Moby Grape - Live

Grape expectations fulfilled

Ask anyone: Moby Grape blew every other San Francisco band clean out of the Bay. Moby Grape Live double-underlines the fact that their all-singing, alldancing schtick was every bit as intimidating and irresistible on stage as it was in the studio. The performances herein – ranging from an unreleased 17- minute take of the lost and shivering Dark Magic in the Avalon Ballroom in 1966 to a set recorded for Dutch radio in 1969 – burn with the righteous fire you’d expect from a band who knew they were the best and couldn’t wait to tell you about it.

Quite apart from the scarcely believable audio quality of these recordings, it’s the sense of mutual respect which most impresses. The guitars of Skip Spence, Peter Lewis and Jerry Miller are subtle, spacious and unobtrusive on lambent readings of Someday and Sitting By The Window (from Monterey, 1967), while the euphoric group hollers on Omaha and Changes sound like the devotional affirmations of lifelong blood brothers.

We all know and revere Spence’s contributions to the legend: now let’s hear it for bassist Bob Moseley. If Skippy was Moby Grape’s antic spirit then Moseley was the band’s soul, as his lionheart bellow on Bitter Wind and Trucking Man gloriously attests.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

Sundazed | SC 11210

Reviewed by Marco Rossi
<< Back to Issue 376

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