Spooky Tooth Spooky Two

Call me mad.  I just listened to my new Japanese CD of Spooky Tooth's Spooky Two.  This is a gatefold mini-LP, with the Island label imprint, so I assume it's the British as opposed to U.S. version, which was on A&M and had a fairly crappy standard sleeve.

I don't buy these imports on a whim -- I can't afford it. This has always been one of my favorite albums.  The sad thing is I can't read most of the accompanying liner notes, they being in Japanese.  The good news is that the sound is perfection, putting my by comparison sludgy LP to shame.  There are some diagrams on the liner notes which I presume purport to show why this sounds so good, but they are inscrutable to me.

The album has one of my all-time favorite songs:  Evil Woman.  The song is pure overblown proto-prog, with a positively growling Hammond, deep rumbling bass and in your face drums, and of course the Harrison/Wright vocal call and response of the lyrics.  Oh, and what I consider the second best guitar solo of the era (only bested by Blackmore on Child In Time).

Of course the album is not a one-trick pony.  There's a lot to enjoy here, particularly Waitin' for the Wind and Better By You, Better Than Me, which of course was covered by Judas Priest. 

The album has a couple of nice bonus tracks in The Band's The Weight, which is nice enough as it goes, and Oh! Pretty Woman, which again is nice enough as it goes.  However, neither really rises above the "pretty good cover" designation.

Evil Woman was written by Larry Weiss, who as far as I can tell never recorded it, or if so perhaps on an extremely obscure label.  Spooky Tooth apparently recorded the song after Canned Heat, who had recorded it for their Boogie With album, at least a year or two prior.  I would say Spooky's version is definitive, though I haven't heard the Canned Heat version for probably 40 years.  It was also apparently recorded by the Troggs, which would presumably pre-date the Canned Heat take again by a year or two.

Edited by jammun - December 19 2008 at 15:11

For those who may casually stumble across this post, let me repeat you'll be hard-pressed to find a better guitar solo from the era than Luther Grosvenor's on Evil Woman.