Spooky Tooth
Agora Ballroom Cleveland Ohio
1974-02-11

01 Waiting For The Wind 3:49
02 Cotton Growing Man 4:46
03 Old As I Was Born 13:33
04 The Mirror 6:33
05 Fantasy Satisfier 4:55
06 I Am The Walrus 7:07
07 Evil Woman 12:46

Mike Patto - Vocals & Keyboard
Gary Wright - Vocals & Keyboard
Mick Jones - Guitar
Val Burke - Bass
Bryson Graham - Drums

Lineage: FM > unknown tape generations > FLAC download > Audacity fiddling > FLAC

This turned up on the web recently (soundaboard), and I found it to be an enjoyable recording, with some aspects that I felt could be improved a bit. There were some rough edits from tape stops, at least one tape flip gap ("Fantasy Satisfier"), and numerous tape dropout episodes that I attempted to smooth out, patch, and/or minimize as best as possible. The mid bass was rather pronounced, and the low bass rolled off, so I attempted to balance that a little better. The highs are still pretty muffled, but I did boost them slightly and applied light noise reduction. A little radio announcer guy survives, and the final "whoa whoa whoa yeah yeah yeah" crescendo of "Evil Woman" fades out - not much to be done about that.

I wasn't very familiar with this band until Gary Wright had some solo hits and an enterprising record company put out a double record collection of Spooky Tooth songs. Very good heavy psychedelic melodicism, perhaps somewhere along the spectrum between Vanilla Fudge, Rare Bird, and Procol Harum.

Gary Wright had left the band for a bit, but was back in the fold here. Co-lead vocalist Mike Harrison had in turn left the band, and his shoes are ably filled here by the redoubtable Mr. Patto. Luther Grosvenor (aka Ariel Bender) had also gone, replaced by the Mick Jones who would later form Foreigner. Original drummer Mike Kellie had also departed, and would turn up in the Only Ones in a few years time.

The date 1974-02-11 is more than "two to three weeks" before Wikipedia's reported release date for "The Mirror" LP, but an advertisement for the Agora apparently exists, showing that date for a visit. Wikipedia says "the album was released in October, 1974, one month after group members had permanently disbanded." They apparently played Detroit February 3, Terre Haute March 1, and Santa Monica May 31. I can imagine the discouragement a band might feel from doing that much touring without the new album getting placed in stores by the record company!

Sample below.

Cheese DIME 2015

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