CoronaVinyl Day 57 (Album I've Never Listened To Before): Spooky Two by Spooky Tooth

For an explanation of CoronaVinyl, click here.

Today's CoronaVinyl category is an album I've never listened to before.  And yes, I realize that the proper way to phrase that would have been "an album to which I have not before listened," but good Christ, that's cumbersome.  Anywho, I added this category because there are a lot of records in my collection that I've never heard.  This issue comes from my purchases of various lots of records over the years, so I might get 50 records at a time from an online estate sale, and who has the time to listen to all those records?  Well, now I do.

I've heard of the late '60s/early '70s British rock band Spooky Tooth is one of those bands that I've heard of, but I have never actually heard their music.  I couldn't tell you where or when I acquired their 1969 sophomore effort Spooky Two, but I have it, and I've never listened to it -- nor did I really know much of anything about the band -- until today.  Tuesday?  More like Toothday!

The album is pretty solid.  It's late '60s rock, sometimes blues-based, sometimes psychedelic, sometimes hard rock.  It reminds me of Mountain, Joe Cocker, Blind Faith, Faces, and even Deep Purple.  As I delved into the band's history and the album, I found a few things interesting:

• The band had two keyboardists, Mike Harrison and Gary Wright (the latter of later "Dream Weaver" fame).  They would also share vocal duties, though Harrison was the main singer.
• One of the tracks on the album is "Better By You, Better Than Me," which was covered by Judas Priest on their 1978 album Stained Class.  The cover version gained infamy after a 1985 incident, where two friends in Nevada (one who was 18 and one who was 20) entered into a suicide pact, got hammered, and decided to shoot themselves in the face with a shotgun in a church playground.  One died instantly, and the other survived, but died three years later.  In 1990, the latter's parents sued Judas Priest, claiming that there was a subliminal message of "do it" in the song that prompted the boys to try to kill themselves.  I realize how ridiculous this sounds, but you have to remember that, in the '80s and '90s, heavy metal music was a popular target on which to blame all of society's ills.  After all, it couldn't be that depression, substance abuse, or mental illness caused people to kill themselves or others.  Rather, it had to be Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Slayer, or Marilyn Manson.  Thankfully, the parents lost their case, though it cost Judas Priest a quarter million dollars in legal fees to defend against.
• Spooky Tooth went through various lineup changes and reunions over the next few years, before disbanding in 1974, but many of the band members over the years found success elsewhere:
• Wright went on to play piano on George Harrison's All Things Must Pass in 1970 before reuniting with Spooky Tooth for 1973's You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw album -- definitely a title that wouldn't fly today -- before going solo, helping bring the synthesizer to the forefront of music, and, of course, making the hit 1976 song "Dream Weaver."
• Bassist Greg Ridley left the band after Spooky Two to co-found Humble Pie.
• Guitarist Luther Grosvenor left the band after their 1970 album The Last Puff, and went on to play with Stealers Wheel before changing his name to Ariel Bender and joining Mott the Hoople for a few years.
• Grosvenor was replaced in Spooky Tooth by Mick Jones, who would go on to form Foreigner in 1976.
• Guitarist Henry McCullough played on the band's 1970 album Last Puff, and then went on to join Paul McCartney's band Wings for several years.  He is also the voice at the end of Pink Floyd's "Money," saying "I don't know.  I was really drunk at the time."

The Spotify version of the album has nine extra songs.

Favorite song from Side 1:  "Evil Woman"
The last track on Side 1 is a nine-minute acid blues proto-metal jam that sounds like Deep Purple did a few years later.

Favorite song from Side 2:  "Better By You, Better Than Me"
You can see why Judas Priest decided to cover this one nine years later.  It's another hard rock, proto-metal song, with brooding bluesy undertones and a nice earworm of a guitar riff.