MIKE HARRISON - SAME island ILPS 9170 LP 1971 UK

	€		89
	$		103

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PREMESSA: LA SUPERIORITA' DELLA MUSICA SU VINILE E' ANCOR OGGI SANCITA, NOTORIA ED EVIDENTE. NON TANTO DA UN PUNTO DI VISTA DI RESA, QUALITA' E PULIZIA DEL SUONO, TANTOMENO DA QUELLO DEL RIMPIANTO RETROSPETTIVO E NOSTALGICO , MA SOPRATTUTTO DA QUELLO PIU' PALPABILE ED INOPPUGNABILE DELL' ESSENZA, DELL' ANIMA E DELLA SUBLIMAZIONE CREATIVA. IL DISCO IN VINILE HA PULSAZIONE ARTISTICA, PASSIONE ARMONICA E SPLENDORE GRAFICO , E' PIACEVOLE DA OSSERVARE E DA TENERE IN MANO, RISPLENDE, PROFUMA E VIBRA DI VITA, DI EMOZIONE E  DI SENSIBILITA'. E' TUTTO QUELLO CHE NON E' E NON POTRA' MAI ESSERE IL CD, CHE AL CONTRARIO E' SOLO UN OGGETTO MERAMENTE COMMERCIALE, POVERO, ARIDO, CINICO, STERILE ED ORWELLIANO,  UNA DEGENERAZIONE INDUSTRIALE SCHIZOFRENICA E NECROFILA, LA DESOLANTE SOLUZIONE FINALE DELL' AVIDITA' DEL MERCATO E DELL' ARROGANZA DEI DISCOGRAFICI .

MIKE HARRISON
same / eponymous / self-titled

Disco LP 33 giri , 1971,  island , ILPS 9170 , pink rim palm label, UK, first pressing

OTTIME CONDIZIONI, vinyl ex++ , cover ex++/NM.

Mike Harrison (born 30 September 1942 in Carlisle, Cumberland, England) is an English musician, most notable as a principal lead singer of Spooky Tooth and as a solo artist. He has also been the lead singer in the The V.I.P.'s, Art and the Hamburg Blues Band, among others.

Mike Harrison is the first solo album by Spooky Tooth principal lead singer Mike Harrison, released on Island Records in 1971. It was recorrded and released after Spooky Tooth had broken up for the first time, following the release of their album The Last Puff (1970)

Debutto solista per il front line e membro storico degli Spooky Tooth Mike Harrison, con questo LP dell' ottobre 1971 che porta il suo stesso insipido nome

• Etichetta:  ISLAND
  
• Catalogo: ILPS - 9170
• MATRICI : ILPS 9170 A-1U / ILPS 9170 B-1U
• Data di pubblicazione: 1971

• Supporto:vinile 33 giri
• Tipo audio: stereo
• Dimensioni: 30 cm.
• Facciate: 2
• Copertina apribile/ gatefold , pink rim label (with palm) , original island blue inner sleeve

1. Mother Nature (Batey)
2. Call It A Day (Batey-Harrison-Herbert-Iverson)
3. Damian (Harrison-Herbert)
4. Pain (Herbert-Iverson-Kenyon)

1. Wait Until Morning (Griffin-Harrison)
2. Lonely People (Batey)
3. Hard Headed Woman (Cat Stevens)
4. Here Comes The Queen (Luther Grosvenor)

Personnel

• Mike Harrison - vocals, piano, harmonica, organ
• Kevin Iverson - drums, percussion, background vocals
• Peter Batey - bass, percussion
• Lan Herbert - guitar, piano, organ, vibes, background vocals
• Frank Kenyon - guitar, background vocals

Chris Blackwell signed The VIPs as one of the first bands on his fledgling Island label, they had a chart topping single in Europe - I Wanna Be Free – before morphing into the prog rock Art with a couple of personnel changes.

American Gary Wright, later to have the massive 1976 US Number 1 Dream Weaver, joined and the band again changed into the celebrated, hard rock Spooky Tooth.

