Moby Grape (folk, blues, country, jazz, rock, psych / USA)

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. 


According to Peter Lewis, "Matthew (Katz) brought the spirit of conflict into the band. He didn't want it to be an equal partnership. He wanted it all."


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.

While Jerry Miller was the principal lead guitarist, all three guitarists played lead at various points, often playing off against each other, in a guitar form associated with Moby Grape as "crosstalk". The other major three-guitar band at the time was Buffalo Springfield. Moby Grape's music has been described by Geoffrey Parr as follows: "No rock and roll group has been able to use a guitar trio as effectively as Moby Grape did on Moby Grape. Spence played a distinctive rhythm guitar that really sticks out throughout the album. Lewis, meanwhile, was a very good guitar player overall and was excellent at finger picking, as is evident in several songs. And then there is Miller. ...The way they crafted their parts and played together on Moby Grape is like nothing else I've ever heard in my life. The guitars are like a collage of sound that makes perfect sense."

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. 



Genres: Rock and roll, folk rock, psychedelic rock, country rock
Years active: 1966-1971, 1973-1975, 1977-1979, 1983-1984, 1987-1991, 1995-2001, 2006-present


Lineup (early years): Peter Lewis (guitar, vocals); Jerry Miller (lead guitar, some vocals); Bob Mosley (bass, vocals); Skip Spence (guitar, vocals); Don Stevenson (drums). Spence died of multiple medical problems, April 1999.



Album: Moby Grape - Moby Grape (full album) 1967:

Source and more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Grape