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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