(Psychedelic Rock) Moby Grape - Дискография (1967 - 1984) [7 Albums, 3 Live, 1 Compilation], 16CD, FLAC (tracks+.cue/image+.cue), lossless

Moby Grape is an American rock group from the 1960s, known for having all five members contribute to singing and songwriting and that collectively merged elements of folk music, blues, country, and jazz together with rock and psychedelic music. Due to the strength of their debut album, several critics consider Moby Grape to be the best rock band to emerge from the San Francisco music scene in the late sixties. The group continues to perform occasionally.

The group was formed in late 1966 in San Francisco, at the initiation of Skip Spence and Matthew Katz. Both were previously associated with Jefferson Airplane?Spence as the band's first drummer, playing on their first album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, and Katz as the band's manager. Both had been dismissed by the group. Katz encouraged Spence to form a band similar to Jefferson Airplane, with varied songwriting and vocal work by several group members, and with Katz as the manager.

The band name, judicially determined to have been chosen by Bob Mosley and Skip Spence, came from the punch line of the joke "What's big and purple and lives in the ocean?". Lead guitarist Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson (both formerly of The Frantics, originally based in Seattle) joined guitarist (and son of actress Loretta Young) Peter Lewis (of The Cornells), bassist Bob Mosley (of The Misfits, based in San Diego) and Spence, now on guitar instead of drums. Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson had moved The Frantics from Seattle to San Francisco after a 1965 meeting with Jerry Garcia, then playing with The Warlocks at a bar in Belmont, California. Garcia encouraged them to move to San Francisco. Once The Frantics were settled in San Francisco, Bob Mosley joined the band.

All band members wrote songs and sang lead and backup vocals for their debut album Moby Grape (1967). Mosley, Lewis and Spence generally wrote alone, while Miller and Stevenson generally wrote together. In 2003, Moby Grape was ranked as number 121 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Noted rock critic Robert Christgau listed it as one of The 40 Essential Albums of 1967. In 2008, Skip Spence's song "Omaha", from the first Moby Grape album, was listed as number 95 in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time".

In a marketing stunt, Columbia Records immediately released five singles at once, and the band was perceived as being over-hyped. This was during a period in which mainstream record labels were giving unheard of levels of promotion to what was then considered counter-cultural music genres. Nonetheless, the record was critically acclaimed, and fairly successful commercially, with The Move covering the album's "Hey Grandma" (a Miller-Stevenson composition) on their eponymous first album. In mid-June 1967, Moby Grape appeared at the now legendary Monterey Pop Festival. Due to legal and managerial disputes, the group was not included in the D.A. Pennebaker produced film of the event, Monterey Pop. Moby Grape's Monterey recordings and film remain unreleased, allegedly because Matthew Katz demanded one million dollars for the rights.

The second album, Wow/Grape Jam, released in 1968, was generally viewed as a critical and commercial disappointment, even though the album charted at #20 in the Billboard Pop Albums charts, partially due to the unusual 2 albums for the price of 1 double-album packaging. Though Wow added strings and horns to some songs, their basic sound remained consistent from the debut album, featuring tight harmonies, multiple guitars, imaginative songwriting, and a strong level of musicianship. The album included the track "Just Like Gene Autry, a Foxtrot", a tribute to the ballroom music big band era which was tracked to only be played back properly at the speed of 78 RPM. This gimmick rendered the tune unlistenable on most conventional LP players.

The Grape Jam LP was one of loose improvised studio jams with outside musicians; this detracted from the stronger tunes on Wow, such as the room-shaking shuffle "Can't Be So Bad." Also in 1968, the band contributed to the soundtrack of the movie The Sweet Ride, and appeared, credited, in the film.

Spence was supposedly never the same after ingesting large quantities of LSD. After spending time in the infamous Tombs jail in New York, Spence was committed to New York's Bellevue Hospital, where he spent six months under psychiatric care. After that in Nashville, Skip recorded his only solo album,Oar, playing all of the instruments and producing the album himself.

After the forced departure of Spence, the remaining four members continued recording throughout 1968 and released Moby Grape '69 in January 1969. Spence's "Seeing" (also known as "Skip's Song") was finished by the foursome, and it's one of the highlights. Despite the collaborative effort to complete the song, the songwriting credit was left solely with Spence. Mosley and Lewis wrote some of their best songs for this album. Bob Mosley then left the group, shocking the remaining members by joining the Marines. The remaining three released their final album for Columbia, Truly Fine Citizen, in late 1969.

Miller and Stevenson then formed The Rhythm Dukes, later joined by Bill Champlin. The band achieved a degree of success as a second-billed act during much of the latter part of 1969 to 1971, plus recorded one album, which was ultimately released in 2005.

The original five members re-united in 1971 and released 20 Granite Creek for Reprise Records, prior to Spence again departing and the group again breaking up.

With Spence gone again, the remainder soldiered on for a few years, and later reunited on several occasions, with and without Spence. Notwithstanding continuing to perform on occasion, the group has never returned to the level of popularity enjoyed in the early Avalon Ballroom/Fillmore Auditorium days.

Bob Mosley and Jerry Miller, together with Michael Been on rhythm guitar (later of The Call) and John Craviotto on drums, recorded an LP that was released in 1976 as Fine Wine on Polydor Records in Germany. Thereafter, Mosley and Craviotto joined with Neil Young to form The Ducks, which played in and around the Santa Cruz area during 1977, and were immensely popular during the band's brief life.

Fine Wine was one of several band names used by Moby Grape members during the course of a protracted legal dispute with former manager Matthew Katz over ownership of the Moby Grape name. Other names used for performance or recording purposes included Mosley Grape, Legendary Grape and The Melvilles. The Legendary Grape album, originally released in 1989, is considered by some to be a Melvilles recording. This is because, while it was originally issued as a Moby Grape cassette-only release, former manager Matthew Katz took legal action, with reference to his alleged ownership of the Moby Grape name. The tape was withdrawn, repackaged and reissued as being by The Melvilles. Despite Jerry Miller, Bob Mosley and Peter Lewis continuing to release solo records in the 1990s and 2000s, Moby Grape has not released an album of new material since the release of Legendary Grape in 1989. Jerry Miller considers the 2003 remastered and supplemented CD version of Legendary Grape to be an essential Moby Grape album.