Acclaimed debut 1968 album It’s All About followed and a year later Spooky Two confirmed the band’s reputation and commercial popularity, if only in the USA and Europe.

Legends everywhere else, Spooky Tooth remained cult heroes in the UK, feted by their peers and university students, known as one of the great live bands of the day in the right circles.

Despite sold out tours of America, sales into the hundreds of thousands, Harrison quit to pay the mortgage in 1976.

“We never made a penny from touring, although someone did and I’ve never seen a royalty for record sales in my life. If I had the money for a lawyer I’d pursue it. I just enjoyed singing, it didn’t matter where I did it.”

“But I did gigs in Germany and we recorded an album, I just thought, ‘this is what I’m best at, let’s get back into it’.”

Mike Maslen, boss of Halo Records and Mike Harrison worshipper, heard of these new adventures and set about convincing his hero to consider the unthinkable.

“I swore blind I’d never do a record for another company,” Harrison shakes his head, “But Mike’s great, he’s given me total freedom. I had in mind to do an album of Ray Charles songs and then expanded to just songs I love singing. As it happens they’re mainly by Ray Charles and Etta James, there’s one Otis Redding.”

Currently recording at Grange Studios, the two Mikes are aiming for an authentic soul album, recording in analogue to really mine Harrison’s roots. Early results showcase as uniquely an authentic voice as has ever emanated from these shores and Harrison’s ethos of ‘keep it simple’ is reaching to the core of great, great songs, infusing them with a lifetime’s experience that more illustrious musicians are sadly lacking.

“I don’t regret much, except not looking after the money,” he considers, “I don’t regret anything I did musically and I don’t regret giving it all up because probably if I stayed in it I’d be dead or totally sick of it.

“A lot of my contemporaries believed their own hype and went down the tube. I’ve always believed that with music, if you have any talent at all, it doesn’t come from you, it comes through you. It’s a gift and should be shared. I certainly don’t stand there thinking ‘look at me.’ All I want to do is make people smile and make it good.”

Mike Harrison "Out Of The Rain" makes the top 100 best songs of 2007 in Classic Rock magazine!

The Spooky Tooth story (for those of us who are into this sort of thing), if you want to wax analytical about it, provides the perfect paradigm of how various members of disparate 60's British Beat bands pooled their musical resources and mutated into a psychedelic/progressive outfit.

The story begins in the Summer of 1963, in Carlisle, Cumbria, in the far North-West of England. Jimmy Henshaw (guitar, keyboards), Walter Johnstone (drums), Frank Kenyan (guitar) and former export clerk Mike Harrison (vocals) formed a beat combo, and dubbed themselves The VIPs. Johnstone and Kenyan had previously been in The Teenagers; not long after forming the band, The VIPs added Greg Ridley on bass, who had previously lined up with Dino & The Danubes, The Dakotas and The Ramrods, together with Harrison. They scored a record deal with RCA, who put out their debut single, "She's So Good"/"Don't Keep Shouting At Me" in 1964, both sides being penned by Henshaw. The single is a great slice of sneery Brit R&B, and is now an ultra-rare collectors' favourite. From 1965 to 1966 the band were a top club attraction in London, and gigged regularly at the Star Club in Hamburg, garnering a sizeable cult following.

The original VIPs' line-up recorded three more singles ("Wintertime" as The Vipps for CBS, plus "I Wanna Be Free"/"Don't Let It Go" and "Straight Down To The Bottom"/"In A Dream" for Island, produced by Island stalwart Guy Stevens) before disbanding. Henshaw, Johnstone and Kenyan were replaced by Luther Grosvenor (guitar), Mike Kellie (drums), and Keith Emerson (keyboards). Emerson had previously been a member of Gary Farr & The T-Bones; this variant of The VIPs gigged for only three months, before Emerson upped and formed The Nice, with Brian "Blinky" Davidson, Lee Jackson and Davy O'List. The remaining quartet changed their name from the by then somewhat anachronistic VIPs, to simply Art.

