Doc Thomas Group And The Silence - The Italian Job / Shotgun Eyes (Reissue) (1966/1998)

The first 12 tracks (titled The Italian Job) comprise the entirety of the self-titled, Italian-only 1967 LP by the Doc Thomas Group, a band that (like the Silence) included Pete Watts and Dale Griffin. The subsequent 15 tracks on this single-disc CD were cut by a reunited lineup of the Silence in 1990, and comprise the Shotgun Eyes part of the release. That confusion out of the way, the Doc Thomas portion of the program album would be of no interest whatsoever if two of its members had not gone on to Mott the Hoople in a few years. It's guitar-oriented R&B/soul in the mold of the Small Faces and (more obscurely) the Byrds, although lacking anything like the personality of those two outfits. The all-cover LP is heavy on well-trod soul tunes like "Rescue Me," "Barefootin'," "Harlem Shuffle," and "I Got You," done with enough spirit to convey the band's qualifications for playing clubs of the time. The vocals aren't so hot, though, and the drumming falters into near-amateurishness from time to time. The Silence tracks are competent reworkings of the kind of R&B material that Watts and Griffin played in the band of the same name in the mid-'60s, and though not very creative, is actually well above average for projects of this type. Taken together with the Doc Thomas cuts, though, this is something of a dream come true for Mott the Hoople heads, gathering their rarest side project material onto one disc, with excellent annotation.