Here’s how it’s supposed to happen: You make a great album. Your label gives you full support. The critics are enraptured. The audiences are, too. Boom. You’re a rock star. Welcome to immortality.

In 1967, that’s exactly how it played out for Moby Grape—except for the rock star part. More than 50 years later, while plenty of their contemporaries have assumed the mantle of rock gods, nobody talks about this once-promising band that blossomed out of the same San Francisco psychedelic scene that produced the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane. Ask anyone under Social Security age about Moby Grape, and they’ll assume you’re referring to the newest flavor of La Croix.

In the lore of rock & roll, Moby Grape is the rocket that failed to launch. In a year that saw the release of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, the Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, and now classic debut albums from the Dead, Pink Floyd, the Doors and Jimi Hendrix, some of the most rapturous reviews were reserved for Moby Grape’s first album.

So, what the hell happened?

Canadian journalist Cam Cobb tells the band’s story in his new book, What’s Big and Purple and Lives in the Ocean?: The Moby Grape Story (Jawbone Press). True to its subject, Cobb’s book is itself something of a psychedelic experience, its history told through a kaleidoscope of first-person narrative, oral history, even speculative fiction and dream sequences.

“They could have been a huge, huge band,” says Cobb from his home in Windsor, Ontario. “If you listen to that first album, they could have had hit after hit.”

Instead, by the end of the next year, the band was reeling from a series of bizarre music-biz mishaps and the full-on psycho-emotional meltdown of its charismatic frontman Skip Spence.

Through interviews with many of the surviving members of the band—Spence died in 1999—Cobb spends much of the book’s first half chronicling the group’s attempt at a comeback in the early 1970s. Only later does he backtrack and document the band’s crazy highs and lows, which took place mostly in ’67.

If Moby Grape had produced a masterpiece rock album that was sunk because of record industry indifference, that’s a familiar story. In fact, Columbia crippled the project by being too enthusiastic about the band. On the release of the band’s self-titled debut album, Columbia took the unprecedented (and mystifying) step of unleashing five singles from the album, all at the same time. Radio jocks were so confused, they essentially played none of them.

The release of the album—still considered a gem by many fans—coincided with what Cobb in his book calls “The Time of the Three Punches,” all occurring in the same month. The first “punch” was Columbia’s absurdly lavish launch party for the album which cost more than $100,000 (a lot of money in 1967). The party was way out of step with the hippie ethic of the time and created the impression that Columbia was hyping a Monkees-style fake band.

That same night, three of the band members were arrested for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” (being with underage girls late at night), which created bad press.

The third punch came a couple of weeks later when Moby Grape played the fabled Monterey Pop Festival. A disagreement between the festival’s organizers and the band’s infamously incompetent manager resulted in not only the band losing its coveted Sunday night slot alongside The Who and Hendrix, but also in its performance being entirely left out of the film and soundtrack of the festival.

That no-good-very-bad month was followed by Spence’s breakdown, which resulted in six months in Bellevue Hospital; and an insane situation in which the remaining band members had to compete against another band calling themselves Moby Grape (thanks to the band’s break with its incompetent manager).

Together, these strange blunders and missteps constituted a huge wipeout for a band that showed by the brilliance of their first album that they could have been giants.

“I call them tragic heroes,” Cobb says. “In literature, a tragic hero is someone who is capable of greatness and achieves a degree of it, but is stopped short by bad choices. That’s Moby Grape.”

What’s Big and Purple and Lives in the Ocean?: The Moby Grape Story
Out Now
Jawbone Press

Earlier this month, as he and his friends were having drinks in San Francisco, Cory Althoff was bemoaning the fact that he’d need to cut his night short if he wanted to make it back to his own bed in Los Altos. It was either that—or, if he wanted to stay out past the last Caltrain back down the peninsula—find a local friend with a couch.

It was a decision with which Althoff was all too familiar.

“Ever since I was in college and started going out in San Francisco, my friends and I have noticed it’s a huge problem,” he says, alluding to the fact that Caltrain and BART stop running around midnight most nights of the year, and that taking a taxi or an Uber back home is wickedly expensive.

And then he and his friend, Michael Horton had an idea: what if they hired a charter bus to take a large group home to a handful of destinations in the South Bay?

“Everyone just got really excited and they said they’d love to use that,” he recalls. “The next day we got up and basically just started working on the website and got it coded in 24 hours.”

That was two weeks ago, and the resulting website—MidnightExpress.io—allows people to book a $15 seat on a charter bus, which leaves San Francisco at 2am Saturday morning and drops up to 56 passengers off at a handful of South Bay destinations along the way.

In the wee hours of last Saturday, Dec. 20, they ran their first bus from SF down to the San Jose Caltrain Station, stopping at Palo Alto, Los Altos and Mountain View Caltrain stations en route. The was sold out.

“It’s been sort of a whirlwind,” Althoff says of how fast he and Horton took their idea from conception to reality.

Encouraged by the interest and success, Althoff and Horton are pressing forward. So far, they only run one bus, at the end of Friday night (early Saturday morning), and they only stop at the four above mentioned Caltrain stations. However, they are looking at the possibility of booking more buses and adding more nights and stops as demand grows.

They don’t have an app. Instead they have a simple website, which can be accessed from a browser or a mobile phone. For now, Althoff says, that’s all they really need. “We’ve got a really, really great response.”

As of publication, there are still slots open on the bus for this coming weekend and for New Years Eve. It’s true, Caltrain will run late between Dec. 31 and Jan. 1, but Althoff says he and Horton didn’t create Midnight Express to help people out on holidays.

“There are thousands of people that want to go out in San Francisco on the weekends,” he says. “And they want to stay out past midnight. We just want to give people a way to go out in the city and enjoy themselves and to be able to get home safe and get home affordability.”

The Midnight Express departs from the 4th and King Caltrain Station in San Francisco every Friday at 2am. More info.

Outside Lands Music Festival, one of the largest music events in Northern California, arrives in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on August 10-12, with more than 60 bands and a variety of specialty food options.

Our friends at SF Station put together a playlist featuring the 65 acts performing this year, including headliners Metallica, Neil Young and Stevie Wonder and up and coming Bay Area bands like Thee Oh Sees, Wallpaper and Geographer.

In addition to the main festival, many of the bands will perform special night shows at major venues throughout San Francisco—perfect for those who didn’t get a ticket before the festival sold our and those who plan to spend their days at San Jose Jazz Summerfest.

What Outside Lands acts are you excited to see?