SPOOKY TOOTH

SPOOKY TOOTH were a five piece band out of London, England and this is album number two from 1969. I'm into consistent albums and this is surprisingly consistent given the year. Kind of a hard rocking, bluesy, psychedelic affair with some prog leanings. The vocalist Mike Harrison is fantastic! He can belt it out and sing in different ranges really well. Bassist Greg Ridley would play with HUMBLE PIE while Luther Grosvenor the guitarist played with STEALERS WHEEL and MOTT THE HOOPLE. But the big name here is Gary Wright playing organ. As a teenager I was mesmerized with "Dream Weaver" and "Love Is Alive". Here on the opener "Waitin' For The Wind" he comes in with this distorted, rolling organ that is nasty and this along with the vocals makes this my favourite track off the album. The nine minute "Evil Woman" is just a killer track. The vocals and lyrics especially. Then there's the catchy "Better By You, Better Than Me" which was covered by JUDAS PRIEST. There's some not so great numbers like the gospel sounding "I've Got Enough Heartaches" which is about the vocals or "That Was Only Yesterday" which starts out ballad-like but then kicks into gear but I'm just not into it. The rest though is great to varying degrees. A solid 4 stars.

This album sounds to me like it maybe was recorded to fill contractual obligations with the record label. Maybe I´m wrong. But at that time SPOOKY TOOTH was a trio of remaining original members Mike Harrison (vocals), Luther Grosvenor (guitar) and Mike Kellie (drums), after Gary Wright (keyboards, vocals, and main composer of the band) and Andy Leight (bass) left the band after the release of the "Ceremony" album, which was recorded with French Avant Garde musician Pierre Henry. For this "The Last Puff" album, which was released as "SPOOKY TOOTH FEATURING MIKE HARRISON" in July 1970, they had Chris Stainton as producer. He also was the keyboard player / bassist for the GREASE BAND, a band which accompanied singer Joe Cocker in some of his early albums and tours in the late sixties and early seventies. So, maybe it was Stainton who brought some of the other members of the GREASE BAND to help SPOOKY TOOTH to record this album (guitarist Henry McCullough and bassist Alan Spenner). So, this album obviously sounds somewhat influenced by the sound of Joe Cocker, Chris Stainton and the Grease Band. Maybe one connection between SPOOKY TOOTH and Chris Stainton and The Grease Band was Mike Kellie, who previously appeared as session drummer on two tracks of Joe Cocker's successful "With a Little Help from My Friends" (1969) album.

This "The Last Puff" album starts with a cover of THE BEATLES's "I am the Walrus". A very well arranged heavy version, with some uncredited female backing vocals (like in other songs in this album), good guitar solos and generally very well played by the band. This song is maybe the most known song from this album, even being played a lot on the radio. It even was played by another very different line-up of SPOOKY TOOTH during their tour in 1974 (Gary Wright, Mike Patto, Val Burke, Bryson Graham and Mick Jones) with a similar musical arrangement!

The next track is Gary Wright's "The Wrong Time", also with some uncredited female backing vocals. I don't know why a song composed by a former member of the band was recorded for this album. Maybe it was played by the band before Wright left the band, so they decided to record it for this album.

The next track is Joe Cocker's song titled "Something to Say", a song which he was going to release in his album titled "Joe Cocker" (or titled as "Something to Say" in the U.K.) from 1972. Maybe SPOOKY TOOTH was the first band to record this song.

Two other covers of songs, "Nobody There at All" and "Down River" (both from less known songwriters, at least for me) sound good but maybe more far from the band´s original musical style, both sounding a bit like Pop Rock / Blues / Soul songs from the U.S.

"Son Of Your Father" is a song composed by Elton John and Bernie Taupin which is good, too.

The album ends with Stainton's "The Last Puff", which is a slow Blues / Jazz musical piece without vocals. It sounds good, too, but I think that they only recorded it to have more material to finish the album.

In conclusion: this album is good, but, as I wrote before, it sounds more like a record contract obligation album than anything else, with a lot of influences from Blues, Soul and Heavy Rock music, obviously influenced by the presence of three members of Joe Cocker's backing band led by Producer Chris Stainton. The band even toured a bit to promote this album in late 1970, but with John Hawken on keyboards and Steve Thompson on bass (there is a short video from this tour on youtbe), and without Stainton, McCullough and Spenner, before they split until 1972, when the band was reformed by Harrison and Wright with some new members.

The first time that I listened to this album was in the late seventies in an AM Radio station's broadcast . That AM radio station from my city was called "Radio Capital" (I don't know if it still exists) and it had a then famous radio programme called "Vibraciones", which some days of the week broadcasted some albums by some bands at night.

For this album, the original bassist of the band Greg Ridley (who went to form HUMBLE PIE) was replaced by Andy Leigh. The album's full title is "Ceremony - An Electronic Mass", and it was released as a collaboration by SPOOKY TOOTH / PIERRE HENRY, but in France it was credited as being an album by "PIERRE HENRY AVEC SPOOKY TOOTH".

