47 years ago Moby Grape released Moby Grape

Moby Grape is the rock band Moby Grape's eponymous 1967 debut album. Coming from the San Francisco scene, their reputation quickly grew to immense proportions, leading to a bidding war and a contract with Columbia Records. The album peaked at #24 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in September 1967. Production began on Moby Grape in Los Angeles in March 1967. Produced by David Rubinson, it took just six weeks, and $11,000, from March 11 to April 25, to record all thirteenth tracks and a fourteenth that was intended for the album but for which lyrics were never written ("Rounder")

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The cover photograph is by noted rock photographer Jim Marshall. On the original release, Don Stevenson is shown "flipping the bird" (making an obscene gesture) on the washboard. It was airbrushed out on subsequent pressings, but the UK re-issue on Edsel/Demon restored the photo to its original state.

Released on June 6, 1967, Columbia chose also to place ten of the thirteen songs on five singles released on the same day: "Fall on You"/"Changes", "Sitting By the Window"/"Indifference" (2:46 edit), "8:05"/"Mister Blues", "Omaha"/"Someday" and "Hey Grandma"/Come in the Morning". Of these five, only "Omaha" and "Hey Grandma" charted.

Nevertheless, as Gene Sculatti and Davin Seay write in their book San Francisco Nights, Moby Grape "remains one of the very few psychedelic masterpieces ever recorded." Justin Farrar considered that "(i)t's no understatement to hail the group's 1967 debut as the ancestral link between [sic] psychedelia, country rock, glam, power pop and punk." In addition, the 1983 Rolling Stone Record Guide said their "debut LP is as fresh and exhilarating today as it was when it exploded out of San Francisco during 1967's summer of love." In 2003, the album was ranked number 121 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.