Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Spooky Tooth - BBC Sessions (1968-1969)

I must admit that I didn't know much about the British band Spooky Tooth until it came their turn for my BBC project. It turns out I like their blues rock music, although they weren't together long. There was only enough for the one BBC album here.

Spooky Tooth formed in 1967. But at first they were known as "Art," and put out an album in 1967 with that name. The band had an excellent lead singer and keyboardist, Mike Harrison. However, they didn't have anyone who was really good at writing songs. So they got an American living in Europe named Gary Wright to join. He too was a lead singer and keyboardist, so they band wound up having two people in those roles. Wright would later find bigger fame in 1975 with the hit songs "Dreamweaver" and "Love Is Alive."

The band had two phases in their prime years. They were together from 1967 to 1970. Then they broke up, only to reunite in 1973 and 1974 for three more albums before breaking up again. Everything here is from 1968 and 1969 because I couldn't find BBC recordings from any other years.

Everything here is listenable, or I wouldn't have included it, but the sound quality does vary a lot. Tracks 1, 2, and 6 through 9 have all been released as bonus tracks, and their sound quality is excellent. The rest are unreleased, with five of the six coming from John Peel sessions, and their sound quality is where things get variable. None of those come from Top of the Pops transcription discs where the sound quality is pristine. I'm guessing most or all of them were taped off the radio. I edited three of those, the ones with "[Edit]" in their names. I believe I boosted the lead vocals some on those to make them more listenable.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 Sunshine Help Me (Spooky Tooth)
02 Too Much of Nothing (Spooky Tooth)
03 Tobacco Road (Spooky Tooth)
04 Evil Woman (Spooky Tooth)
05 Love Really Changed Me [Edit] (Spooky Tooth)
06 The Weight (Spooky Tooth)
07 Feelin’ Bad (Spooky Tooth)
08 I Can’t Quit Her (Spooky Tooth)
09 Blues Town (Spooky Tooth)
10 Better by You, Better than Me [Edit] (Spooky Tooth)
11 That Was Only Yesterday [Edit] (Spooky Tooth)
12 Pretty Woman [Edit] (Spooky Tooth)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16088488/SPOOKTH1968-1969_BBSessions_atse.zip.html

I'm not that happy with the cover photo, since all the band members are looking to the side. But it's really hard to find good color photos of this band, so this what we've got. I don't know when or where this photo comes from, but it's evident that it's from the band's 1968 to 1969 era.

5 comments:

  1. These songs come from a bootleg LP called First Tooth.

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  2. Thanks a lot for this one. I bought Spooky Two the week it came out. Shows my age lol!

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  3. Link not working - any chance of a re-up? Thank you, Simon

    ReplyDelete