by Michael LelloWeekender Editor
If you hear a moe. fan raving about a particularly “sick” show, there’s a doctor that has the cure. Dr. Stan Lobitz, a Kingston-based general practice physician, is the popular jam band’s archivist, cataloging and organizing the recordings of moe.’s concerts, which are often released as live albums or downloads.
Lobitz, a longtime Grateful Dead and Phish fan as well as “a voracious taper” of both bands, first heard moe. in the 1990s thanks to a fellow taper.
“Someone had just sent me a tape of moe. for filler for a Grateful Dead show, and it piqued my interest,” Lobitz said last week after a late night in the emergency room. “I saw my first moe. show in 1996 at the Middle East in Philadelphia. They knew I was a longtime taper, and I had gear for burning CDs. I was probably the only person they knew that had a CD burner.”
Lobitz said moe., which records all of its concerts, began sending him tapes, which he transferred to CDs for the band. He now catalogs and digitally backs up all the band’s shows. When moe. or its management needs material for a live release, they call the doctor, literally. Official live releases from the Lobitz-maintained archive include “Warts and All, Vol. 1,” recorded in 2001 at the Scranton Cultural Center; “Warts and All, Vol. 3,” which features a drawing of Lobitz by moe. guitarist Chuck Garvey on its cover; and a series called “Dr. Stan’s Prescription.”
Lobitz laughed when asked how it felt to see his face and name on moe. releases and noted the “Dr. Stan’s Prescription” title was the idea of moe. manager John Topper, not the archivist himself.
“Chuck had already put a caricature of me on a ‘Warts and All’ album,” explained Lobitz, who is originally from Drums, near Hazleton. “I found it really neat to see my ugly mug on tour shirts and such. It was Topper’s idea to use that name, and he wanted to kind of separate it from the ‘Warts and All’ thing, just showing that those releases were more my picks.”
Though busy at his medical practice, Lobitz tries to attend as many shows as possible — about a dozen a year, he said. He plans on being at the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg on Wednesday, Jan. 27 and said he’s working on assembling some material for an upcoming moe. “special appearance” for radio that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss in detail.
While some of Lobitz’s patients have no clue about his insider status with a band that is a regular at the Bonnaroo festival, has headlined at Radio City Music Hall and shared stages with everyone from The Who and Robert Plant to The Dead and Dave Matthews Band, others are very much in the know.
“Some of my younger patients would show up sometimes for sketchy reasons — a sore throat or whatever,” he said. “And kind of on the way out, they’d say, ‘Do you have a copy of the New Year’s show from yada yada?’ and I’d have to hook them up with CDs.”
w
