Is Moby Grape really THAT good?

i don't know if i feel the kak similarity. kak were onto some serious epic shit, a quality sorely missing from the grape.

Chrissie Hynde always maintained they were the best hippie band, for what it's worth.

From what I've read, the Grape were a total hit on the ballroom circuit and other musicians were in awe of them. They totally blew the hippies' minds. But the Grape failed on the national pop chart level, as Matos pointed out.

that album is leagues better than the dead and the Airplane, both of whom are very very bad.

I can't decide if I want to take the bait or not, maybe I already did.

I'm not sure though, because I entered this world in 1971.

the move did it and didn't know the words, the bit about robutussin and elderberry wine.

sure, they were that good. i mean try playing like that if you're in a band, that restraint. far outclassed those lame-o san francisco bands, the dead and the diggers or the charlatans u.s. or whoever the fuck they were. the jefferson airplane, give me a break. all totally ropey compared to moby grape. but, they had to go country-rock and it ruined them. "21 granite creek" has a couple great moments, esp. "going down to texas" at about a minute fifty-nine. they were always good at compression. plus ragging on veronica is dumb, i'm sure many hippies did think the dead were better; most people today, who are just as stupid as they were in 1968, think of those endless jams and jerry garcia's beard when they think of that era. they failed because they were a typically mismatched group without any one person to focus on, they were all equally talented and that's always fatal for a pop group, since they all need one really talentless person. or used to, now it's all different and they're all geniuses like those guys in coldplay.

As for them not being dug by the hippies because they wrote pop tunes, I wouldn't mind seeing some back-up on that. Sure, free form jamming was definitely a big part of the Haight Ashbury aesthetic but lets not forget that groups like the Lovin' Spoonful were a huge smash at early ballroom happenings. Plus, the Dead's debut, the Airplane's first two records, and all of the Charlatans recorded output is not comprised of acid freakouts. They are fairly concise rock albums with a bunch of pop thrown in (as Ellison basically stated earlier).

I have heard Muzak's instrumental version of "Sitting By the Window." More than once, but absolutely ages ago.

I wonder if whoever thought that up was on some hard drugs. And I wonder if they got fired.

YES re Jerry Miller. Eric Clapton wishes he could play like that.

The youtube clip I saw the other day is worth checking out – it’s them on the Steve Paul Scene special (NYC TV), 1967. They do “Hey Grandma” and “Sitting By the Window.” Skippy is positively magnetic.

So true...

broke out the 2cd anthology a few days ago for the first time in ages and it is making me very happy. excellent driving music. forgot how good some of the post-debut songs are (and how bad a couple are too). that batch that were recorded for the the follow to the s/t but were rejected are esp. good. also downloaded a few songs from 20 granite creek and they sound interesting, too bad that reunion didn't last.

"Seeing", which closes the second disk of that excellent anthology, is a top shelf song for sure.

"Changes, Circles Spinning" off Truly Fine Citizen is my late-Grape fave.

did veronica moser ever end up getting into the classic dead LPs??

I don't see the word "Creedence" here anywhere, which is what the first album bears comparison to. Or A Hard Day's Night.

As for what could have been, I don't know. Which song off the first album could have been a big hit?

Spinning the debut rn, and it seems to me that "Come In The Morning" & "Changes" would have been good picks for an up-tempo single, and "Someday" & "Sitting By The Window" might have broken through if programmers would have taken a shot on a slow/melancholy track. "Omaha" was a bit too out there for AM radio (so of course it charted highest).

Putting out five singles out at once was perhaps the dumbest of the dumb moves Columbia pulled re:the first album.