Customer Reviews

Spooky Two

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This album is one of the masterpieces of Rock music. Spooky Two ranks with The Beatles "Revolver" and "Abbey Road" and The Rolling Stones "Exile On Main Street" as one of the best records ever made. All of the songs are powerful, however I feel that "Waitin' For the Wind", "I've Got Enough Heartaches", "Lost In My Dream", and "Better By You, Better Than Me" are the highlights. The voices of Gary Wright and Mike Harrison are splendid, either on their own or in tandum. On the song "Evil Woman" they combine to drive the song higher and higher to a shattering climax. Spooky Tooth, while it recorded several fair albums both before and after Spooky Two, were never again able to reach the perfection of that record. Buy it for yourself and your friends who love great music.

their greatest album. fans of procul harum, traffic , early led zeppelin, etc. will enjoy this. not a bad track on the record. a dark and disturbing downer album . sheer power on every level: songwriting, playing( particularly guitarist luther grosvenor on tracks like "evil woman" and "better by you, better than me". the organ is also tastefully used on the recording.), and the incredible lead vocals of gary wright and the eternally underrated stellar singing of mike harrison , one of the finest english vocalists of that, or any time. couldn't recommend it any more than to say its an excellent addition to one's collection. hard to say what the best cut is, most would say either of the two i've mentioned. other than that , i've always loved the gospel styled " i've got enough heartaches" and the opening track "waitin for the wind", but like i say there isn't a bad number on spooky two. the record mixes hard rock, blues, soul, gospel, and even a little bit of eerie quasi- psychedelia for lack of a better term very well. it's easy to see why luminaries like george harrison and the move were fans of this fine band who never received the fame they deserved.

"Spooky Two" is a classic late sixties early seventies heavy metal album. The band Spooky Tooth sound a lot like early Deep Purple, though their music tends a bit more toward the psychedelic. The shared lead vocals by Gary Wright and Mike Harrison will remind you a little of Robert Plant. There are a lot of good instrumental jams through out the album and the production is first rate. "Feelin' Bad," "Evil Woman" and "That Was Only Yesterday," are probably the best tracks, though its hard to choose given the album's heavy consistency. "Evil Woman" is a classic of guitar and keyboard fury. A great soundtrack for any retro heavy metal party.

Okay I admit it! I bought this album in '69 because I liked the name of the band. Don't try this today kids. But what a pleasant surprise awaited my young Brit-Rock lovin' ears. File this with the Hoople boys for all time heavy organ drenched rock! "I've Got Enough Heartaches" is soulful as all get out. "Evil Woman" is better than any other song called "Evil Woman" if you know what I mean. And can this great vocalist be the same Gary Wright who would later make elevator operators everywhere swoon with'Dream Weaver'? Well yeah it is but here he's all rocker. Nobody even tries to make music this tough and supple anymore. Even the Tooth couldn't keep this incarnation together for more than one record. This is the one to own. 4 and 1/2 stars for the music and the fifth for the name.

This album is as good as any album of the late 60s to mid 70s and beyond rock albums, but just never really got the attention. I'll never fully understand why...maybe because there were so many established groups about at the time this was released and Spooky Tooth had no big names? I bought the album based on the name and the fact that I had heard "Evil Woman" played on an 'underground' FM rock station back at the time this album was released. Based on that one song, I figured this album would be worth the $4.99 (yep, that's what the vinyl cost in 1969) if only for that song...boy, was I totally surprised to hear that "Evil Woman" was about the 3rd or 4th best cut on the album! Add to the mystery that this was basically their only above average album--so, if you didn't get this album first, you'd probably not want to buy anything else Spooky Tooth released including this album! Anyway, this is without question a 60's rock album that everyone who loves that genre of music must have! Kind of the "perfect storm" of rock albums (without question, Tooth's perfect storm!); it has all the necessary elements for unique greatness. To be honest, this album was so good that somebody actually stoled it from me! So, as soon as the CD was available, I grabbed it. If you are reading these reviews and have enough interest in this album to even consider buying it JUST BUY IT! You'll never ever regret it. My only regret is that I didn't wait for the remastered version...but who knows, I may spring for that version too in time.

