Moby Grape Live LP, Rec Store Day 7”

Sprawling 19-track album covering 1966-69 performances, plus exclusive Record Store Day single with non-album track.

By Blurt Staff

Sundazed is billing it as the first official concert collection from the legendary San Fran sixties outfit: Live by Moby Grape, originally comprising Jerry Miller, Skip Spence, Bob Mosley, Peter Lewis and Don Stevenson. Their Columbia debut LP, Moby Grape, issued in June 1967, is still acclaimed as one of the greatest rock albums ever - a union of blues, soul, country, surf twang and day-glo garage rock, packed into original killer-pop songwriting. Extreme Columbia hype, devastating business hassles and Spence's tragic mental collapse threatened to blow up the band, although the Grape continued to make a string of great albums, 1968's Wow and Moby Grape '69.

Meanwhile, though, Moby Grape, in their prime, were also one of the Bay Area's - and America's - best stage bands, like the Beatles and Rolling Stones in one, with a breathtaking triple-guitar attack and stunning vocal harmonies. Live is the long-awaited proof. It features more than an hour of dynamite performances from soundboard and broadcast tapes, including tracks from the Avalon Ballroom in 1967 and the band's complete long-lost set at the Monterey Pop Festival, just a week after Moby Grape came out. There are live versions of the great rare Grape songs "Rounder" and "Looper" and five tracks from a famous Dutch radio show featuring the hard-charging '69 lineup of Miller, Mosley, Lewis and Stevenson.

And Live climaxes with the historic first-ever release of Spence's acid-guitar masterpiece "Dark Magic" - never recorded in the studio by the original band but presented here in an epic 17-minute performance at the Avalon, on New Year's Eve 1966. These recordings boast you-are-there fidelity, and the album comes with sumptuous packaging and rare photos plus liner notes by Rolling Stone writer and Moby Grape authority David Fricke.

The album's due in April from Sundazed.

Track Listing:

Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, 1967*
1.    Ain't No Use
2.    Rounder
3.    Looper
4.    Bitter Wind
5.    Changes
6.    Indifference
7.    Someday
       
Monterey International Pop Festival, 1967
8.    Introduction
9.    Indifference
10.    Mr. Blues
11.    Sitting by the Window
12.    Omaha
       
San Francisco, 1967
13.    Sweet Little Angel
       
RAI, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1969
14.    Murder in My Heart for the Judge
15.    I Am Not Willing
16.    Trucking Man
17.    Fall on You
18.    Omaha
       
Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, 1966
19.    Dark Magic
       

Plus a special Record Store Day Exclusive:

Moby Grape Live: Historic Live Moby Grape Performances 1967 & 1969 7" single with exclusive non-album track.

1.    "Rounder"
    Recorded live at the Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, 1967
    From the Sundazed release Moby Grape Live, available on CD & LP.

2.    "Sitting by the Window"
    Recorded live at RAI, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1969
    Previously unissued, available here only.