Grape Jam

Moby Grape | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 9, 2007)
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sundazed Music Inc.
• ASIN: B000UVPJS2
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #157,203 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Never

2. Boysenberry Jam

3. Black Currant Jam

4. Marmalade

5. The Lake

6. Grape Jam #2* previously unissued

7. Grape Jam #9* previously unissued

8. Bags' Groove* previously unissued

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The least of it, and yet...., October 13, 2007

By 

feralduck "Opinions reasonably priced!" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Grape Jam (Audio CD)

Of the original Columbia albums the Grape released, this is the slightest of the five. Yet, it does have some merits, even though as a jam session it doesn't equal the quality of, say, Super Session or Spare Chayne on Jefferson Airplane's After Bathing At Baxters. The saving grace of this album is the opening track, Never, notoriously "rewritten" by Led Zeppelin as Since I've Been Loving You on Led Zeppelin III.
The remainder of the album is pleasant, though hardly essential. One wonders what a true guitar jam between Jerry Miller and Mike Bloomfield might have been like, rather than wasting Bloomfield on keyboards at this session.
The Lake is psychedelic silliness, although the Grape can't be entirely blamed for it; this was a contest dreamed up by their then manager for the band to write a tune to a fan's lyric, much like Buffalo Springfield's In The Hour Of Not Quite Rain.
All in all, not the Grape's finest hour, but not a complete waste of time, either.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, August 6, 2009

By 

Bill Your 'Free Form FM Handi Cyber Print DJ ... (Mahwah, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Grape Jam (Audio CD)

Before top rock names played arenas, they played clubs. So it was common for, just say, Hendrix to jam with Jack Bruce, Jack Cassidy with Charles Lloyd. Big money was not involved yet. Things were looser.

Grape Jam brings this crossbreeding to the studio: Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield and members of Moby Grape. This is a blues record, but an acidy, funky blues.

A different side of Moby Grape is shown. For a San Fransico band, circa 1968, they were song oriented. Here they are loose and loud and ragged. But they are great players, and have ample chops to carry the improvosation.

Al Kopper and Mike Bloomfield. If both were in front of me, who's feet would I kiss first? Thier feel for blues--from the grittiest to the most cosmopolitan-was 100% instinctive. Yet they give it a 1968 rock grit. Listen to Bloomfield's "Buysonberry Jam" Les Paul growl.


This is not the pristine studio Grape, but for top musicans ripping and crunching, you can't do better. Little known fact: Plant and Page wrote "Since I've Been Loving You" after hearing the first song on Grape Jam, "Never"


What is good for the goose is probably good enough for you.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Really good stuff (you get my meaning??), March 26, 2009

By 

Jersey Kid (Katy, Texas, America!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grape Jam (Audio CD)

I have always preferred Grape Jam' to `Wow.' This is due in great part to my predilection for that "this marriage will never work out (but it did)" combination of Chicago-style blues played psychedelically. I've had this love since I first heard Mike Bloomfield's heroin-driven (hmmm...heroin-driven...an oxymoron??) introduction on `The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper. This album - included with `Wow" as a two-fer is contemporaneous with that work, and included the aforementioned Bloomfield and Kooper (though how long Mike was there and how much he did is subject to conjecture).

Advertised and marketed as a jam, but far too well played and produced to be such, most of these pieces are linearly related to Miller's Blues on `Wow,' though played at a more leisurely pace. Boysenberry Jam and Black Currant Jam are intricate little trips within this genre that demand the listener get into a mellow state of mind (I won't say how, that's up to you!) and just drift with the groove.

Other works left me thinking how close some of the music from the original LP was to `Live Adventures.' I make this differentiation because the added cuts are a departure from the original LP and Moby Grape's style. These works have a horn section that moves the music away from the notional hippy-dippy psychedelic blues towards a more jazz-oriented genre. Given the partial pedigrees of Messers Bloomfield and Kooper - namely Blood, Sweat and Tear and the Electric Flag - this should be no surprise. I think it also provides a bit of confirmation that there were an element of planning in the composition and production.

The weak spot in this album is - and this should be no surprise whatsoever - The Lake. This misbegotten piece of tripe was the issue of corporate greed and marketing, whereby Matthew Katz, the band's manager who continues to obfuscate and litigate in a mean-spirited effort to hurt the band members - Columbia staged a lyric writing contest through an SF radio station in which the winner got to hear his words over the Grape's music. Presented with this, the band elected to make trash and were highly siuccessful in their endeavour. The track is an aural pastiche of words and notes - I avoid using the word 'music' deliberately - that sounds as if it was recorded from another room. The result is best programmed out.

The rest of the material is - for those who relish the happy marriage (or at least, the shacking up together) of blues and horns and jazz (oh my!) will listen to this recovered gem repeatedly...maybe even habitually.