My Top 1000 Songs #940--8:05

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Moby Grape's 1967 debut--IMHO the single finest LP to rise from San Francisco's Summer of Love (with apologies to the Grateful Dead & Jefferson Airplane)--offers a wealth of outstanding songs in a variety of styles. Having already noted one of the album's more upbeat acid rockers, I now turn to the record's prettiest song. "8:05" is a gentle acoustic number with lovely harmonies. It's the sort of song I think of in the same breath as The Youngbloods' "Get Together" or Kaleidoscope's "Please" or the Airplane's "My Best Friend" as a folk-rock touchstone of the era; and it envisions where the Dead would land a few years later with American Beauty.

On the Mike Douglas Show, 1968:

Gorgeous cover from Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant: