No. 148: DON STEVENSON / Moby Grape recorded a perfect debut album back in the Summer of Love, but thereafter the quintet's luck ran out and the stars kept on crossing

A podcast with the drummer's first-person account of 1969, abounding with famous names from back in the day: Otis Redding, Jimmy Hendrix, Neil Young, Robert Plant and even Tom Smothers.

toronto.mike

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A deeply personal one today, blessedly free of sports though maybe not athleticism: I co-hosted an episode of the Toronto Mike’d Podcast yesterday and brought in a friend as a guest: Don Stevenson, the drummer of the band Moby Grape back in the Summer of Love and these days a more-than-occasional busker in the Toronto subway system. Yeah, it’s hard to believe, but that guy strumming at the Yonge-Bloor station behind an open guitar case these days played at Monterey Pop opening for Otis and Jimi et al back in the day. If you need a feel-good story today it’s hard to beat an 82-year-old who’ll be making his Massey Hall debut next week.

(Yeah, I know, you don’t know Moby Grape but in the estimation of Dave Fricke of Rolling Stone, the band’s eponymous first LP remains “one of rock’s truly perfect debut albums and a pivotal document of Sixties rock in radiant mid-mutation.” Yeah, that’s how rock critics talk when twisted with enthusiasm.)

The perfect debut albums imperfect launch: You ha…