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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SPOOKY TOOTH
Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH
February 1974
Excellent soundboard remastered by PR
1. Waiting For The Wind
2. Cotton Growing Man
3. Old As I Was Born
4. The Mirror
5. Fantasy Satisfier
6. I Am The Walrus
7. Evil Woman
Mike Patto - vocals
Gary Wright - keyboards
Mick Jones - guitar
Bryson Graham - drums
Val Moore - bass
NO ARTWORK!
I ran this one by the Mods first due to the limited info on this show. They have agreed to let this one run.
This is Spooky Tooth at the Agora Ballroom in Cleveland OH from 1974. Probably an FM broadcast, but no specific info was provided in the info file I originally got with this. I d/l this from Pink Robert last year - many thanks to him for sharing his fabulous music collection with us.
I have attached a sound sample, and also frequency analysis and spectral views of one song, kindly provided by the Mods. There is significant drop-off after 8K, but it is not "lossy" sourced.
I checked various sites such as All Music Guide, Spooky Tooth discography sites, and Amazon.com to see if any official releases contained any material from this recording. The only official release of live material I could find was the BBC release, which includes some of their BBC recordings, and also a couple of cuts from an unknown show in 1970. There is another bootleg called "First Tooth", which contains some of the songs from this show, but not all of them. All the references I could find show "First Tooth" to be a bootleg, and not an official release.
Seeded to DIME on 3/26/2007 by seohcE
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Original Info File:
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SPOOKY TOOTH
Agora Ballroom
Cleveland, OH
1974
1 Waiting For The Wind
2 Cotton Growing Man
3 Old As I Was Born
4 The Mirror
5 Fantasy Satisfier
6 I Am The Walrus
7 Evil Woman
Mike Patto--Vocals & Keyboard
Gary Wright--Vocals & Keyboard
Mick Jones--Guitar
Val Burke--Bass
Bryson Graham--Drums
Lineage: Unknown source > CD-R > EAC > FLAC (8)
07 Evil Woman.flac:a854a2dcbe2a1a9c722ec75b2d7a2131
01 Waiting For The Wind.flac:f818d5892cfc3d831583f4e42e3eddf8
02 Cotton Growing Man.flac:628f8c09d8e863b0de0a04d1ab9fe513
03 Old As I Was Born.flac:dc078ea503548678633fed9b6514d0b0
04 The Mirror.flac:89b8039c038feffe9c237bc4d3f28958
05 Fantasy Satisfier.flac:a0b26d72a5a81557b517b79034498eb6
06 I Am The Walrus.flac:46ea42d2cacc7e503aa2e4e35dc1a7c7
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