It's taken a week for my heartbeat to slow down enough to write this..... It's always nice to realize a dream you've had for thirty years (!) and from now 'till I die I will never again be able to say "I never got to see Moby Grape....."

I sent a few copies of my Fake Grape Tape to this guy Geoff Blumenauer in Florida, who was supposedly booking the East Coast Moby Grape reunion shows; but when I called him to follow up, his phone was disconnected. I was hoping he'd get the tapes to the guys in the band before they came to New York, so I'd have a convenient way to introduce myself. But I don't know what happened there.

I tried to get in touch with both of the guys I know in California who have connections to Moby Grape, back when I picked up the tickets; to find out if either of them was coming East with the band, so we could hook up at the show. But their phones are ALSO disconnected--if some evil f*** is going through the ranks of M.G. fans one-by-one, he may get to ME soon so I'd better write this quickly. Anyway, I just went by myself on Wednesday, and brought the whole circle of friends on Thursday. I was the guy with the MONKS T-shirt. I'm quite confident that it was in fact the ONLY Monks T-shirt in the place. And the place was packed, both nights--which really did my heart good. I was afraid we'd be the only ones there. Here's my two cents' worth:

Wednesday night I got there reasonably early, and managed to meet one of the guys who responded to my frantic Relix ad, Wayne Momyer, which was nice. I went there alone. Wasn't going to go Wednesday at all, but talked myself into it at the last minute. We went again Thursday with the wife and a small entourage. But back to Wednesday: I sat in the bar just a little bit too long and before I knew it the room with the stage in it had filled up with humans. So I had to watch the show from the bar area, which sucked because I was directly off the right side of the stage, looking at the sides of their heads.......they looked like a row of nickels or something. You've never been to Wetlands, have you? It's a neat, funky little place, but there is NOWHERE TO SIT. There are literally just two little benches, one in each corner--total capacity: nine. Nine. The other room, where the bar is, is up two steps, and there's a half-wall with stools in front of it, and that's where I was. But to back up--halfway thru the opening band's set, I just happened to turn around and there's Jerry Miller, being besieged by some fans. Poor bastard. He just kept shaking hands, gamely, and saying "Thanks.......thanks..........thanks." Now how am I gonna go over and introduce myself in the middle of THAT s**t? I stepped outside my head for just a second and imagined myself saying something REALLY INTELLIGENT like, "Hi, blah blah your biggest fan, blah blah, thirty years, blah blah, I'm the guy who made that tape that I think Mike Martyn or Craig Juan might have played for you, or maybe they didn't, in which case you have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about and I really shouldn't have walked over here in the first place but I couldn't help myself and please don't cut me dead the way Randy California did, and of course HE'S DEAD NOW HIMSELF........" and of course at that point the big red A**HOLE light goes on over my head. So I just smiled and waved at him and gave the guy a break. I figured I'd try again later.

Well, let's talk about the show......tough to describe! You know, if you talk about that set objectively, you have to use words like "ragged," "under-rehearsed", etc.--but even given that, they were truly magical. Seeing them Wednesday was weird. The band now consists of Jerry, Peter Lewis, and Mosley--plus Sam Andrew pretending to be Skip--(yowch)--and some drummer named Randy. Don Stevenson won't leave the house--apparently he's made tons of $$$ by selling vacation time-shares. RokkinROLL!!

Mosley, I think I told you, was diagnosed clinically schizo (like Skip) quite some time back--he's fine, apparently, when he takes his medicine. But for the last few years, he's been living under a bridge in San Jose or someplace like that--no lie--and by CHOICE. Last fall, when they won the name "Moby Grape" back from that ******* M*tth*w K*tz in court, they did a couple of impromptu reunion gigs, and they coaxed Bob up on stage to sing a couple of songs. He wouldn't play; and he didn't sing too very well either, from what I read. But he caught the performing bug again, and he's been practicing ever since. Wednesday night, he walks out on stage slinging a bass--my heart almost stopped. He played all night, without a net.

Jerry and Peter were right on the money all night long--Jesus, can those guys play--but Mosley was fading in and out. When he was on, he was dynamite--but from time to time he drifted off somewhere. His playing was rock solid all night, but every now and then he was forgetting to sing.......not like he forgot the words, but like he forgot to sing at all. He started off gorgeous--they opened with "Murder In My Heart" and "Omaha" and he kicked ass on both.

Sam Andrew was trying to take both Skip's place and Don's place, and he seemed like he really needed more rehearsal time. His background vocals were not on. The whole thing was like a big ebb-and-flow, moving from sheer brilliance to sheer "ouch"--but don't let me give the wrong impression, they were just AMAZING. The mistakes didn't matter. The ragged harmonies didn't matter. The whole audience just sat there with their jaws dropped all night. And they played FOREVER.

Mosley spent a good part of the night sitting down--he looked really tired. And OLD. That's to be expected, I suppose. There were these brief flashes during which he just snapped right back to 1967 and took everyone's breath away. He didn't speak much--he just apologized once or twice after some small mistake or other that he made. Jerry was having a lot of fun--even though he knew the set was a little rough, he was still having a grand old time. He and Peter were discussing it between songs.....at one point Jerry turned to Peter and said "Don't worry--THIS audience will cut us some slack." The crowd cheered, and Peter came back with, "What do you mean US?"

