’s only chart “hit” (#88) in 1967. ‘Someday’ is every bit as restrained and subtle as ‘Omaha’ is boisterous and dynamic.
I’ve always considered Moby Grape to be a kind of Northern California version of Buffalo Springfield. Both bands had multiple lead singers and guitarists, as well as the ability to fuse rock, country, psychedelia and jazz into something new and different.
‘Someday’s gentle sound stands in direct contrast to its surprisingly bitter lyrics of a love gone bad, until the bridge, in which the anger in the words is reflected briefly in the music, followed – oddly enough – by a jazzy little coda.
If you’re not familiar with Moby Grape, do yourself a favor and track down that 2 disc comp (if you can find it) ‘Vintage: The Very best of Moby Grape’. It’s an excellent – well annotated – compilation. If you can’t track it down, there’s a later single-disc comp, as well as CD reissues of the individual LPs.
I hope you dig the tune and I’ll see you all on Monday.
Peace
Larry
PS Head over to Funky16Corners for a tribute to Norman Whitfield.
PSS Check out Paperback Rider (just updated) too…
3 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Just recently became aware of the overlooked Moby Grape, myself… like you, I’ve heard and read the name for decades, but never had the opportunity to actually listen to them.
“The history of Moby Grape is a tortured one, filled to bursting with business rip-off, mental health problems and an excess of bad timing”
You can say that again! I do love me some Skip Spence
Larry,
You sure come up with some old favorites. Jerry Miller of the Grape used to play a Martin electric, GT-70. I was so into them I had to get one of those guitars. They came in either black or a kind of burgundy color. I got the black, but was also into the Springfield. So I got this guitar guy (forget his name but he later became a big-shot at Guitar Magazine) who worked at Westwood Music ( owned by Wallechi, who was quite a fan of guitars himself & offered David Russell Young’s – they were based on Martin acoustics, but out-toned & out-rang ‘em), and he painted mine white & changed all the hardware to silver, installed two Humbuckers, and inlaid ‘CF Martin & Co on the head, so it would look like Stills’ & Young’s guitars. Also, Springfield’s drummer, Dewey Martin used to crash at my house regularly. I also roomed with Michael Clark (Byrds drummer) & my ex-brother-in-law is Ricky Fataar, drummer for Bonnie Raitt & occasionally works with Boz Skaggs. He used to be the Beach Boys’ drummer & comes from a band called The Flame. He also did the ‘So What’ tour with Joe Walsh and was a member of the Rutles, playing the George Harrison part. Ricky can play almost every instrument handed to him. I’ve seen him handle all guitar parts, keyboards, violin, flute and sitar. They were out of Durbin, South Africa & discovered by Carl Wilson in London. They were the first band on the Beach Boys label, Brother Records, other than the Beach Boys. It was also engineered by Steve Desper(sp), and was the first album to be Quadraphonic, also a ‘baby’ of Desper. His partner was Blondie Chaplin, who now does backround vocals on Stones tours. I think you’d like the record, it’s filled with all original material & I’d like to find it myself. In closing I’d like to find out what happened to all the Knight Riders stuff? Paul