SPOOKY TOOTH

SPOOKY TOOTH
THE LAST PUFF (1970)
320 KBPS

This one is credited to "Spooky Tooth Featuring Mike Harrison," strangely enough, even though Luther Grosvenor and Mike Kellie are still backin' him up with the hi-fi jam. So Gary Wright isn't around - so what? He only wrote most of the songs! This becomes dorkingly evident pretty early on when you check the cold beat wax and see that only ONE (1) of these seven songs was actually written by a current member of Spooky Tooth!!!!! And that's the title track - a gospelly piano instrumental written by the gospelly piano guy that replaced Gary Wright!!!! AWWW MAN!
Gospel was also an influence on Spooky Tooth - I may not have mentioned that earlier. You can tell by the hosanna church style piano lines in a lot of places, as well as the occasional buttock-unattractive female choir backup vocals. But what's with the name Spooky Tooth? The band is neither spooky nor a tooth.
They do a slow bluesy cover of "I Am The Walrus" on here that you may very well have heard on your local FM radio station, it having been a semi-hit and all. Unfortunately, they also do songs by Joe Cocker and Elton John, and not terribly good ones either. You would think that with a catalog of 50-some-odd albums from which to choose, they could have picked a better Elton song than the corny "Son Of Your Father" - perhaps "I'm Still Standing" or "(Princess Di, Please Shove A) Candle In The Wind (That's Coming Out Of My Ass, Which Is Gay)." Or "Nikita," of course, but that's already been covered to death by pretty much every gangsta rap band in the country.
There's lots of piano on this album.
It's not a bad album. There's a leftover from Gary Wright (I guess that's who it's by - it just says "Wright" - I guess it could be by hilarious comedian Steven Wright, who is as popular today as he ever was) that's a really catchy poppity blues/rock tune deserving of every bit of success that it earned. But I'm still not quite sure what Mike Harrison was thinking. Why would he insist upon keeping the band name when neither he nor any of the other members had any new songs to offer to the world?

1. I Am the Walrus
2. The Wrong Time
3. Something to Say
4. Nobody There at All
5. Down River
6. Son of Your Father
7. The Last Puff
Bonus tracks
8. Son of Your Father
9. I've Got Enough Heartache
10. I Am the Walrus
11. Hangman Hang My Shell on a Tree