Worcester-born Grosvenor had played guitar for The Hellians, whose 1964 single, "Daydreaming Of You", released on Pye subsidiary Piccadilly, was produced by maverick West Coast genius/madman/charlatan Kim Fowley. The Hellians, if I may digress still further, boasted the nascent talents of both Dave Mason and Jim Capaldi, who would, of course, go on to form Island mainstays Traffic with Steve Winwood, and a young Poli Palmer, who latterly rattled the joanna for Family. The Hellians, in turn, mutated into Deep Feeling.

Mike Kellie, originally from Birmingham, had drummed for second city band Locomotive, who also featured sax and flute player Chris Wood, who joined Traffic in 1967. There. See how incestuous this little scene was? Anyway, Locomotive would go on to enjoy a UK Top 30 hit with the ska-rhythmed "Rudi's In Love" (unusually enough, the band were very heavily ska and bluebeat-driven), and in 1969 put out the awesome latter-day psychedelic gem, "Mr. Armageddon".

Back to Art. Art cut one album, "Supernatural Fairy Tales", also produced by Guy Stevens (and also available on Edsel), released in 1967. Beautifully housed in a Hapshash And The Coloured Coat-designed sleeve, its original Island Records catalogue number was, ironically enough, ILP 967. Hapshash And The Coloured Coat released an album on Liberty, in which Art featured as backing band on several tracks.

Art's line-up was swelled by the addition of American Gary Wright in October 1967, which initiated a name change - Art became Spooky Tooth.

Wright was born in New Jersey, and had been a child actor, before studying psychology. It was these studies which brought him to Europe initially. The vocal and keyboard interplay between Wright and Harrison is what characterised the Spooky Tooth sound. The debut album, "It's All About", originally released in May 1968 on Island ILPS 9080, featured the band's blistering reading of the John D. Loudermilk classic, "Tobacco Road", always a live showstopper, and their debut single, "Sunshine Help Me". The latter so enamoured Brummie poppers The Move that they cut their own version on the live "Somethin' Else" EP. It's inevitable that the band's heavily Hammond organ-saturated sound drew comparisons with Island stablemates Traffic; after all, the various band members had worked together in other outfits, but Winwood & Co. had the head start in terms of record releases and chart success. Moreover, both Traffic and Spooky Tooth shared producers in the shape of Jimmy Miller, so such sonic similarities are perhaps less of a surprise. If anything, Spooky Tooth were darker and doomier, although their strongly melodic rock set them apart from their contemporaries.

The band's penchant for road work ensured that they built up a loyal club following in the UK, but it was in the USA that the band enjoyed greater commercial success. "It's All About" was renamed "Tobacco Road" for the US, and belatedly made No.152 in the US album charts in August 1970.

The original Spooky Tooth line-up cut two further albums for Island, "Spooky Two" (Island ILPS 9098, released March 1969) and "Ceremony" (Island ILPS 9107, released January 1970), the latter being unusually distinguished by featuring French electronics wizard Pierre Henry. The band, however, regarded the album as "an utter failure", and claimed that after two and a half years, they had slipped into "stale, predictable music and creative demoralisation", and promptly split in February 1970.

Following the demise, Gary Wright formed the band Wonderwheel (who boasted guitar ace Jerry Donahue in the original line-up, replaced, in turn, by Mick Jones, who had been musical director with French rock and roller Johnny Hallyday), which lasted from April 1971 to September 1972. Wright cut two albums with the band for A&M, after signing to the label in September 1970, namely "Extraction" (A&M AMLS 2004, April 1971), and "Footprint" (A&M AMLS 64296, January 1972).

The rest of the band didn't take long to get out of the slough of despond they seemed to have descended into post-"Ceremony"; in Autumn 1970, Harrison, Grosvenor and Kellie reconvened under the Spooky Tooth banner, with the addition of ex-Grease Band members Alan Spenner (bass) and Henry McCullough (guitar) replacing Ridley and Wright to record "The Last Puff" (Island ILPS 9117, July 1970). Ridley had earlier departed to join Humble Pie with Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton. John Hawken (ex-Nashville Teens keyboard man - it was the 'Teens who had the original UK chart hit with "Tobacco Road"!) and Steve Thompson (bass) joined the others to tour the record. "The Last Puff", despite the line-up changes, was still a fine album, with the band's storming version of "I Am The Walrus" kicking things off energetically. They also showed great taste in covering David Ackles' aching "Down River", as well as a spirited version of Elton John's "Son Of Your Father". The band folded again shortly afterwards, however.

