Moby Grape – Omaha

I did a San Francisco music week a few months ago and featured this band for the first time. I’ve been wanting to come back to them and today is the day. They came out of the San Francisco scene in the 60s along with The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and others. They were never as big as those bands but I’ve heard many of their songs that I liked.

It comes back to some bad luck and some self-sabotage. They had it all…including five members who could all write, sing and play. Record labels were lining up for them. They have since fought for decades between each other and especially their manager Matthew Katz. Other bands like Buffalo Springfield said that Moby Grape was one of the best bands from San Francisco.

One of their problems was hype. CBS was their record company and they decided it would be great to release FIVE singles at once by the band. The label was convinced that each of the 10 sides had the potential to make it to the top of the national charts. The thinking was that a shot-gun approach would ensure that at least one of the five would hit and garner maximum airplay and revenue. It failed miserably.

Nowadays an album is released and different songs are played… every song on an album can chart. That is why it’s almost impossible to compare the charts now to any other time in history before downloading. I guess CBS was ahead of their time but way too far ahead and the market wasn’t ready for it. You couldn’t just download it in 1967 with your love beads and patchouli oil…although I do like patchouli oil!

This song was one of the five singles released and it did better than the others. It did chart in the top 100 so there is that. It peaked at #88 on the Billboard 100 and #87 on the Canadian Charts in 1967. It’s a good song and I think it deserved to do better than that but with a glut of songs it was probably doomed to fail. It was on their debut album Moby Grape which peaked at #24 on the Billboard Album Charts.

They are still together with some of the original members. Peter Lewis, Jerry Miller, Bob Mosley, and Don Stevenson. Skip Spencer died in 1999 of lung cancer. His son Omar Spence is now with Moby Grape…singing his dad’s songs. There is a cult following of this band and they had the talent to do much more. This is a case of a record company really hurting them.

Omaha

Listen, my friendsListen, my friendsListen, my friendsListen, my friendsListen, my friendsListen, my friends

Listen, my friends, you thought never butListen, my friends, I’m yours foreverListen, my friends, won’t leave you ever

Now my friendsWhat’s gone down behindNo more rainFrom where we came

Listen my love, get under the covers, yeahSqueeze me real tight, all of your lovin’Into the light, beneath and above yaSo out of sight, bein’ in love!

Listen, my friendsListen, my friendsListen, my friendsListen, my friendsListen, my friendsListen, my friendsListen, my friends

…

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

26 thoughts on “Moby Grape – Omaha”

      1. Skip Spence was (very) briefly in Quicksilver before leaving to join the Jefferson Airplane (as a drummer). After the Airplane he moved on to Moby Grape. Quicksilver may be the most under-rated band (maybe a tossup between them and Los Lobos, who are also not in the R&R Hall of Fame).

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      2. I’ll post one by Quicksilver next after Christmas…I liked all of these bands. This band had commercial appeal…I guess the timing was wrong.

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  6. That ws some dumb marketing by CBS – five singles simultaneously?! How could that possibly have worked, I wonder. This song isn’t bad, doesn’t sound like a big hit to me but probably could have done a lot better than #87. One of those bands I know the name of – who can forget it? – but know very little of. Puts them in the same category as that other SF band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, I guess

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    1. Yes….Quicksilver shared a member… they were different but I don’t cover San Francisco enough…only Janis and The Dead so I wanted to expand a bit….I need to cover another Airplane song as well.

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      1. The band were all between the ages of one of my sisters and one of my brothers, so those jokes were from their era and mine. There are a bunch, all equally bad. “Why do elephants paint their toenails red?” “So they can hide in a strawberry patch.” Yeah, most ere elephant jokes. The whale joke added a bit of sophistication to the genre.

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  8. One of my older sisters graduated from High School in ’67, and I remember her having this album and mentioning Moby Grape quite a bit. I’m not sure I ever actually heard the music then. The song doesn’t sound familiar, but I like it. It certainly brings back 1967 vibes. I love the Mike Douglas clip. My mother tuned in every day at 4:30 without fail.

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    1. Oh I would have loved to…be alive then. Oh I was…I was born in 1967 but I would have loved to been a teen…
      I watch Mike Douglas on youtube and my favorite talk show…Dick Cavett.

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  9. The name sounds familiar. Am sure I listened to the other one you posted. They are really good and def hear The Grateful Dead in there. The one guy is really small or his guitar is really big, but he manages it well. Haven’t seen Mike Douglas in years! Used to watch him when I babysat for the audiophile dad and his hairdresser wife’s 2 kids.

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    1. I watched Douglas and others while growing up as well. Cavett will always be my favorite…he was even handed and invited a lot of different people. He would interview people for an entire show…I have a post coming up with him.

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