Spooky Tooth, The Last Puff (1970)

It’s no coincidence that the fourth Spooky Tooth album, The Last Puff, is billed as ‘Spooky Tooth Featuring Mike Harrison,’ as their frontman absolutely tears it up across the seven-track/33-minute long-player first released in 1970 on Island Records. I don’t know if Spooky Tooth were ever a household name in terms of hits, but either Harrison and guitarist Luthor Grosvenor (who also played in Mott the Hoople) led one incarnation or another of the band between 1967 and 2009, and even their initial run from ’67-’74 is longer than some groups of the birth-of-heavy era managed to last. There were lineup changes even during that time though, and The Last Puff brought together Grosvenor, Harrison and drummer Mike Kellie with The Grease Band, who were best known for backing Joe Cocker at Woodstock in 1969. No minor shakes, and certainly the arrangements on The Last Puff‘s tracks play that out as well.

Those were guitarist Henry McCullough (later of Wings), bassist Alan Spenner (who played with a ton of people from Roxy Music to David Coverdale) and pianist/keyboardist Chris Stainton (whose CV boasts lines with The Who, Marianne Faithfull and Ringo Starr, among others), and what they bring to The Last Puff in vibe is not to be understated. In the pedal-steel and organ-meets-piano rollout of “Nobody There at All” (co-written by Mike Post, who later penned the theme to Law & Order) and especially in their six-and-a-half-minute righteously lumbering take on The Beatles‘ “I am the Walrus,” which is the opener and longest inclusion on the LP (immediate points), this incarnation of Spooky Tooth make their mark in a soulful vision of the blues rock of the era, standing out in terms of tone, Harrison‘s believable soul, and in the organic sound of what surrounds him as he “features,” which includes background singers on “I am the Walrus” and the subsequent “The Wrong Time,” on which Harrison summons his inner Robert Plant in likewise believable form. The hook in that second track is a landmark unto itself, and its nodding, funky central verse riff feels like a blueprint on which an entire sprawl of heavy rock would be constructed in the years following by the likes of Humble Pie and, oh, the next three generations. More laid back and less dirt-encrusted than Blue Cheer, not as stately as Cream always seemed to want to be, The Last Puff found a place of its own in what was already a crowded sphere of emerging heavy rock and roll.

Percussion and a more ranging vibe, jaw harp, more singers and all, bring “Something to Say” to a hypnotic place in its second half as the presumed end of side A, but “Nobody There at All” is a return to ground on side B, introducing a stretch of four shorter tracks that round out the album neatly without losing the open spirit of the preceding three. With piano up front and vocals deeper in the mix, “Down River” spends its early going in a build that seems to come to a gradual fruition before it’s done, but still doesn’t touch the five-minute mark; the only shame of it is that it fades out just as Kellie seems to really start wailing on his drums. I’m sure that tape exists in some closet of Island Records somewhere. The closing duo is a bluesy take on Elton John‘s “Son of Your Father” that fades neatly into the instrumental title-track, which is the shortest piece at just three and a half minutes and, being instrumental, doesn’t feature Harrison at all, but follows suit with the spirit of the rest of the record just the same, with an interplay of piano and keys and a bounding groove.

You can read the band’s narrative and discography in the usual spots on the internet, the Wikipedias, Discogses, and artist websites, but what you want to know is that after 1970, Grosvenor left Spooky Tooth. They were broken up for a couple years and came back in 1973 with the titled-in-such-a-manner-as-to-get-your-band-canceled-today You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw and the same year’s Witness. Founding keyboardist/vocalist Gary Wright led the band through 1974’s Mirror and that would be their last release until 1999’s Cross Purpose, which brought Grosvenor, Kellie and Harrison back into the group with bassist Greg Ridley. As noted, they’d continue to play live with Kellie and Harrison in the band in spurts for about the next decade, then split. Kellie passed away in 2017 and Harrison in 2018, while Grosvenor, performing under the pseudonym Ariel Bender, did reunion dates with Mott the Hoople.