After this (again albeit temporary) hiatus, Mike Harrison utilised the services of Carlisle band Junkyard Angel to back him on his eponymous solo debut (Island ILPS 9170, October 1971), and also cut a second solo work, "Smokestack Lightning" (Island ILPS 9209, 1972). Luther Grosvenor, after a period of recuperation and songwriting in Spain, recorded a solo album, "Under Open Skies" (Island ILPS 9168, October 1971, also available on Edsel), before joining Stealers Wheel for their last six months. After that, he replaced Mott The Hoople lead guitarist Mick Ralphs, joining the band at their commercial peak, having been renamed "Ariel Bender" by the Mott main man Ian Hunter. After splitting from Mott to be replaced for a valedictory single by ex-Spider From Mars Mick Ronson, he formed Widowmaker with former Love Affair vocalist Steve Ellis. Mike Kellie went on to rattle the traps with Peter Frampton's Camel, as well as lots of session work.

By September 1972, however, with neither Wright nor Harrison's solo ventures stirring up much commercial paydirt, the band again decided to get back into the ring as Spooky Tooth. Apart from Wright and Harrison, the line-up that recorded "You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw" (Island ILPS 9227, May 1973) featured Mick Jones (guitar, vocals), Bryson Graham (drums), and ex-Junkyard Angel Ian Herbert (bass), and lasted from September 1972 to March 1973. Jones and Graham had worked with Wright in Wonderwheel. "You Broke..." was again a reasonably successful album; Stateside, it reached number 84 in May 1973, it was followed up with a tour and enthusiastically promoted by the band.

Kellie was welcomed back into the fold to record "Witness" (Island ILPS 9255, Nov. 1973 - the band's last album for the label), and Keith Ellis replaced Herbert on bass. This line-up lasted until February 1974, when Harrison split for good, eventually cutting a solo album for Good Ear, entitled "Rainbow Rider" (Good Ear EARL 7002, August 1975). His place was taken by Mike Patto, who had fronted Timebox, his own, eponymous band, and Boxer; the band decamped to New York, but by now the Spooky Tooth plot was severely lost. The band stuttered on until September 1974, cutting a final album, "The Mirror", also for Good Ear (EARL 2001 - October 1974). By this time, Wright was the only original member of the band, Kellie and Ellis jumping ship, replaced by Bryson Graham (again!) and Val Moore.

So, the band rather ignominiously ground to a halt by September 1974. The final line-up saw Mick Jones first join ex-Mountain guitarist Leslie West's band, before throwing in his lot with former King Crimson keyboards/horns man Ian McDonald in the massively successful Foreigner; Mike Patto eventually succumbed to throat cancer in 1979; Bryson Graham and Moore went back to session work. Mike Kellie turned up in The Only Ones, another great lost band of the 1970s. Gary Wright signed with Warner Brothers as a solo act, and struck immediate platinum with the hugely successful "Dream Weaver" (Warner Bros. K56141, July 1975). Follow-ups didn't scale the same commercial heights, although he remained a recording artist until the late 1980s.

So that was the Spooky Tooth story. The band are still fondly remembered as one of the great live acts of their time who never earned their commercial due. They bequeathed some great records, and bizarrely enough, their name would latterly accrue notoriety following an infamous US court case, wherein one of the band's songs, "Better By You, Better Than Me", covered by Birmingham Heavy Metal legend Judas Priest, resulted in a court case following the death of two fans in a "back-masking" controversy. No matter; the best of their music is to be found in these Edsel reissues.

(the band's 1999 reunion album, "Cross Purposes")