This is an Experimental / Avant Garde / Rock Music collaboration between French Electronic Music composer PIERRE HENRY and the English Rock band SPOOKY TOOTH. I don't know how this collaboration was agreed and done, but it really sounds more like HENRY recorded his electronic music parts after the band recorded their musical parts. It really gives the impression that both parts were recorded separatedly and later mixed together song by song, which each song credited to be composed by HENRY with GARY WRIGHT (the main composer in the band). The sound mixing in my opinion is not very good, because HENRY's parts are more at the front of the mixing, and the music of the band is more in the background, with HENRY's parts sometimes sounding more like "interferences" to the band's music. This album has very good musical parts played by the band with the added electronic effects, noises and voices by HENRY. But, as a whole, it really wasn't a very successful collaboration. It has some interesting musical parts, but, as WRIGHT said in one interview, it really wasn't an album done in SPOOKY TOOTH's typical musical style, and it wasn't considered by him and the band as a SPOOKY TOOTH album, but the record label anyway wanted to release it as an album by SPOOKY TOOTH with PIERRE HENRY, against the band's wishes

Considered by Wright as a "failure" that "ended our career then", I think that this album has some interesting moments, even if I am not very much a fan of Experimental / Avant Garde music. Wright and Leigh left the band after this album was released, and the remianing members of the band (Grosvenor, Harrison and Kellie) remained together for a short time to record their next album titled "The Last Puff" (1970).

Spooky Tooth - Spooky Two (1969)

If you claim to have any love for sixties psych and prog its roots, you simply can't ignore this great second album Spooky Tooth. Psychedelic rock with soul and stunning performances by Mike Harrison, whoes voice is one of the better of the psychedelic movement. All songs on this album are great, but organ-driven opening track 'Waiting for the wind', the extended 'Evil Woman', the epic "Lost in a dream' and the cover 'Better by you, better then me' stand out. Furthermore, the album has a nice sixties sound with only minor flaws in the production (a few pitch anomalies). When people visit you when you play this record even the silliest among them will recognise this as being 'pure rock'. I can also warmly recommend the less adventerious but nice 'The Last Puff'. Four stars.

What a blast from the past, better than I remember!

Spooky Tooth ? Spooky Two is a classic in sound and style. Its got that 60s communal, almost Joe Cocker sound at times, that hammond organ heavy rock sound, that good hard rock guitar sound, and even a great gospel sound on an occasion.

Spooky Tooth are almost a pre-supergroup in 1969 in this line up with Gary Wright on keyboards of future "Dream Weaver" fame leading the way, Luther Grosvenor (alias Ariel Bender of the later years of Mott the Hoople fame) on guitar, and Mike Kellie on drums from Three Man Army duty, as well as Mike Harrison who shares vocals and keyboards with Gary, and then Greg Ridley bringing up the bass.

Most of the sound is heavy in nature with the opening track "Waiting for the Wind" as my favorite. Almost all the songs are full of delightful hooks that are not cheesy or forced by no means, but just darn good.

Four to four and a half stars, will keep it at 4 in the proto-prog world. Younglings and geezers alike, take a little trip back in time with Spooky Tooth!

This is often one of the most maligned album in the Spooky Tooth discography, probably because the combination of avant garde composer Pierre Henry with Spooky Tooth is regarded as a mismatch, much like Lou Red and Metallica decades later and the maligned Lulu in 2011. One listen to Ceremony and you get the impression that a.) Neither Pierre Henry nor Spooky Tooth listened to each others work, and so it sounds as if Pierre Henry did his thing, then Spooky Tooth their thing, and then have them combined, and voila! or b.) you get the impression that neither Pierre Henry had an understanding of rock music nor Spooky Tooth had an understanding of avant garde. So I can understand why people might run at the thought of this album, even I admit that some of Pierre Henry's part threatens to drown out Spooky Tooth's music. Thanks to the Electric Prunes releasing Mass in F Minor, I imagined this was the reason for Spooky Tooth to do their own rock Mass, but unlike the Prunes, they didn't use Gregorian chanting in a rock context. Now let me tell you that Spooky Tooth's end of things is nothing short of amazing. They really rock like there's no tomorrow. I can't believe this is that same Gary Wright later of Dream Weaver fame, because he really rips it on organ here! The problem comes with Pierre Henry. It's like he never even heard what the band put down before he did his part, as mentioned earlier, so it sounds like a bunch of random sounds that rarely seem to go appropriately with the music. One could say it sounds like a bad Krautrock album, because the best Krautrock out there the musicians involved had a full understanding of both rock and avant garde (in fact several Can members were Stockhausen disciples) and took that knowledge to their full advantage. There's a couple parts of this album that annoys me, particularly "Jubilation". Although the band puts on some killer bluesy guitar riffs on that song, you keep hearing this "bi bi bi bi bi bi bi bi bi bi" voices that NEVER stops. Despite the obvious flaws, there are some really brilliant and amazing moments put by the band, and if they did this by themselves without Pierre Henry, this could probably felt as one of Spooky Tooth's defining moments. Yet I still want to give it a four star rating (it would be five if Pierre Henry took his approach better) because I was blown away by what the band were doing.