Bands either last or they don’t, and while the members of Spooky Tooth went on to do interesting things as players and as a group, it’s probably their earliest run — 1968’s It’s All About, 1969’s Spooky Two and Ceremony, and The Last Puff — that’s best known. They’re hardly in an exclusive category there, or really with their sound, but even if there seem to be an infinite number of bands who were rocking out in like fashion at the time, look around you. Not much has changed in that regard.

That said, I’ll admit that my first experience with The Last Puff happened just last week. I’m by no means an expert on the band’s history or what they accomplished, but while I was at Ode to Doom in Manhattan last Wednesday, the “I am the Walrus” cover came on the P.A. in between the bands, and being the Beatles fan that I am — you know Charles Manson was crazy because it’s obvious all their songs were written just to speak only to me — it immediately caught my ear to the degree that I asked the sound guy who was doing the song. In my didn’t-already-know-it defense I’ll say just that he also had to go check who it was. My tolerance for Beatles covers is low, low, low, so that was enough to make me check out the rest of The Last Puff, and I have absolutely zero regret at having done so.

As always, I hope you don’t either.

Thanks for reading.

—

Holy crap, I’m behind. On like, everything. Mostly news. With news and reviews, I’ve got Monday and Tuesday fully booked already and Wednesday more than halfway there. If I see one more relevant press release today, I’m gonna cry.

That’d be business as usual to some degree but for all the other stuff. The next Freak Valley lineup announcement needs doing this weekend (I’m not sure when it’s actually going out), plus a bio for the recently-recorded The Atomic Bitchwax LP — it’s their first in 15 years with a new guitarist, so much to talk about — as well as another bio to edit and a Gimme Radio playlist for the show that’ll air next Friday.

Perfect time to be incredibly, incredibly distracted, right? Totally. The good news is that while I was writing the above portion of this post, I took my emails down from about 220 to under 60. The bad news is there are only so minutes in the day and those were minutes I didn’t spend writing this sentence or whichever one about being super-productive I’d have written in its place.

As ever: some you win, some you lose.

I had a minor surgery on my left leg at the start of the month. It’s 8:18AM now and the right leg is being done at 10. So there you go. That to some degree is probably a source of distraction — it’s not a big deal on medical terms, but it sure did hurt like hell last time and I was laid up for a few days after; if it’s any indicator, it puts in question my going to see Warhorse next week — but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s shit to be done.

By the way, I just stopped writing to put up the Uncle Woe post and wound up falling down a Facebook hole reading about how they’re closing the Middle East in Boston. This morning has been brutal.

Alright, the kid’s long since up and with The Patient Mrs., so let me wrap up. I was kind of hoping writing now would turn my head around, but turns out my head is spinning and requires more than mere typing can give. Like coffee.

Next week: Deathwhite, Big Scenic Nowhere and Galactic Cross reviews. A Devil to Pay video premiere, and an album stream from The Spacelords. Not in that order. You’ll dig it. It’s a good week.

And side note, Wednesday has filled up while I’ve been sitting here with the laptop open.

Super.

Did I mention holy crap I’m behind?

Great and safe weekend. Be kind to someone. Maybe yourself.

FRM: Forum, Radio, Merch at MiBK.

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King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)

