Live Grape

Performer: Moby Grape
Engineer: John Timms
Producer: John Chesleigh
Distributor: City Hall

Notes: Personnel: Skip Spence (vocals, guitar, drums); Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis (vocals, guitar); Cornelius Bumpus (saxophone, tenor saxophone, keyboards); Daniel Spencer, Fuzzy John Oxendine, John Oxendine (drums). Recording information: Sonoma Recording Studios, Cotati, CA; The Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA; The Shady Grove, San Francisco, CA. This live set captures a semi-reformed Moby Grape in the late '70s. Absent were drummer Don Stevenson and bass player/singer Bob Mosley. Spence, already well into his sad decline, contributed only one song of his own, "Must Be Goin' Now Dear." Guitarists Jerry Miller and Peter Lewis pretty much keep everything rolling. They were responsible for enough of the band's character, that even with a new rhythm section and organist on board, it still sounds like Moby Grape. Moby Grape was saddled with legal problems from the outset, so it comes as no surprise that contractual issues (on the part of their ex-manager, Matthew Katz) prevented the members from using their full name. They shortened the name to Grape and later adopted the name The Melvilles and then The Legendary Grape. Recorded on their home turf in the San Francisco area, LIVE GRAPE finds the new incarnation confident and engaged throughout. This is not the album to start with for those unfamiliar with the band (the uninitiated should check out their self-titled debut), but it's a fine document nonetheless.

The myth surrounding San Francisco psych legends Moby Grape is largely based on their magnificent debut album and the cult status of their mercurial songwriter Skip Spence. Despite major label support, the bands early singles failed to cause a stir, yet those 10 well-crafted, deeply soulful songs were compiled for the band's brilliant self-titled debut album. The follow-up, WOW, charted but marked the departure of the enigmatic Spence; his ethereal composition "Seeing" was one of the highlights of the patchy MOBY GRAPE '69. Despite legal struggles over name rights, the band continued to record and tour in various lackluster reunion formations (though never with Spence) and under hybridized names into the 1980s. Spence died of lung cancer in 1999.

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