THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
898) Moby Grape — “Murder in My Heart for the Judge”
’68 B-side and track from the second album Wow is “a tough and funky blues number” Mark Deming, https://www.allmusic.com/album/wow-mw0000780808), “a fabulously hilarious story of being dressed down in a court by a judge while paying parking tickets”. (Matthew Greenwood, https://www.allmusic.com/song/murder-in-my-heart-for-the-judge-mt0007908943)
Matthew Greenwald observes that:
The heart of Moby Grape’s ability was in their unique three-way guitar cross-talk, and it has never been more apparent than on “Murder in My Heart.” Based on a simple, bluesy groove and chord changes, its basic feel has been said to have been inspired by Stephen Still’s “For What It’s Worth.”* The guitars all interweave patterns over the melody and groove, creating a tapestry of crunchy white noise.
https://www.allmusic.com/song/murder-in-my-heart-for-the-judge-mt0007908943
Jim Connelly:
Co-written by lead guitarist Jerry Miller & drummer Don Stevenson, “Murder in My Heart For The Judge” leads off with its fun and funky chorus, riding a big, slow, Bob Mosley bass groove, with one of them getting lower than the bass leaning into the chorus with a faux-soulful “Iiii’ve” . . . . Meanwhile, guitarists Skip Spence, Miller & Peter Lewis are all playing off of and around the beat, Lewis soloing even before then get into that chorus. Their interplay gets even weirder as the first verse — sung from the perspective of a scumbag who’s probably guilty as f*ck, but still can’t help himself. . . . In the end, after the book has been thrown by the mean old judge, the guitars take over. There’s a solo in one speaker, while the rhythm guitars remain slightly disjointed, like they can’t believe they’re going to spend the rest of their lives in the joint. Then suddenly one of them thinks “f*ck it” and launches into a solo the other speaker, just as the drums start kicking into a short sharp rave up that just as you think is going to take off gets slammed shut behind the jail guitar doors.
https://medialoper.com/certain-songs-1182-moby-grape-murder-in-my-heart-for-the-judge/
I don’t know about “scumbag”, as Alex Palao points out that the song “dated back to Miller and Stevenson’s Frantics days, in subject matter at least, referring as it did to a legendary run-in over parking tickets.” (liner notes to the Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets: 1965-1970 CD comp)
As to Wow, Mark Deming writes:
Between the time that Moby Grape released their brilliant self-titled debut and when their second album Wow appeared in 1968, a little thing called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band happened, and for the next few years it was no longer enough for a band with some claim to importance to just play rock & roll, even if they approached it with the freshness and imagination Moby Grape displayed on their first LP. Bowing to the pervading influences of the day, Wow is a far more ambitious album than Moby Grape, trading in the latter’s energetic simplicity for an expansive production complete with strings, horns, and lots of willful eccentricity . . . . [R]epeated listening reveals this album has plenty of strengths despite the excess gingerbread . . . . Wow lacks the rev-it-up spirit of Moby Grape’s masterpiece, but [the trio] guitar work is just as impressive and richly layered, and the group’s harmonies and songwriting chops are still in solid shape. . . . Moby Grape’s . . . many virtues . . . are visible on Wow despite the layers of studio excess, which sapped the momentum and charm of this band without snuffing them out altogether.
https://www.allmusic.com/album/wow-mw0000780808
Though Richie Unterberger chimes in that:
[The] 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 didn’t blend their instrumental and vocal skills nearly as well. The “bonus” disc was almost a total waste, consisting of bad jams.
As to the band, Unterberger tells us:
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 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 ’60s.
Matthew Katz, who managed the Jefferson Airplane in their early days, helped put Moby Grape together around Skip Spence . . . a legendarily colorful Canadian native whose first instrument was the guitar, had played drums in the Airplane’s first lineup . . . . The group’s 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 [which] remains their signature statement . . . . Spence departed while [Wow] was being recorded . . . 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 York’s Bellevue Hospital, he did re-emerge to record a wonderful acid folk solo album at the end of 1968 . . . he struggled with mental illness until he died . . . . The group broke up at the end of the ’60s . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/moby-grape-mn0000569914/biography
* It may have been the other way around:
Dickie Davis (Buffalo Springfield’s manager & “spiritual advisor”) feels that Stephen (Stills) resented the Grape lifting his band’s format [three guitars & four part harmonies] and sound. “He believed they had stolen the idea,” maintains Dickie. “When he wrote For What It’s Worth he based part of the arrangement on Moby Grapes’ Murder In My Heart For The Judge as a kind of revenge”. According to Jerry Miller, there was an affinity between Stephen’s song and a number the Grape performed in their live set. “We had this song called Stop”, confirms Jerry, “and it kind of went ‘Stop, children, can’t you hear the music’…” Adds the Grape’s Peter Lewis, “later when they came to the Avalon, Stephen told me, ‘Hey man, we just cut this song and when we were done we realized it was two of your songs stuck together’. And it was cool. . . . I just told him, ‘who cares’. It wasn’t a case, like now, of ‘I’m gonna sue your ass.’ Some of my happiest memories of those days were of sitting around Bob Mosley’s apartment in Mill Valley with Stephen and Neil and Rickie, smokin’ dope and playing each other our songs.”
John Einarson and Richie Furay, For What It’s Worth: The Story of Buffalo Springfield
The only problem here is that while Moby Grape got together in the late summer of ’66 and Buffalo Springfield released FWIW as an A-side in December 1966, Moby Grape didn’t release Wow until April ’68. Could Jerry Miller have been talking about an early version of “Murder”?
Forget Three Dog Night and Lee Michaels — Nellie McKay gives us a fabulous interpretation:
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