San Diego Spotlight : Reconstituted Grape a Juicy Reminder of the Glory Days

They come and they go and then, years later, they come back, either for a second shot at stardom or simply to cash in on their legacies. One of the latest entries in the comeback sweepstakes is Legendary Grape, previously known as Moby Grape, one of the most revered products of San Francisco’s fertile late-1960s rock scene.

The reconstituted Grape will appear tonight at Winston’s Beach Club in Ocean Beach. And unlike most oldies groups, they are awfully close to the real thing. All but one of the five original members are on board: guitarists Jerry Miller and Peter Lewis, bassist Bob Mosley, and drummer Don Stevenson.

And they’re not only touring throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, but writing a bunch of new songs--something all too few oldies groups even bother with--in the hopes of getting a record deal.

Judging from recent concert reviews, the new Grape is every bit as good as the old. Since their fall from grace, the four have gone through some pretty hard times--at one point, in the 1970s, Mosley was pumping gas at a National City filling station--and thus seem particularly determined to make another go at it. Moby Grape was formed in 1967 in San Francisco. Miller, Mosley and Stevenson had previously played together as a trio, the Frantics. After hooking up with Lewis, who is Loretta Young’s son, and guitarist Skip Spence, who had briefly played drums in the Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape made quite a splash on the local club scene with its provocative music, a structured hybrid of folk-rock and the free-form psychedelia that was the rage in the Bay Area.

At the time, record company talent scouts were flocking to San Francisco for a wild signing spree, and Moby Grape promptly landed a deal with Columbia Records. The group’s debut was critically well received, but it was a commercial flop, perhaps because it got too much hype: Eight of the 13 songs were released simultaneously as singles, creating nothing but confusion for Top 40 deejays.

A second album, 1968’s “Wow,” also failed to make much of an impact on the charts, and the Grape subsequently disbanded, only to reunite a year later as a foursome, without Spence. Five years and countless breakups and reformations later, they finally gave up when an old manager, who had obtained rights to the name, banned the group from using the Moby Grape name.

Understandably, the group’s return last year, after such a long absence, was initially met with much skepticism. Since then, however, group members have more than proven themselves, cutting an excellent four-song demonstration tape in a San Francisco recording studio, which they’re still shopping around, and earning myriad plaudits for their live shows.

Reviewing a recent Legendary Grape concert in Seattle, where the four now live, a critic for the (Everett) Herald wrote, “They were playing their hearts out and nobody ever did it with any more savvy and genuine know-how.”

Christian rock group Petra, whose latest album, “Beyond Belief,” is currently one of the best-selling Christian music albums in the country, will appear Friday night at the Starlight Bowl in Balboa Park.

But Bob Hartman, who founded the group in 1972 while attending college in Indiana, said the problem of pigeonholing that the group has encountered since Day 1 has yet to be overcome.

“It’s funny. You can sing songs about just about every other kind of religious beliefs, as in reggae music, and be categorized alongside any other pop artist,” Hartman said. “But if you walk in a record store, you have to go to the Christian section to find a Christian record.

“It isn’t a big deal to me, but it is saying that music is still segregated to the point where a radio programmer might get one of our records and say it’s Christian and we don’t play Christian, even though the music might fit the format in every other way.”

As a result, you’re unlikely to hear Petra’s music on any non-Christian radio station, Hartman said, which drastically limits its potential audience.

Even so, Petra is doing quite well on its current concert tour. Nearly 3,000 tickets to the group’s Starlight Bowl show have already been sold--more than total ticket sales to recent concerts there by such non-religious acts as Dio and Los Lobos.

“We get both extremes,” Hartman said. “We have some in the church who think our music has nothing spiritual at all in it, and then we have people who think our music is nothing but holy, holy, holy.

“So there are misconceptions on both sides, and most of those misconceptions can be done away with once people actually hear the band.”

LINER NOTES: San Diegan Steve Vaus, producer of the second annual “The Stars Come Out for Christmas” benefit album, was in Nashville last week, shooting three promotional TV spots with country superstar Randy Travis. The spots will be broadcast nationally starting Nov. 26, the day the album, a compilation of Christmas tunes sung by big-name pop, rock and country acts, is released. This year’s beneficiaries are chapters of the American Cancer Society in 20 California cities, including San Diego, and various nonprofit children’s hospitals in the United States. . . .

Jello Biafra, former lead singer of hard-core punk-rock group the Dead Kennedys, will lecture tonight at UC San Diego’s Price Center ballroom on constitutional rights, censorship and the emergence of a “new right.” He’ll be speaking from experience: In 1985, the Dead Kennedys’ controversial “Frankenchrist” album cover forced Biafra to stand trial on charges of “distribution of harmful material to a minor.” The trial ended in a hung jury and the case was dismissed. . . .

Tickets go on sale Thursday at 3 p.m. for the Waterboys’ Dec. 9 show at Symphony Hall, and Iggy Pop’s Dec. 10 concert, with Alice in Chains, at Iguanas in Tijuana. Tickets go on sale Friday at 3 p.m. for the Cocteau Twins’ Dec. 10 concert at Spreckels Theatre downtown. Mazzy Star will open. . . .

Best concert bets for the coming week: Billy Joel, tonight at San Diego Sports Arena; Legendary Grape, featuring four original members of Moby Grape, tonight at Winston’s Beach Club; Bonedaddys with Punjabi, Thursday at Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach; Robert Vaughn and the Shadows with the Wild Bingos, Friday at Winston’s Beach Club; Judas Priest with Megadeth and Testament, Saturday at the Sports Arena; James Harman Band with Jerry McCann and the Band of Giants, Saturday at Belly Up Tavern; Tower of Power with the Wild Truth, Tuesday at the Bacchanal.