An observation by King Crimson, and a brilliant one at that. The first time I heard King Crimson‘s 1969 debut, In the Court of the Crimson King was on the flight home from my honeymoon. I was 23, and while by some standards that was late to encounter the record, it’s a setting I wouldn’t have traded a decade for, returning from my first time out of the country, The Patient Mrs. sitting next to me as I loaded the disc into the bulky CD player I’d continue to use for years afterwards — 23-year-old me is a little disappointed every time 33-year-old me plays a song on my phone — the swells of the closing semi-title-track “Court of the Crimson King” matching the puffy whites and greys of clouds outside the aircraft window. It’s an association I’ll always have with the first King Crimson record, and that may well be part of why I consider it among the best albums I’ve ever heard, but sentiment aside, I think even the most objective observer would have to be taken aback by just how much ground the UK band — the lineup of Robert Fripp (guitar), Michael Giles (drums, backing vocals, percussion), Greg Lake (vocals, bass), and Ian McDonald (flute, clarinet, sax, keys, harisichord, piano, vibraphone, backing vocals, etc.) — were able to break on their debut release. Out through Island Records in the UK and Atlantic in the US for its original pressing, its 44 minutes continue to serve as a blueprint for the founding consciousness that typifies nearly every strain of progressive rock. It’s the higher consciousness that all those acid-heads were trying to attain.

King Crimson are probably more known for 1974’s Red, or their 1981 post-hiatus return, Discipline, which in many ways set the tone for everything that followed it, but In the Court of the Crimson King makes for an even more striking listen because it’s as much about its melodies as its experimentalism. From the jagged insistence of “21st Century Schizoid Man” — a landmark in itself and a defining moment for the band — through the closer’s spacious roll and minimalist interplay, King Crimson were beyond just freaking out. Every texture in the mellotron-infused “Moonchild,” and every pseudo-militaristic drum stop in “Epitaph” has its companion sense of melody, and the work as a whole is as gorgeous as it is complex. The dreamy wisps of “I Talk to the Wind” are much stronger for it, and while King Crimson would ultimately become more of a show of technicality and genre-defining progressive rhythms under various lineups incorporating the likes of guitarist/vocalist Adrian Belew, bassist Tony Levin and drummer Bill Bruford — nothing against that band, those players or anyone else who might have “I played ‘x’ in King Crimson” on their resumé — this earliest incarnation of the group was unafraid to complement all that distinguishing class with simple sweetness, and that was something that they’d never quite do in the same way again. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, listen to the early part of “Moonchild.”

Of course, that’s not to belittle the band’s subsequent accomplishments or what Greg Lake would go on to do with Emerson, Lake and Palmer, or what Fripp continues to do with the modern version of King Crimson — which if I recall correctly featured no fewer than three drummers on their most recent US tour; I was sorry I missed it — just to highlight the fact that In the Court of the Crimson King is something special and it was a shortlived moment in the band’s ultimate trajectory. I can’t imagine this post is anyone’s first time hearing it, but if it is or if you’re just revisiting, fair enough. I can’t imagine this version posted on YouTube will be there all that long before it gets taken down, so if nothing else, consider this a recommendation to take your copy off the shelf — CD, vinyl, whatever it might be — and give it another look, or if you don’t have a copy, to get one. It’s one of those records that goes a long way toward making a house into a home.

Either way, enjoy.

—

I’ve been thinking this week about the idea of curating. Announcing that I’m putting together that all-dayer for next August in Brooklyn has got me thinking about the various ways in which we curate our existence, the choices we make, the little things we do every day. My conclusion? I’m way fucking in favor. You know what the tradeoff is for all the privacy we’ve thrown out the window in the last two decades, all the data we’ve let be gathered and sold back to us, all the compromises we’ve made on our relationships to media and the relentlessly-cloying-yet-somehow-also-all-controlling corporatocracy in which we live? The tradeoff is the “I don’t want to see this” button.

It’s not quite my favorite thing in the world, but it’s definitely on the list. Imagine a real-life bullshit detector. I used to abhor willful ignorance, as though everyone should make an effort to expose themselves to everything, all the time — the least realistic of expectations. Our brains would explode. Fuck that shit. Life is short, and yeah, you should get out and see the world, but when you come across something you just know is garbage, “I don’t want to see this” comes in real, real handy.

The Patient Mrs. asks me all the time if I’ve seen this or that floating around, the latest horrific thing some Republican candidate said or did. There was a time where the answer would be yes, but now? Not a chance. I barely even pay attention to mass shootings, suicide bombings, war, greed, corruption, etc., anymore. Not when there are show flyers to check out! Is my being interminably beaten down by the needless cruelties we perpetrate on each other going to fix them? Nope. Am I improving myself by being upset by these things? Nope. Okay then.

