Moby Grape tonight. I've been meaning to run some of their stuff for months but never quite got around to it - no good reason, just distracted.
One of the more legendary unsung heroes from the heyday of San Francisco psych, Moby Grape by all accounts should have been a household name. A lot of it was unmet (and probably unreal) expectations on the parts of the press and the record company. A lot of it was the wild clash of personalities (founding member Skip Spence was the archetype for emotional instability), but most of it was just piss-poor timing, rotten management and a lot of bad luck.
They were actually together roughly three years. And even though their first album was considered a masterpiece, later albums were crazily uneven. But they did produce some gems during that time - you had to be patient and listen all the way through in order to find them.
Tonights track is off Moby Grape '69, for all intents and purposes the last official group album by them - I Am Not Willing was something of an autobiographical account of founding member Peter Lewis' failed marriage. Like everything the band did, it was brutally honest and heartfelt at the same time.
Had things and circumstances been different there's no telling what might have happened. But maybe some things were just not destined to turn out any other way. There are no sure things.
