Moby Grape

Moby Grape是美国的一支早期摇滚乐队，成立于1966年，为“旧金山之声”的代表人物，五位成员全都能写能唱。他们的曲风融合了包括Blues，乡村摇滚，迷幻摇滚等多种风格，有人认为他们是那个时期最强的美国迷幻乐队。这个乐队“出产”了一位著名的吉他手Jerry Miller，被认为是史上最强的吉他手之一。主唱Skip Spence也是名噪一时的人物，曾经参与Quicksilver Messenger Service和Jefferson Airplane乐队。然而乐队成员大都用药成瘾，生活放浪不羁，使得他们未能充分发挥自己的天赋，乐队成军5年后即宣告解体。
乐队的首张专辑《Moby Grape》在滚石杂志评出的500张历代最强专辑中排名第121位，"Hey Grandma"和 "Omaha"都成为打榜的歌曲，而"8:05"被认为是乡村摇滚的标准经典。
One of the best 60s San Francisco bands, Moby Grape were also one of the most versatile. Although they are most often identified with the psychedelic scene, their specialty was combining all sorts of roots music — folk, blues, country, and classic rock & roll — with some Summer of Love vibes and multi-layered, triple-guitar arrangements. All of those elements only truly coalesced, however, for their 1967 debut LP. Although subsequent albums had more good moments than many listeners are aware of, a combination of personal problems and bad management effectively killed off the group by the end of the 1960s.
Many San Francisco bands of the era were assembled by recent immigrants to the area, but Moby Grape had even more tenuous roots in the region than most when they formed. Matthew Katz, who managed the Jefferson Airplane in their early days, helped put together Moby Grape around Skip Spence. Spence, a legendarily colorful Canadian native whose first instrument was the guitar, had played drums in the Airplanes first lineup at the instigation of Marty Balin. Spence left the Airplane after their first album, and reverted to his natural guitarist and songwriting role for the Grape (the Airplane had already recorded some of his compositions). Guitarist Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson were recruited from the Northwest bar band the Frantics; guitarist Peter Lewis had played in Southern California surf bands like the Cornells; and bassist Bob Mosley had also played with outfits from Southern California.
The groups relative unfamiliarity with each other may have sown seeds for their future problems, but they jelled surprisingly quickly, with all five members contributing more or less equally to the songwriting on their self-titled debut (1967). Moby Grape remains their signature statement, though the folk-rock and country-rock worked better than the boogies; Omaha, Sittin by the Window, Changes, and Lazy Me are some of their best songs. Columbia Records, though, damaged the bands credibility with over-hype, releasing no less than five singles from the LP simultaneously. Worse, three members of the group were caught consorting with underage girls. Though charges were eventually dropped, the legal hassles, combined with an increasingly strained relationship with manager Katz, sapped the bands drive.
Moby Grapes follow-up, the double-LP Wow, was one of the most disappointing records of the 60s, in light of the high expectations fostered by the debut. The studio half of the package had much more erratic songwriting than the first recording, and the group members didnt blend their instrumental and vocal skills nearly as well. The bonus disc was almost a total waste, consisting of bad jams. Spence departed while the album was being recorded in New York in 1968, as a result of a famous incident in which he entered the studio with a fire axe, apparently intending to use it on Stevenson. Committed to New Yorks Bellevue Hospital, he did re-emerge to record a wonderful acid folk solo album at the end of 1968, but that would be his only notable post-Grape project; he struggled with mental illness until he died in 1998.
Another unexpected blow was dealt when Mosley, despite his membership in a band that emerged from the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic scene, joined the Marine Corps at the beginning of 1969. The band did struggle on and release a couple more albums during that year, and the best tracks from these (particularly the earlier one, Moby Grape 69) proved they could still deliver the goods, though usually in a more subdued, countrified fashion than their earliest material. The group broke up at the end of the 60s, although they would periodically reunite for nearly unheard albums over the next two decades, in lineups featuring varying original members. Their problems were exacerbated by Matthew Katz, who owns the Moby Grape name, and has sometimes prevented the original members from using the name when they worked together.