I’m not saying compassion has no value — unless we’re measuring in terms of pure real-world productivity, which in most cases it does indeed have no value — or that the news isn’t worth keeping up with, but I’m saying that, like the news organizations, we’re fortunate to live in an age in which we’re also able to engage in what media studies calls “agenda setting.” I don’t know what Donald Trump said about Mexican immigrants. I don’t know how many people were blown up today in Baghdad. I do know Baroness have a new album coming out, and I know that the new Graveyard record kicks ass. And I’m perfectly okay with that balance. My agenda has been set.

Perhaps complemented by the revelation of a somewhat troubling tendency to gravitate toward ’90s television (Star Trek spinoffs, MST3K, etc.) and videogames, being able to curate my own life has proven a massive win, and it’s made me more conscious (again, for better and worse) of my decisions and habits, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The rest? Well, I don’t know about it, because I choose not to know. Other people can fret over the fact that nobody’s willing to do anything about climate change, that people on the internet say, write and do stupid, racist, sexist shit, and so on. Other people can protest wars like that’s ever going to stop them. It’s not like meaningful debate is a thing that exists or anyone’s interested in having. So yeah, beat your head against the wall of someone else’s dumbassery. Let me know how many years that adds to your life.

Next week, stay tuned for a Funeral Horse track stream, an initial announcement from Desertfest, reviews of Thera Roya and Uncle Acid and an interview with Monster Magnet‘s frontman, the inimitable Dave Wyndorf. There’s copious news already to go up on Monday about a new record from Saviours and the Melvins‘ next European tour, and I hear there’s an announcement coming from the Borderland Fuzz Fiesta as well, so stay tuned. Much goodness en route.

And if this site is one of the things to which you choose to expose yourself on a regular basis, please know you have my thanks and best wishes.

Great and safe weekend. Please check out the forum and radio stream.

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Free, Free (1969)

A long couple days behind me and a good garlicky meal bubbling around in my belly, I wanted to cap the week with something that had that classic groove all over it, and the 1969 self-titled sophomore outing by Free hit the mark just right. This is one of those records where even the ballad grooves. I dig it. I hope you dig it. I hope if you haven’t heard it in a while or if you’ve never heard it, you take the time to check it out and enjoy, even if you put it on and then go do something else. That’s what I did. I’m doing this.

Right on.

I had thought maybe I’d take next week and try and get on some record reviews that’ve been waiting to get done. I’ve got a whole bunch of albums people have been kind enough to send my way — actually send, not just email — that I want to get written up. Two shows next week though, so probably I won’t get caught up immediately. Monday, I’m gonna go see (and hopefully be fortunate enough to have a photo pass waiting for me to shoot) Black Sabbath at the Comcast Center up here, and then Wednesday will be my first time at the Great Scott. Elder and Second Grave are playing, and I’ve been here for more than a week and it’s high time I got out. I barely left the condo this week. At all. Last night I went to buy some groceries and it was a fucking revelation. All of a sudden, it’s Thursday and I’m going, “Holy shit, I haven’t been anywhere since Saturday.” It was like that.

So clearly I’m still figuring out the balance when it comes to the whole working-from-home thing. Need to give it a while. I’ll get there. I’m most definitely not there yet. Lots of stress, lots of anxiety. Tonight though my plan is to relax, watch the ball game, regroup my brain and come back fighting on Monday. Or if not fighting, at very least not feeling like I’m getting the crap kicked out of me.

And even though I’m going out twice and will have reviews of those shows, I’ll have a full-album stream from Primitive Man on Tuesday and a review of the new Admiral Browning record, which is killer. Maybe another album review too if I can get my head in it.

If you’re still reading this, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. And if you clicked off too, anyway. Go get ’em.

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