SPOOKY TWO is the best album by Spooky Tooth, an underrated band of hard rock pioneers. Their unique sound, a blend of Traffic, Cream, Procol Harum, the Jeff Beck Group, the Band, and Jimi Hendrix, was an enormous influence on numerous bands of the 70s and 80s, including the Winter brothers, Rick Derringer, and Foreigner. Mike Harrison and Gary Wright are, like Trapeze's Glenn Hughes, two of the greatest rock singers of all time, up there with Robert Plant, Paul Rodgers, and Steve Marriott. Like the other singers mentioned, Harrison and Wright take the Memphis-Chicago-Texas-St. Louis-Muscle Shoals-Detroit blues/R&B/soul styles, add a bit of the Band's Richard Manuel, and top it all off with the influences of English contemporaries Gary Brooker, Jack Bruce, Steve Winwood, and Rod Stewart, to create an original blend. These guys can do anything vocally and instrumentally, and it's great that their albums are now coming out on CD. Maybe a new generation of bands will pick up on Spooky Tooth's influence and incorporate it into their own music.

`Spooky Two' is, of course, the second album by `second British invasion band' Spooky Tooth who came to us with Traffic, Procol Harum, Yes, The Moody Blues, and King Crimson, just at the time when the great first wave bands such as the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Kinks were peaking. With all this going on at the same time as the American rock Renaissance, it is easy to see how Spooky Tooth can be lost in the shuffle.

I would probably have never noticed them at all if it were not for their final album, `A Genuine Tong Funeral' which I sincerely believe is the second greatest Rock idiom composition in a traditional genre, after the Who's `Tommy'.

But getting back to `Spooky Two', it is a very good album which has the misfortune of coming out among dozens of other very good albums which sound very much alike. One hallmark of the `second British invasion' may be `fusion', with the most obvious landmark work being Procol Harum's `A Whiter Shade of Pale' based on a work by Johan Sebastian Bach. One of my other favorite examples is Rod Stewart's performance of `Ol' Man River' on Jeff Beck's first solo album, `Truth'.

Spooky Tooth has its share of fusion elements on this album, but they borrow more heavily from choral music, most especially gospel influenced choral music than from the Yes/King Crimson/Procol Harum/Emerson, Lake, and Palmer borrowings from symphonic works.

Most of the tracks on this CD reissue of the 1969 LP are written or co-written by Gary Wright who went on to a modestly successful solo career after the `Tong Funeral' LP (which, the last time I looked, is, unfortunately not available on CD).

If you happen to be making a collection of major 1960's performers' recordings, I recommend this one and their last conventional album, `The Last Puff'.

I actually think this album is a bit overrated but I've given it five stars anyway because it was a landmark album in 1969. It suffers from poor production qualities which gave a muddy and unbalanced feel to some tracks. Also, the wide variety of styles, from country-rock (That Was Only Yesterday) through British soul (I've Got Enough Heartaches) to proto-metal (Evil Woman) is a bit uneven. But overall, the impact of such classics as 'Better by me, better than you', 'Evil Woman' and 'Waiting For The Wind' cannot be denied. The vocals by Harrison and Wright are really outstanding. After 30 years this is still a very enjoyable album.

My introduction to Spooky Tooth was through a local cover band in the early seventies that performed Waitin' For The Wind. I was completely enthralled with it and picked up the album expecting more like it. As it turned out, that particular song is somewhat of an anomaly compared to the rest of the album (Evil Woman being the only other heavy hitter). I was pleased nonetheless as it introduced me to their unique brand of music, and it has maintained its place over the years as one of my favorite albums. Its appeal has a lot to do with their ability to integrate obvious influences into a signature sound. What made them special rather than derivative involves subtle qualities that are hard to articulate. They had the advantage of distinctive vocals, which always helps, but their music also had a unique quality that separated them from similar bands. I would attribute that to a functional collaboration, a willingness of the stronger talent to accommodate the weaker, which made their music very engaging and varied. If that's the case, it was also a double edged sword. Over time they became their own worst enemy with experimental ambitions that kept fans guessing and ultimately frustrated. Regardless, Spooky Two represents the best of what they hoped to become, an inspired effort that belongs in any respectable rock music collection.

I keep surfing the radio hoping to hear creative, pulsing rock, but rarely do I find anything that cooks like old Spooky Tooth. Buy this one, and keep hoping that CD releases of Spooky Tooth's classics "Witness" and "You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw" follow real soon.