Not a very interesting album for my taste, this first album by Spooky Tooth shows the band in a more Pop Rock and Psychedelic style, with all members of the band playing very well their instruments, and with very good lead and backing vocals by Mike Harrison and Gary Wright. Sometimes these vocals sound a bir "dramatic" in some songs, and they also use the harpsichord in some songs, an instrument which I think it was not very often used in bands of the sixties. Sometimes the music becomes heavier, but I can say that most songs are a bit more Pop Rock than in the next album titled "Spooky Two", which in my opinion is heavier and more "dark" and in general much better than this first album. Their first album really sounds a bit dated in sound, and the recording and mixing are good but showing the passing of time. I can say the same about the cover design. "Spooky Two" is a much better album than this and for this reason is more remembered and considered as their best album, I think. For collectors and fans only.

On Spooky Two, Spooky Tooth offer a gritty organ and guitar-driven sound which charts a course that meanders between the evocative prog-leaning proto-metal of Deep Purple or Atomic Rooster on the one hand and the brash, bluesy hard rock of the Faces on the other. Unlike the classics of those bands, however, it doesn't quite elevate itself beyond the aesthetic of its time and the album never quite catches fire; although all of the songs on here are good, if you've got an appreciable 1970s hard rock collection you've probably heard a lot of the tricks on here done better by other artists.

The absolute best and most original song on here is Better By You, Better Than Me, and to be honest the Judas Priest cover version of that number absolutely blows the original out of the water. Doubtless innovative on release, Spooky Two doesn't quite endure the test of time, though if you are feeling nostalgic and want to evoke the feel of the early 1970s it's an effective way to accomplish that.

The Last Puff is Spooky Tooth's fourth album and the last one before a break for three years. This album was recorded while the band had already fallen a part, containing only three original Spooky members: Mike Harrison on vocals, Luther Grosvenor at the guitars and Mike Kelly on drums. The band was completed by the addition of members of Joe Cocker's band and no one should be surprised that this album became Spooky Tooth's most soul-orientated album. This record mainly consists of cover songs like "I am the Walrus" from the Beatles; "Something to say" from Joe Cocker and "Son of your Father" from Elton John. Although the band was breathing out it's last breath (or puff) and the artists mentioned will not excite all members on PA, this record is actually pretty good, especially when considering the circumstances during it's production.

I'm not too fond of Beatle covers (read my Vanilla Fudge's debut review), but this version of "I am the Walrus" of Spooky Tooth I find mindblowing. The minimalistic psychedelic hardrock approach during the verses combined with the outstanding soul vocals of Mike Harrison gives me the thrills. The instrumental acid rock parts in addition makes this in my opinion the best cover ever (even better then Voivod's Astronomy Divine cover). This cover is a masterpiece and may be the best song ever recorded by Spooky Tooth.

"The Wrong Time" which is a song written by Gary Wright who had left Spooky Tooth before this recording is the second best song on the record and only original Spooky Tooth song. This song shows the artistic approach of Spooky Tooth's earlier efforts, which is the reason Spooky Tooth was added on PA. A great soul song with nice percussion. All the other songs are more or less pure soul songs. Spooky Tooth as a band however was far more skilled then Joe Cocker's band and the vocals of Mike Harrison are shining throughout this record.

This record is advised for music lovers with a positive attitude towards soul music. Spooky Tooth's version of "I am the Walrus" is advised for everyone and this record is discommended for prog purists. Like prog reviewer Chicapah has mentioned the first side of the record is the better one - containing the two best songs of the record. I do like the second side too and cannot find a weak song on this album. First side: 4+ stars/ second side: 3,5 stars.

After their LP "Ceremony" was released, Gary Wright left the band. Mike Harrison, Mike Kellie and Luther Grosvenor recorded one more album called "The Last Puff" with some assistance from some musicians of Joe Cocker´s band in 1970, and also toured briefly that year before they split.

In 1973, Harrison and Wright re-formed the band with guitarist Mick Jones (later the founder of Foreigner in 1976). After some changes in personnel and two albums, in 1974 the band recorded this album called "The Mirror" , now with Mike Patto, Bryson Graham and Val Burke in the line-up, and with Gary Wright as the only original member. As I read in one website dedicated to the band, it seems that Patto and Wright had some conflicts in the musical direction of the band, so after this album was released, Wright left the band and took the name of the band with him. So, the band was dissolved until in 1999 the band was reformed by Mike Harrison, Mike Kellie, Luther Grossvenor and Greg Ridley (but without Wright) and they recorded an album called "Cross Purposes" (which I have not listened to yet).

This "The Mirror" album is mostly influenced in sound by Gary Wright and it also has the predominant use of synthesisers. It also has a very good recording and mixing.It also has in sound more influences by the mid- seventies Hard Rock style, but it also has some progressive influences.

The best songs in this album are "Kyle" (a very good ballad), "Fantasy Satisfier" and "The Mirror". "The Hoofer", a song by Patto, is a bit different in style to the other songs.

The original LP cover was very good in design, having a die-cut cover on which an inner sleeve drawing could be seen. To see scans of the original LP cover visit www.collectable- records.ru/groups/spooky_tooth/mirror.htm

This album was re-issued several times with different covers and even under a different title ("Comic Violence" ).