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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

What's big and purple and lives in the ocean?

Moby Grape - the only US 60's band that ever collectively surpassed the Beatles in terms of individual  talents and song-writing ability, in my humble opinion:-



The Grape was made up of probably the 5 best unattached singer/songwriter musicians in the West Coast area in the late sixties.

They were put together to be America's serious answer to the Beatles and the Stones, but were f*cked by their record company, who released 5 singles simultaneously from their debut, and best, album, 'Moby Grape', and then seemed to do everything else possible to inadvertantly wreck their careers.

Still, some of their tunes are blissfully astounding, usually all coming in at under 3 minutes: '8:05', 'Some Day', 'Sitting by my Window', 'Naked if I want to' et al.

Check out '8:05' on the second part of this UTuber.

Jefferson Airplane's original drummer, the schizophrenic genius Skip Spence was one of their 3 guitarists and one of the 5 very capable vocalists in Moby Grape. He's not around anymore - he spent years in mental institutions in the 70s.  Also, growling-voiced bassist Bob Mosley (a Vietnam Veteran) was reported to have been living on the streets for many years due to mental health issues, but is meant to be doing better these days.

There is very little video on them, but I hear that there have been some reformations recently. I would donate a testicle to see the remaining band live!

Anyhoo, they almost, almost, almost made it to the big time. That's the thing about life though - sometimes 'almost' isn't enough...

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