EXCLAMATION MARK

This is what Black Widow were doing before they were Black Widow, recorded in a hurry to get the band's music out there. Kay Garret's presence on vocals is the big difference here, though the Return To the Sabbat archival release offers the demo version of Black Widow's Sacrifice which includes her on vocals, and offers perhaps the best midpoint between the Pesky Gee style and what Black Widow would evolve into.

As it turns out, early Pesky Gee offers up a sort of soulful blues-prog - the sort of thing which is very reminiscent of what Jethro Tull were doing at around this time. The influence is only underlined by the presence of a cover of Tull's Dharma For One, alongside covers of material from acts like Family, Steppenwolf, and Donovan - their take on Donovan's Season of the Witch owing a bit to Vanilla Fudge's version. Still, I think it's This Was/Stand Up-era Tull which represents the primary creative influence out of all of those acts here.

At this stage of their development Pesky Gee/Black Widow feel like a band with some potential in terms of execution (especially once you account for the minimal studio time they were given to record this), but who were light on creative ideas of their own. Sure, cover versions were a bit more respected at the time, but by 1969 if you were cramming this many on one album it would tend to give the impression you don't have much in the way of a strong original vision. Of course, once the band hit on their distinctive gimmick it'd prompt a total reinvention - leaving the Pesky Gee days in the dust.

At the end of the day, this is a good and entertaining little album but not particularly memorable; its most recent rerelease is on the Sabbat Days boxed set, which offers the complete run of Black Widow's output from 1969 to 1972, and I suspect that may be the way to digest it, because I can't imagine most people would be interested in it if it weren't for the Black Widow connection.