Lewis was the biggest surprise--I don't think history gives him enough credit. Everything you read about the Grape always waves him away as the Pretty Boy of the group, the Sensitive Songwriter Guy. But he can play like a bastard. Of course, standing on stage with a guitar, four feet away from THE BEST guitar gunslinger still walking around, can tend to make you kind of invisible. Fair enough. (Yes, the BEST. Danny Kalb is not a "Guitar Gunslinger." Just wanted to clear that up early.) As for Jerry, these sets were basically two-hour guitar solos for him, he never leaves the pentatonic scale, and he never went over the same ground twice. How the f*** does he DO THAT??

And you would really have to get a look at Peter "Dorian Gray" Lewis to believe it. Somehow, in defiance of both physics and the Julian Calendar, he is now younger than I. And not since Hendrix have I seen anyone look that good holding a guitar.

They played mainly later material in the first set, promising to come back and do the whole first album after the break. Which they did, leaving out only Lazy Me. The only real problem was during Indifference--as each section of the song ended, no two guys on stage seemed to agree on which section came next. Each time, they'd just pull it together at the last instant. Until they got to the final break--nobody sang that line "Just one thing I've got to say," that leads into that ending frenzy, and the whole song just collapsed like an old building. But they pulled it back out and finished--that's how good they are.

The drummer--"Randy"--sang Changes pretty well, but forgot a lot of the words. I can't tell you how much I wanted to jump up on that stage and start bellowing into the nearest mic "But my changin' self won't keep up with nobody else..." But that, of course, would have lit up the big red "A**HOLE" light over my head for sure. And possibly have gotten me killed as well. "Hey, but I'm the guy that made that TAPE...." Yeah, sure. Welcome to New York, and here's my foot in your ear. So I decided, wisely, to just sit and listen.

They also tossed in some real surprises for me---Seeing, Dark Magic, and--yeah!--Gypsy Wedding, one of my favorites. Like you can pick a favorite. That was the last song, and Bob found his voice for that one. He sounded like a thunderclap. They encored with Truckin' Man.

When they were finished, they didn't leave--they just stayed on stage and shook hands and signed things people handed them. I wished I'd been smart enough to bring a couple of copies of my tape, and resolved to do so the next night. Meanwhile, it's 1AM and I have a 45-minute drive between downtown NYC and my little Red House Over Yonder in NJ. And a day job. So I left after a few minutes without meeting anybody.

Thursday--NOW we're talking. INFINITELY better. Like night and day. They were perfect. Honestly, it was as though they had spent the entire 21 hours in a concentrated rehearsal. They hit the stage on fire and never let up. And Mosley--I don't know what the hell happened to him overnight, but on Thursday he was absolutely possessed. He never sat down, he was all over the stage, he was talking between songs like no one could stop him, and most important--his voice never left him. Well, maybe once or twice. In hindsight, I think the extremely fierce stage lighting might have been sucking him dry on Wednesday. Thursday night he loped out on stage in a stylish wide-brim hat, which he kept on throughout the entire evening. Couldn't see his eyes, but I think the hat may have helped him conserve.

He was fabulous. They all were. The ending of Changes went on for ten minutes, and that was followed by Indifference, (perfect this time) and the ending of THAT went on for about TWENTY minutes. They're both in the same damn key, and these guys managed to play about half an hour's worth of one chord, all told, and make it work. That's how good they are. Changes in particular--if you recall, at the end of the song, during the guitar solo, there's this little machine-gun bass riff that repeats till the fade. Well, the guy who only the previous evening had been a tired old man stood there playing that riff without a hitch for TEN MINUTES. The only song that didn't completely work was the one right after that--Bitter Wind. You know how there are two versions of it, that are like mirror images of each other? Where the lead vocal and "answer" vocals are switched around? Well, I'm not sure which version they played Thursday, and I don't think THEY are either. It just sort of fell apart at the end, and Mosley just waved his arms and went "Wait a minute!" Everybody stopped playing, and you could hear the whole audience hold their breath--then he goes, "Yeah, okay, you know sometimes these guys screw it up, and that time I screwed it up, but I'm gonna tell you somethin'--that Robert Plant, he said something really nice, he said Moby Grape was his favorite band, and that was really nice, and so we're gonna do one really well now, we're gonna do Never." And before you could say, "Huh?" they smacked into this slow, wailing, bluesy thing (from Grape Jam--this is the song YOU could have been on. "Call me Ishmael Katz." Has a nice ring to it.) and Bob sang the S**T out of it. He sounded like it was 1966 again. And he knew it, too. He was really happy. At the end, Lewis was tuning up, and Bob goes, "Don't you worry none about Peter--he can't play."

Jerry talked about how they can't pay Don Stevenson enough to make it worth his while to come out of the house, but he was hopeful that they'd eventually get him back in the fold. Then he said, "Well, maybe not, NOW...'cause this'll probably all be on the internet tomorrow and he'll see it." [Alright, so it took two years. But here it is.] Then, in a truly bizarre surprise, somebody came out and read a fax that had just come from Skip Spence--sort of a "Hi guys, wish I was there" thing. The last line was "All my life I love you, Skip"--which is the title of one of his newer songs--and I was hoping they'd play the song, but they didn't.

They ended up with Dark Magic, and walked off. This time they saved Gypsy Wedding for the encore, and skipped Truckin' Man.

I had two copies of my tape all ready to stick into Jerry's and Peter's hands--but of course, my luck, they didn't stay on stage this time, they went off. There was a mob waiting at the curtain, waiting for them to come out and sign things. And Wayne was with us, and he had run out of energy midway through the second set, and I could tell he really wanted to get out of there, so we left. I was bummed. I had two chances to meet my idols, and two guys who could have run interference for my introduction if I had been able to get a hold of them in time--but no go. But the band sounded pretty sincere when they said they loved playing here and they'd be back as soon as possible. So, next time.